Isua workshop, Berlin 17 to 20 January 2002. Harnack Haus, Berlin, programme and abstracts

The present volume contains Abstracts of lectures presented at a Workshop of IMRP participants at the Harnack Haus Conference Centre of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin during 17 – 20^th January, 2002. The Workshop was held to mark the termination of official funding for the IMRP and to present some of the scientific results obtained during the previous four years by an international group of scientists working in loose affiliation. Of other groups working in the Isua region, there was also representation from the Geological Museum and the Danish Lithosphere Centre.

The IMRP was funded during 1997 to 2001 by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), the Danish National Research Council, the Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland, and the Greenland Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum (formerly the Minerals office). IMRP support was provided for essential helicopter transport throughout each summer field season, for camping costs in Greenland, and for shipment of samples to laboratories world-wide. Generous support to IMRP has also been received from the National Geographic, the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie, Mainz, and the National History Museum, Ontario.

Since the first realisation of the scientific importance of the Isua Greenstone Belt (IGB) for early Archaean studies in 1971, many workers have published research papers on varied aspects of the belt, whilst a geological map of the whole Isua region was published by the Geological Survey of Greenland in 1986. In the early- to mid - 1990’s it became clear to us that some of the older work on the IGB, as well as the published map, were in need of major revision. In addition, several lines of current research had never been applied to IGB rocks. It was therefore decided to seek funds from the organisations listed above for a renewed and more intense round of field work to, firstly, revise the published geological map and, secondly, enable international scientists from a wide range of disciplines to visit the Isua region and to collect samples under expert geological guidance for multidisciplinary laboratory studies. The following Abstracts contain a cross-section of work mostly done under the auspices of the IMRP.