Increasingly, the conduct of science requires strong international scientific partnerships and sharing of knowledge, information, data, and other assets. This is particularly true in the geosciences where the highly coupled nature of the earth system and the need to understand global environmental processes and their regional linkages have brought to the fore the importance of and growing need for collaborations and partnerships across national and continental boundaries. The climate system is far too complex a puzzle to be unraveled by individual researchers, groups or even nations. As geoscience studies become a team effort involving networked scientists and data providers, it is crucial that there is full, open, reliable and timely access to and sharing of earth system science data. In recent years, may international activities have focused on such collaborations and promoted sharing of data and other resources (e.g., IPCC assessments, THORPEX, and IPY).

The aim of the session is to provide a broad forum where presenters and participants can discuss their activities and share ideas relevant to promoting international collaborations. They include but are not limited to:

1. descriptions of and results from projects and activities involving international informatics partnerships
2. various data and software sharing efforts
3. international data collection efforts in various field and other types of projects
4. projects aimed at capacity and community building in various regions
5. other pertinent topics in e-science/cyberinfrastructure collaborations