GeoPRISMS Office Support

GeoPRISMS is a community-led program aimed at understanding active processes along continental margins, through integrative approaches that merge field studies, laboratory experiments, and theoretical analysis. The program addresses first-order questions about Earth's most active tectonic, mass transfer, and sedimentary systems, and which are relevant to major geohazards that affect population centers, including large earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and landslides. The program supports interdisciplinary scientific research that crosses the land-ocean boundary, and focuses these efforts at selected locations where national and international collaborations can be leveraged; the focus sites for GeoPRISMS include the eastern margin of North America, and the subduction plate boundaries of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

GeoPRISMS science is organized around two initiatives - Rift Initiation and Evolution (RIE) and Subduction Cycles and Dynamics (SCD) - that address the behavior and dynamics of continental margins, which host large population centers and are critical regions to wide-ranging industrial, economic, transport, and strategic activity. The two initiatives are further linked by a suite of overarching themes that provide a context for integration and process-based understanding of these complex systems. Taken together, these two elements of the GeoPRISMS program target fundamental and outstanding questions in the Solid Earth sciences including: feedbacks between fluids, magmas, and deformation; controls on along-strike and temporal variations in deformation behavior, earthquakes, and geochemical cycling; and links between surface processes and deformation. The framework of the program, and the activities of the office to coordinate a diverse scientific community, provide an important intellectual incubator for the exchange of ideas, new collaborations, and engagement of students and early career scientists. The GeoPRISMS Office plays an essential role in this vibrant community-driven program by developing, coordinating, and facilitating research collaboration, synergy across disciplines, and engagement of a diverse scientific community. Specific activities include the organization of meetings and workshops; dissemination of research findings and opportunities through the website and publication of a newsletter; identification of new opportunities for collaboration with major international and national programs; managing database activities; assisting with logistical and scientific activities; and serving as a liaison between NSF and the GeoPRISMS community.