Dear Colleagues:
The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) with its predecessor programs, the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), is the longest running international geosciences collaboration and has been the centerpiece of many sub-fields of the geosciences. Traditionally, scientists have played the most important role in defining drilling objectives and goals and in promoting and advocating for continued resources to support scientific ocean drilling. This letter is intended to facilitate community participation in this tradition.
Current plans are for IODP to support a combined total of only 12 months of drilling per year on the JOIDES Resolution and Chikyu, until 2013. This will surely lead to important scientific discoveries, but represents less drilling time and a reduced scientific scope than we envisioned a few years ago. Maintaining and expanding the program past 2013 will require additional resources and strategic planning by the community.
Now is the time for the scientific community to ensure the health and possible expansion of the IODP in the near future and beyond 2013. How can we do this?
These web pages provide suggestions for how you can do your part to promote the IODP. Recognizing that scientists, geoscience educators, and enthusiasts are diverse in terms of their skills, available time, and perspectives, we have compiled a series of resources, filled with various avenues and mechanisms that anyone can pick from to do their share. Remember that IODP is your program, and we urge you to do your share.
To justify continued and enhanced investment of resources into scientific ocean drilling, we need to:
COMMUNICATE our innovative discoveries to a wider audience beyond the drilling community, including the public, science community leaders and policy makers;
ENGAGE other science communities and enhance the scope of our scientific goals to benefit greater numbers of sub-disciplines and to promote novel interdisciplinary research; and
EDUCATE the next generation of geoscientists, educators, and science program managers, and integrate the IODP scientific discoveries into science and math pedagogy to make a lasting contribution to national education.
Please feel free to contact members of the U.S. Advisory Committee for Scientific Ocean Drilling (USAC) and staff of the U.S. Science Support Program (USSSP) if you have questions or suggestions.
Sincerely yours,
USAC members
