NATIONAL GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS

National geological surveys provide scientific knowledge about a nation's lands, natural resources, and natural hazards within particular political, social, and legal contexts. At any given time, the work done by a geological survey reflects the public good as governmentally defined. Regardless of specific activities, however, geological survey scientists have special responsibilities as public scientists to maintain high standards of scientific inquiry and to remain credible irrespective of shifting priorities and pressures. Historical review of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) illustrates how one major national geological survey has sought to address priorities of the public it serves and to contribute to the common good.

Historical Review

During the nineteenth century, many nations recognized the importance of understanding the nature and distribution of their natural resources and thus established national geological surveys. The British Geological Survey (BGS, established 1835) and the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC, established 1842) were the earliest of these organizations that have operated continuously since their founding. Initially, the BGS, the GSC, and subsequent sister geological surveys in other countries focused on supporting the mineral needs of industrialization. Because countries equated their security and standing in the world with economic viability, the ability to locate raw materials for industrial development became the first major justification for beginning or continuing national geological surveys.

In the United States, mapping and science explorations, reconnaissances, and surveys sponsored by the federal government began in 1804 and continued thereafter under the aegis of the War Department, the Treasury Department, and/or the Department of the Interior (established in 1849), which was responsible for the stewardship and management of federal lands and their resources. In 1879, Congress and the President discontinued three competing mapping and science surveys of the public domain (Rabbitt 1979); their activities in biology passed principally to the Commissioner of Agriculture. In place of these surveys, Congress and the President established the USGS as a bureau of practical geology within the Department of the Interior to respond to pressing national needs for minerals for construction and currency.

The USGS was made responsible for "the classification of the public lands and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain" (U.S. Statutes at Large, v. 20, p. 394, March 3, 1879), but its operations were confined to the
1.2 billion acres in the public domain lands, most of which was acquired during westward expansion of the nation and lay west of the 100th meridian. The General Land Office, established in 1812 and transferred to Interior at the Department's founding in 1849, continued its land-parceling (cadastral) surveys and classifications—including mining, grazing, timbering, and agriculture—as the basis for disposition and title as a source of revenue and public good. To conduct the scientific classification of the public domain, USGS Director Clarence King planned a series of land maps to provide information for agriculturists, miners, engineers, timbermen, and political economists (Rabbitt 1980). In 1882, Congress implicitly extended USGS responsibilities to include the entire country, not just public lands, when it authorized preparation of an improved geologic map of the United States and by necessity a national geographic base map (Rabbitt 1980, Nelson 1999).

By the last decade of the nineteenth century, the increasingly recognized consequences of the rapid exploitation of lands and their resources spawned the first significant conservation movement in the United States. The USGS responded to these concerns between 1888 and 1902 by gaining statutory approval to study surface and ground water (which led to a national stream-gauging network), to map forest reserves, and to conduct reclamation investigations.

Studies by the USGS in support of the exploitation of natural resources continued well into the twentieth century, work spurred by concerns for economic growth, public needs, and national defense. The mineral industry had supplanted agriculture as the U.S. principal business activity in 1859. Raw materials needed during the Civil War, postbellum national development, and the emergence of the United States as a world power between 1898 and 1918 justified the view that resource studies were critical to the economic well-being and security of the nation (Rabbitt 1980, 1986; Cloud 1980). Beginning in 1938 and 1939, the USGS increased its critical- and strategic-minerals program for national defense. During World War II, the USGS increased its minerals and water-resource investigations and its mapping for military purposes; the agency also founded a Military Geology Unit for terrain-intelligence studies at home and in combat theaters. These activities, along with energy programs and the study of uranium and other radioactive materials also begun during World War II, continued and expanded during the subsequent Cold War based on much the same rationale: providing the nation with a better understanding of these resources as aids to exploration and development for economic and military security (Rabbitt 1989).

After World War II, it was generally believed that good science automatically created societal benefits (Sarewitz 1996), and USGS scientists pursued research goals within broad programmatic guidelines to generate new science to apply. At the same time, the USGS responded directly to societal needs as they arose by adding new missions. By the mid-1960s, for example, USGS personnel studied the effects of underground nuclear explosions, mapped the Moon, helped to train astronauts for the manned space program, and established long-term cooperative projects with government agencies in Brazil, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other countries (Rabbitt 1989).

