Findings and Recommendations - New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences - page 94

that promote community interactions around this theme.
Finding 2: New opportunities for studies of climate, tectonics, and surface processes
exist within the GeoPRISMS program for research that spans the shoreline within
focus areas that include Cascadia, the Aleutians, and eastern North American margin.
Development of closer linkages between EAR and the Division of Ocean Sciences
(OCE) within GeoPRISMS can leverage and optimize these research opportunities.
Finding 3: The acquisition of high-resolution topographic data, such as through the
NCALM, is essential for continued progress in surface process studies. Maintenance
of this capability and expansion to support acquisition of wider areal coverage and to
provide more comprehensive distribution of these data are highly relevant for studies
of climate, tectonics, and erosion processes.
Finding 4: Seismic reflection techniques provide the primary tools for imaging
structure in the crustal interior at geological scales and is a highly desired capability
for addressing many deep Earth to surface research questions. However, the
capabilities for reflection imaging are diminishing in the academic community.
Maintaining and enhancing reflection imaging capability, perhaps through new
industry-academic partnerships to acquire new data sets or to obtain access to existing
industry data sets for academic study, is also highly relevant for research goals in
fault studies and for continental drilling.
Recommendation: EAR should take appropriate steps to encourage work on
interactions among climate, surface processes, tectonics, and deeper Earth
processes either through a new interdisciplinary program or perhaps by
expanding the focus of the EAR Continental Dynamics program to accommodate
the broader research agenda of these interdisciplinary subthemes.
Instrument and Facilities Needs for Advancing Research on Interactions among
Climate, Surface Processes, Tectonics, and Deep Earth Processes
Finding 1: Important existing facilities that support research in this area include
NCALM (LiDAR data), the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System
(CSDMS), unique lab facilities (e.g., National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics
[NCED]), UNAVCO permanent and portable geodetic facilities, and IRIS permanent
and portable seismic facilities.
Finding 2: Access to geochronometric and cosmogenic dating to support analysis of
the large sample collections intrinsic to this field-intensive research remains
important.