1. Welcome from IM Chair.

2. Agenda approved

3. April 2005 IM Steering Committee Meeting minutes approved

4. IM Membership

Principal members:

• UK (UK margin program closing 09/06, so unclear future source of funds)
• Japan
• US

Members:

• Norway

Associate members:

• China
  

• Spain progress was very slow. Cesar Ranero was identified as a potential contact to encourage membership.
• Taiwan slow.
• Korea slow.
• India slow.
• Ireland had no current contact point or program to work through. However, Colin Brown and a person at Lamont doing Irish work could be contacted for help.

5. Report on IM Office move to Japan

• New Office established.
• Website hit rate going up; IM Office will be updating cruise lists.
• Revised circulation list for IM information.
• Advertised opportunities for workshop support from IM.
• Newsletter would be published once national reports had been submitted by member IMSC representatives.

• Financial status would be updated for the Spring 2005 IMSC meeting.
• Office cost per financial year = 4,352,682 yen (~$36,272).
• Expected expenses until Feb '06 were ~$5,544, leaving a projected balance in Feb '06 of ~$88,412.

An internal audit of IM funds would recommend increasing IM activities to bring down the budget total. However, IMSC members stated that this should be decided by the IMSC, not the audit.

The IM Office would be working on education and outreach plans, which typically account for 3-5% of such a budget in Japan.


7. Reports on major developments in each member country .

Japan

• Joint Indonesia, Germany, U.S. and Japan Sumatra cruises in February-March, 2005.
• Nankai 3D survey planned for Mar-May, 2006.
• An international Taiwan cruise under negotiation would be the first use of a Japanese research ship in Taiwanese waters.
• Many other international Sumatra cruises had been represented at a meeting on the first day of AGU.

Norway

• Norway mainly conducts IM-related work under EUROMARGINS, PETROMAKS and other petroleum industry funded efforts.
• At present, Norway is involved in multiple EUROMARGINS collaborations with other nations.
• The planned Norwegian Margin Network would include high quality deep seismic wide-angle seismic across the Norway and East Greenland margins, which would be collected under EUROMARGINS. A workshop in January, 2006, would discuss interpretation of existing seismic data, which includes access to almost all industry data for the Norwegian margin.
• Onshore work and modeling are being done, including multiple exploration-relevant projects funded by PETROMAKS.
• Slope stability has been a particularly popular area since hydrate deposits were found within the Storegga(?) slide scar. "Megaslides" up to 10x larger had been found in buried sediments.
• Several IODP proposals are being developed. An early 2006 workshop had been planned to speed up progress.
• Data from an OBS deployment on the Voring Plateau were almost all in, and showed major lateral variations in structure along strike. 3D modeling of the data had already started.

U.S.

• Funding decisions from the most recent NSF-MARGINS panel have not been released yet.
• Referred IMSC to "Chair's Report" in Fall 2005 U.S. MARGINS Newsletter for more information on the status of U.S. MARGINS Initiatives.
• Requested information from other IMSC members regarding non-U.S. projects in MARGINS Focus Sites.
• U.S. MARGINS program is generating cohesive science, with several major studies done or underway, and movement towards synthesis of results. Synthesis would need integrated modeling and analysis of system processes.
• The January '06 U.S. MARGINS RCL-Cortez Workshop in Mexico provided some synthesis for the Gulf of California Focus Site. The workshop also considered ways to advance the Initiative without being able to do seismic work in the northern Gulf of California. Most participants were U.S. and Mexican, but there were a number of participants from other countries.
• A May '06 MARGINS Upper Mantle Imaging Workshop will bring together theorists, experimentalists and imaging specialists with questions of how to translate seismic data to physical parameters.
• The U.S. MARGINS Education and Advisory Committee will submit proposals for development of mini-lessons based on past workshop presentations, and construction of a program providing research experiences for undergraduates.
• The U.S. MARGINS Distinguished Lectureship Program, now in its first year, received nearly 100 applications. The MARGINS Office will be filming two lectures from each lecturer to distribute via its website and DVD.
• The U.S. MARGINS Office will rotate to its new location/Chair in October.

U.K.

• The Ocean Margins Program will end in 2006. ~30 projects were funded, and some were presented with posters at AGU. The program focused on volcanic and non-volcanic passive margins, but had no major overlap with focus sites from other margin research programs.
• There will be an Ocean Margins student workshop in London in 2006.
• The Ocean Margins Program will wrap-up with a workshop in September '06.
• Funds has already been allocated for long-term management of Ocean Margins data, but pressure is on PIs to handle their own data. A possibility would be to link the Ocean Margins data into other international data management systems.
• Future UK margin work will have to be proposed via traditional core funding.
• Recent seismic acquisition included:

1. Black Sea, marine and onshore, led by Tim Minshull. See EOS article in November 2005.
2. 2 cruise legs on Hatton Bank, Shetland Bank, and Shetland-Faroes Channel, led by Bob White.
3. Work on South American margins

• Work in Antarctica's margins was being done outside Ocean Margins.
• Hopes of generating 4-D swath bathymetry from the various studies carried out by different countries in response to the Sumatra earthquake.

