Results of the Workshop on Impact Cratering: Bridging the Gap Between Modeling and Observations

On February 7-9,2003, approximately 60 scientists gathered at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, for a workshop devoted to improving knowledge of the impact cratering process. We (co-conveners Elisabetta Pierazzo and Robert Herrick) both focus research efforts on studying the impact cratering process, but the former specializes in numerical modeling while the latter draws inferences from observations of planetary craters. Significant work has been done in several key areas of impact studies over the past several years, but in many respects there seem to be a disconnect between the groups employing different approaches, in particular modeling versus observations. The goal in convening this workshop was to bring together these disparate groups to have an open dialogue for the purposes of answering outstanding questions about the impact process and setting future research directions. We were successful in getting participation from most of the major research groups studying the impact process. Participants gathered from five continents with research specialties ranging from numerical modeling to field geology, and from small-scale experimentation and geochemical sample analysis to seismology and remote sensing.With the assistance of the scientific advisory committee (Bevan French, Kevin Housen, Bill McKinnon, Jay Melosh, and Mike Zolensky), the workshop was divided into a series of sessions devoted to different aspects of the cratering process. Each session was opened by two invited t a b , one given by a specialist in numerical or experimental modeling approaches, and the other by a specialist in geological, geophysical, or geochemical observations. Shorter invited and contributed talks filled out the sessions, which were then concluded with an open discussion time. All modelers were requested to address the question of what observations would better constrain their models, and all observationists were requested to discuss how their observations can constrain modeling efforts.