The environmental movement of the 1970s also influenced the direction and scope of USGS activities. Land-use choices no longer were viewed from a wholly exploitative standpoint. The USGS response to environmental issues included a greater emphasis on water quality (including the development of a toxics-hydrology program and the implementation of a National Water-Quality Assessment), investigation of the environmental effects of resource extraction such as acid mine drainage, and studies of climate change, including global assessment of changes in glaciers and the monitoring of permafrost. USGS studies of uranium in the 1970s focused on deposit models and assessment of resources, but the research emphasis later shifted to addressing the appropriate disposal of low- and high-level radioactive wastes at sites such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The USGS had provided the nation and the world with classic work in ore-deposit modeling (thereby advancing exploration, development, and science), but society's concerns shifted to the consequences of extraction and the USGS responded by modifying the emphasis of its mineral-resource activities.

Toward the end of the twentieth century, several national and global trends combined to influence USGS priorities and change its role and that of earth scientists. The rapid development of information technology fueled societal expectations for more information. At the same time, population growth in the United States affected regions previously sparsely settled, and ever-larger segments of society were exposed to the dangers of coastal storms, earthquakes, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and wildfires. It became clear to the USGS that its studies of the impact and causes of these events would have to be linked more closely to emergency response needs and yield more rapid results. To have the most significant influence on decisions of public safety, the information needed to be available in a timely manner and thus required a response capability of twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week. The availability of real-time data expanded the public and municipality demand for innovative products. By using rainfall amounts and stream-gauging hydrographs, the USGS has predicted the severity and duration of flood events for emergency response efforts. Emergency managers and industry began to use USGS products that showed them the intensity of ground shaking within minutes of an earthquake, enabling them to make quick-response decisions. The engineering community began to use these same products to assess the behavior of structures during earthquakes and to develop more precise building codes.

Remote sensing and satellite operations such as Landsat and their archives became major activities within the USGS. The development of the Internet and the digital revolution enabled the USGS to respond to public demand for a diversity of real-time data, geospatial products, and scientific interpretations through use of the World Wide Web. In the early 2000s, the USGS implemented The National Map, an effort to make up-to-date digital topographic maps available to the public via the Internet.

In 1996, the National Biological Service, founded within the Department of the Interior three years earlier, became part of the USGS. This broadened the mandate of the USGS beyond the geographic, geologic, and hydrologic sciences. The USGS became a natural science organization, unique among the national geological surveys of the world because of the breadth of capabilities within the agency. The USGS began to focus on a more integrated approach to its scientific work to address the complex issues facing society.

Global Cooperation

National geological surveys are increasingly aware of the global nature of their efforts. This awareness is manifested through their increasingly global activities and through organizational partnerships and alliances. In the 1990s, the International Consortium of Geological Surveys (ICOGS) was formed to address the public perception that the missions of the national surveys were completed and that their services were no longer needed in the twenty-first century. ICOGS has worked to increase awareness of the importance of the earth sciences for the public and for policymakers. The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as numerous professional societies, have also addressed the awareness issue through major education campaigns. In addition, individual national surveys have formed a number of strategic alliances that improve their quality and effectiveness. One example is the partnership among the USGS, the GSC, and the Consejo de Recursos Minerales (CRM) of Mexico that has resulted in continental-scale efforts and products of mutual interest, such as geophysical maps, standards, geochemical surveys, and the geologic map of North America. Other groups such as the Coordinating Committee for Geoscience Programmes in East and Southeast Asia (CCOP) and the Circum-Pacific Council also reflect an emphasis on addressing earth science issues through a collaborative process of multiple national surveys, academia, and the private sector.