Germany

• No formal "margins" program, but healthy national and international funding situation.
• The European HERMES Program is funding research on European margins. More information can be obtained from the HERMES website.
• The ISONET Program (similar to ORION) had money coming, and sensors and cabling systems were being developed.
• EuroMARGINS will not continue after the projects that will be running into '07.
• GOMES - Political, but to do with global monitoring.
• New research vessel with ability to go through ice delayed until January 2006.
• National funding for ARCON ocean margin research center with strong technological focus. The center has an ROV already used in Costa Rica, with 5 km depth range and seafloor drilling equipment to drill up to 120m in soft rock. The instrument is large and hard to deploy, but effective in use.
• A government funded marine "cooperative research center" has supported a lot of the Costa Rica (Geomar) research.
• GFZ Potsdam is coordinating an early warning system for the Indian Ocean. The bathymetry and early warning buoy deployment cruises are already done.
• Seismic cruises will map the Sumatra structure.

8. IM Workshop Proposals

IM accepts workshop proposals for May 1 and October 1 deadlines each year. IMSC members requested that these dates be changed to be closer to IMSC meeting dates.

The IMSC discussed whether to set up a science advisory panel to consider workshop proposals, with final decisions made by the IMSC. However, IMSC members considered that this would only be necessary if the number of proposals were to significantly increase.

It was suggested that proponents should submit written ideas close to IMSC meeting dates. Chairperson proposed establishment of a screening committee to evaluate the workshop proposals. However, because the number of the proposals might be not so large, a member suggested that the watchdog system might be better than the screening committee.

The IMSC discussed each of the proposals submitted in 2005:

1. International Symposium on Deep Structure of the Continents and their Margins, by Iwasaki, coming middle September, 2006. Japan. [Wonn Soh excused himself from this discussion]
2. 'Onland ocean linkage in the Bay of Tonking, in relation to Tibetan Plateau and Asian monsoon', in 6th to 8th Feb. in Kochi, Japan, proposed by Peter Clift (UK). This is co-sponsored by IODP.

The high quality of each proposal was noted, but neither was approved for InterMARGINS sponsorship in the proposed form. However, it was agreed that Peter Clift should be invited to request sponsorship for a more general workshop, which would not be for the purpose of planning one specific science proposal. If Peter Clift submits a new proposal then the IMSC agreed that they could decide via e-mail discussion whether to fund it.The IMSC agreed that budget support for these two proposals could be discussed via e-mail after the meeting.

The Chairperson asked all members whether all discussion for workshop support can be done via e-mail. However, the IMSC members agreed that all proposals should be discussed face to face by the IMSC.

The IMSC decided that IM should have guidelines for workshop proposals in order to save people writing and submitting inappropriate requests:

• IM will not fund workshops that would take place with or without its support.
• Proposals must have broad interest and scientific importance to the international margins research community.
• Proposals must be for synthesis rather than planning, and cannot directly help one set of science proponents over another

9. International data sharing

Norway considering participation in the (U.S.) Marine Geoscience Data Management System (mgDMS).

Watts said it might be possible to set up interoperability to allow data from the U.K. Ocean Margins Program database to be accessed through mgDMS.

It was suggested that access to Japanese data through a common system would be put on the Spring 2006 IMSC agenda for discussion then.

It was suggested that the IMSC write a formal endorsement of mgDMS as a beneficial tool for the IM community.

Discussion of SCOR’s global bathymetry integration efforts concluded that IM should pursue its own data integration, but could affiliate with SCOR.

IMSC members also agreed that IM should seek a proposal for a workshop, co-sponsored by IM and other groups (e.g., InterRidge), to discuss and promote international data sharing and integration.

10. Affiliation with SCOR

The IMSC agreed that the IM rules could be changed to allow affiliation with SCOR. The IMSC recognized that affiliation would be very good for international recognition of IM, including at UNESCO. However, the decision on whether to affiliate with SCOR would depend on how SCOR policies, such as the publication policy, would affect IM autonomy.

The education and outreach programs for developing countries will be further discussed in the IMSC.

11. Spring 2006 IMSC Meeting

To be held at EGU, 2006.

Possible agenda items:

• Audit report
• Budget approval
• SCOR issue
• Workshop support

Prepared by the InterMARGINS Office, March, 2006