Pre-conference Town Hall meeting
The Impact Cratering Committee of the Meteoritical Society – Goals, perspectives, and challenges
Sunday, August 13, 2023: 1:30 – 4:30 PM
Convened by:
Ludovic Ferrière, Natural History Museum Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Aaron Cavosie, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Christian Koeberl, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Over the last decades, the field of terrestrial impact cratering has seen incredible new developments – including discovery and confirmation of many additional impact structures – as well as the addition of new diagnostic shock indicators. Until now the process of reporting, confirming, and accepting new impact structures by the scientific community has been somewhat uneven. To date, no public database of confirmed terrestrial impact structures with the backing of a scientific organization is available; therefore, in early 2023 the Impact Cratering Committee (ICC) was established by the Meteoritical Society.
The ICC has two primary goals:
1) to create and maintain a database of all terrestrial impact craters/structures that are approved by the ICC.
2) to articulate the currently accepted data that constitute diagnostic evidence of meteorite impact processes, which can thus be used to confirm an impact origin of a suspected site or material.
This town hall meeting is aimed at informing the international impact cratering community about the ICC, the work that the committee is currently engaged with, and also to provide a platform for community discussion. The committee will share the updated criteria list for confirming terrestrial impact structures, as well as a preliminary list of confirmed terrestrial impact structures that currently meet these criteria.
The motivation for this meeting is not only to report about our activities, processes, and initial achievements. We will also discuss challenges related to establishing and evaluating standards for what constitutes diagnostic evidence criteria, as well as challenges related to the confirmation status of various impact structures (or candidate structures) the committee is currently evaluating. The ICC welcomes the input and opinions of impact crater enthusiasts in this process.
Three short presentations are planned, one to introduce the ICC, one on the diagnostic evidence criteria (i.e., this will be educational and meant to explain and to inspire further/continued studies), and one on the current efforts to establish an ICC impact structures list and database. Then, we will present and discuss some examples of why specific structures have so far failed to make it onto the list. A large part of the meeting will be dedicated to discussion. All opinions will be taken into consideration and all contributions will be recognized.
Participation in the meeting is free of charge and a virtual participation (via Zoom) will be possible (i.e., questions and comments will be accepted only in written form and will be shared with the audience by the moderators of the event).
No registration fee is collected for participation in this meeting. However, there is a capacity limit, so you must confirm your plan to attend the workshop by email to ludovic.ferriere@nhm.at no later than August 5th, 2023.
The meeting venue, in the Geology Building of the UCLA Campus, is 7 minutes’ walk (700m) from the Luskin Center (venue of the Meteoritical Society conference).
Preliminary program:
13:15 Opening of the room / Welcoming of the on-site participants
13:20 Start of the session Zoom
13:30 Welcome & Introductory words (by Ludovic Ferrière & Aaron Cavosie)
13:35 Introduction of the Impact Cratering Committee (by Aaron Cavosie)
13:55 Diagnostic evidence criteria (by Christian Koeberl)
14:25 Current efforts to establish an ICC impact structures list and database (by Ludovic Ferrière)
14:55 Short break
15:05 Open discussion (moderated by Ludovic Ferrière & Aaron Cavosie)
[Participants are more than welcome to contribute to the discussion, including with presentation material. For example, if you wish to discuss/advocate for why a candidate impact structure should or should not be confirmed, you can do so with a short (1-2) slide presentation. Please contact Ludovic Ferrière (ludovic.ferriere@nhm.at) before August 5th, 2023 if you wish to share a ppt. presentation/slide].
16:25 Concluding remarks
16:30 End of the meeting