NASA Volcanology Field Workshops on Hawai'i Island

We have held 10 NASA Planetary Volcanology Field workshops on Hawai‘i Island since 1992, providing an opportunity for >100 young NASA-funded graduate students, post-docs, and junior faculty to view basaltic volcano features up close, in the company of both terrestrial and planetary volcanologists. Most of our workshops were thematic, for example concentrating on large structural features (rift zones and calderas) or features best viewed in high spatial-resolution data, but always cover a broad set of topics. Being field-based, the workshops commonly involve long field days. Part of this is purposeful - an appreciation of scale is important for planetary scientists, particularly if they are working with slow-moving rovers. Our goals are to give these young scientists a strong background in basaltic volcanology, the chance to view eruptive features up close, to compare the appearance of these features and planetary analogs in state-of-the-art remote sensing images, and to begin a collection of field photographs and observations that they can use in future research and teaching. An added benefit is that the participants interact with each other, forging collaborations that hopefully persist throughout their careers. We provide an extensive reading list in the months prior to each workshop as well as a set of remote sensing data for a mapping site. The participants are encouraged to produce a geologic map of the site prior to arriving in Hawai‘i, and we spend one day of the workshop ground-truthing their maps. Funding is provided by NASA's Planetary Geology & Geophysics (PG&G) program, via the successful submittal of a proposal that is reviewed along with all other PG&G proposals. The first workshop benefited from the foresight of PG&G Program Manager Trish Rodgers (she also attended), and we would like to dedicate our efforts to her memory.