ICE-D Workshop
The ICE-D database project (www.ice-d.org) is an effort to organize cosmogenic-nuclide exposure-age data that are useful for, among other things, reconstructing past glacier and ice sheet change. It uses a “transparent-middle-layer” design that solves a number of problems associated with synoptic analysis of geochronology data by enforcing internally consistent calculation of geologic ages across a large data set. At present, the database is fairly complete for Antarctica (www.ice-d.org/antarctica), Greenland (www.ice-d.org/greenland) and alpine glaciers in many parts of the world (www.ice-d.org/alpine), but data is continually being published and there is room for improvement of the Alpine database.
A workshop will take place at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst on March 11-12 that is aimed at (i) training students and researchers interested in synoptic analysis of exposure-age data for glacier change and paleoclimate applications in how to contribute to building, maintaining, and using the database, and (ii) adding more datasets and better-organizing current datasets. 3-4 more spaces are available at this workshop and the purpose of this email is to invite applications from additional potential attendees.
The workshop will cover the following topics:
— How the ICE-D database infrastructure is set up and organized
— How to put data into the database and edit pre-existing data
— Hands-on exercise in digging Alpine data out of the literature and expanding the database
— How to get data out of the database for analysis and visualization purposes using MATLAB, Python, GIS applications, etc.
— As time permits, exercises in using ICE-D data in an embedded web map and/or building web applications that use ICE-D data
The overall aim is to build the group of users who are able to and interested in contributing to the database project and using it for Earth science applications.
Folks attending the workshop should have at least some of the following characteristics:
— Involved in research having to do with cosmogenic-nuclide exposure dating of glacier change
— Involved in or interested in using large data exposure-age data sets for synoptic climate or glacier change analysis
— Motivated to participate in the ICE-D project in future by (i) building or maintaining data, (ii) developing new analysis or visualization applications, or (iii) using ICE-D resources for undergraduate/graduate teaching or outreach.
— Some knowledge of programming environments used to build websites and/or analyze data, for example SQL, Python, and MATLAB.
— Most likely a graduate student or postdoc
There is some NSF funding available to support travel costs for students and early career researchers.
To apply, please send the following to Joe Tulenko (jtulenko@bgc.org) by Feb 23 2024:
— A CV
— A letter explaining (i) how you meet the requirements above, and (ii) what you would like to do with the ICE-D databases or infrastructure.
Further information is available on a workshop web page at:
https://wiki.ice-d.org/workshops:umass
thank you for your consideration,
Joe Tulenko