Draft Proposal 2004 - page 3

US ITASE SMO successfully organized 11 science programs and logistics for all four OPP supported field seasons. The US ITASE traverse team reached South Pole Station at the end of the 2002-2003 field season, concluding SMO operation and field activities for the initial four season sampling of West Antarctica.

This proposal requests support from the Office of Polar Programs for a US ITASE SMO in support of US ITASE activities in East Antarctica to include:

1. A continuation of the highly successful, logistically efficient, multi-disciplinary US ITASE field operation style used during the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 field seasons so that US ITASE can undertake a series of scientific objectives in the region from Taylor Dome to South Pole (TD-SP). The expansion of US ITASE activities into East Antarctica is based upon:
   1. extensive discussions among current US ITASE investigators that formulated the logistics and scientific objectives stated in this proposal
   2. announcements of opportunities and solicitation of other investigators via email messages distributed by the Ice Core Working Group, US ITASE SMO, and US ITASE investigators to colleagues in the scientific community
   3. presentation of the plan for an East Antarctic extension of US ITASE to the Ice Core Working Group and a special Ice Core Research meeting held in Washington, DC (April, 2002), and at a specially convened US ITASE community workshop during the Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco (December, 2003)
   4. continuous information access concerning past, present, and future activities through websites such as: US ITASE (www2.umaine.edu/USITASE) maintained and operated by the Climate Change Institute (CCI), University of Maine, and www.secretsoftheice.org developed and hosted by US ITASE’s outreach partner, the Museum of Science (MOS), Boston and developed through cooperation between CCI, MOS, and when P.A. Mayewski was at the University of New Hampshire, the Climate Change ResearchCenter
   5. collaboration developed by the ITASE Steering Committee (P.A. Mayewski, Chair) between the 20 nations involved in ITASE under the auspices of the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) at several ITASE meetings – most recently in Durham, NH (1999), Potsdam, Germany (2002), Milan, Italy (2003) and soon to be in Bremen (2004)
   6. support expressed at several public meetings and in discussion by ITASE national representatives that are working geographically in closest to the proposed US ITASE activities (Dr. Massimo Frezzotti, Centro Ricerche Casaccia (Rome, Italy), Dr. Michel Fily, Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Geophysique de l’Environnement (Grenoble, France), and Dr. Ian Goodwin, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia).
2. A continuation of the US ITASE SMO (4 mos./yr staff position plus limited hourly support) for purposes of assisting in the planning, organization of science and logistics, and organization of final products resulting from the original 1999-2003 US ITASE activities in West Antarctica in combination with the proposed US ITASE 2003-2005 activities.
3. Traverse route selection utilizing satellite imagery, included in the West Antarctic US ITASE traverses as a separate proposal to G.S. Hamilton, and now included as part of US ITASE SMO (1 mo. for GSH plus 3 mos, graduate student).

Continuing support of US ITASE activities during the 2005-2007 field seasons is requested for several reasons:

1. US ITASE combines in one field program a variety of disciples (meteorology, remote sensing, geophysics, surface glaciology, ice core glaciology, atmospheric chemistry and potentially others) that would not necessarily interact together. The scientific products developed from this association are more robust because of this association.
2. As will be demonstrated in this proposal the scientific objectives for US ITASE in East Antarctica are of significant scientific importance.
3. US ITASE has demonstrated that it is a logistically efficient program that requires significantly fewer resources than would be required if the 11 science activities involved in US ITASE in West Antarctica were treated as individual projects.
   If this proposal is supported US ITASE SMO would assist in the planning and organization of logistics and science for NSF OPP selected projects, as was done for US ITASE 1999-2003.

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