X-CZO Planning

REVISED Agenda for Thursday, May 12, 2011 ( pdf version)

Your input needed! Enter up to three research questions for Thursday's session Follow this Link

Workshop to develop (i) questions, (ii) hypotheses, (iii) approaches, and (iv) methods for Cross-CZO Network

One goal of Critical Zone science is to develop a better understanding of the couplings among physical, chemical and biological processes in the surface Earth. To do that requires an ability to work collaboratively across disciplines, scales, and datasets. This is something that is being pursued by each CZO site.

However, to the extent that we are collecting comparable data streams across the expanded “parameter space” of the CZO network, cross-site data can be queried for emergent patterns that may or may not be discernible at the CZO site scale.

Therefore, the objective of the All Hands Thursday Workshop is to develop a set of questions, hypotheses, and research approaches/methods for possible network pursuit by the CZO teams that will: (i) make synergistic use of existing commonalities across the CZO data sets, and/or (ii) give rise to novel X-CZO collaborations.

The workshop effort should ideally result in cross-site paper(s), follow on proposal(s), etc.

Agenda for the Thursday Workshop Session (ambitious, we would need to be efficient):

A. Breakout Groups 1 (QUESTIONS): After a brief full group introduction, break out into multi-disciplinary working groups that will each develop a set of X-CZO questions that can likely be addressed through cross site comparisons. (8:00-9:00 am).

B. Full Group 1 (QUESTIONS): Reconvene to present the research questions to the full group. Full group should identify a manageable set (5-10 depending on total number of participants) by merging and prioritizing to give a sufficient cross section of disciplines and time scales. (9:00-10:00 am)

C. Breakout Groups 2 (HYPOTHESES): Break out into new groups that self-organize around the questions identified. Develop no more than three hypotheses to be tested under that question. (Note, breakout group composition doesn’t need to be same group composition as breakout 1 and hopefully won’t be.) (11:00-noon)

D. Lunch (noon-1:00)

E. Full Group 2 (HYPOTHESES): Report back on hypotheses developed. Get feedback from the larger group on hypotheses and any initial thoughts on how to test. (1:00-2:00 pm)

F. Breakout Groups 3 (APPROACH and METHODS): Develop an overall experimental design that will enable testing of hypotheses. What do we need information on? Evaluate extent to which needed data are already being acquired across CZOs, how they are being acquired, etc. What are commonalities and differences in how we are collecting the requisite data? What new data do we need? Is it possible to get it? What new infrastructure is required? (2:00-4:00 pm)

G. Full Group 3 (APPROACH and METHODS): Report back to full group and discuss potential synergies. e.g., If new infrastructure is needed, does it address needs of more than one group? (4:00-5:30 pm)

G. Dinner (6:30 pm)