The program activities of most national geological surveys are also adopting a more global view. The BGS, the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO), the French survey (BRGM), the South African Council for Geoscience, and the USGS all have active programs providing earth-science support to the developing world. In addition to these dominantly cost-sharing activities, there is an increase in global assessments and information gathering. For example, the USGS operates a global seismographic network that provides high-quality information on seismic events to researchers and the public. Because resources such as minerals, oil, and gas are such vital commodities and have profound economic implications, the USGS conducts global assessments of these resources. In addition, the USGS reports on the demand for more than 100 mineral commodities, both domestically and internationally for approximately 180 nations. The USGS also receives and processes data from the Landsat satellites and provides images of the earth available to all biweekly. National surveys are also playing an expanded role in diplomacy. The USGS has cooperated with the Geological Survey of Ireland and the BGS on a possible mineral assessment in the border area of Ireland and Northern Ireland, has collaborated with nations in the Middle East relative to the region's seismic hazards, and has worked in Cyprus relative to hydrologic and seismic-hazard issues.

Future Directions

Population pressures challenge Earth's capacity to sustain a viable human society without deleterious effects. The common good has, over time, been redefined to include other values in addition to economic growth, and the public arena is fraught with competing and often conflicting values. Appropriate choices by decision makers and society require scientific insights about complex natural systems and the probable consequences of any proposed decision. Society demands pertinent and reliable scientific information in forms useful for decision-making. Science alone, however, is not the determining factor in most decisions—social, economic, and aesthetic values enter in as well. The tradeoffs inherent in societal choices, and the variable confidence in which knowledge is held at any given juncture, also need to be communicated. In the early twenty-first century, the USGS began a focused effort to improve and expand the use of its scientific results to inform the public and support decision making at all levels of society by exploring the problem of incorporating science into value-laden societal decisions. Ultimately, society will decide which tradeoffs are acceptable based on the its values, but the USGS can provide the critical scientific understandings that can help inform the nation about these choices.

As scientists strive to define their research goals by focusing on the decision context of the information needed, many recognize that it will be difficult to sustain their impartiality and integrity. Before the twenty-first century, many research scientists maintained a significant distance between their research and the decisions that might be based on their results. The challenge will be to bridge the gap between scientists and decision makers without compromising impartiality. The law that established the USGS in 1879 required that "the Director and members of the Geological Survey shall have no personal or private interests in the lands or mineral wealth of the region under survey, and shall execute no surveys or examinations for private parties or corporations" (U.S. Statutes at Large, v. 20, p. 394, March 3, 1879). These ethical requirements remain important ones, as society looks to the USGS for honest, impartial, and useful analyses of difficult choices ahead. All societies need the insight of public earth scientists and their engagement in issues of great societal importance.

Throughout their history, national geological surveys, including the USGS, have reflected the priorities and values of the nations they serve. Although the issues that determine the scope of their missions change over time, three principal activities are conducted: (1) long-term monitoring of the earth and its processes; (2) assessment and applied studies; and (3) basic research and understanding of physical, chemical, and biological processes. In the future, the national geological surveys will face societal challenges that increasingly involve the complex interactions of humankind and the natural world. Among the most important challenges will be the mitigation of natural hazards; an increased demand for water, mineral, and energy resources; the consequences of human activities with respect to earth's ecosystems; and the implications of climate variability. As people expand their definition of quality of life to include human and ecosystem health, decision makers will need insights based on the most reliable knowledge to make informed choices.

P. PATRICK LEAHY CHRISTINE E. TURNER

SEE ALSO Expertise;Geological Information Systems;Modernization;Science Policy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cloud, Preston. (1980). "The Improbable Bureaucracy: The United States Geological Survey, 1879–1979." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124(3): 155–167. A brief overview of the history of the U.S. Geological Survey and the scientific leaders who contributed significantly to the development of the agency.

Nelson, Clifford M. (1999). "Toward a Reliable Geologic Map of the United States, 1803–1893." In Surveying the Record: North American Scientific Exploration to 1930, ed. Edward C. Carter II. Philadelphia: Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 231: 51–74. A history of the national portrayal of U.S. geology from four geognostic maps published between 1803 and 1832 to ten geologic maps issued between 1834 and 1893, with a brief review of subsequent maps through 1974.

Rabbitt, Mary C. (1979). Minerals, Lands, and Geology for the Common Defence and General Welfare, Vol. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. A detailed history of public lands, federal science and mapping policy, and the development of mineral resources in the United States to the founding of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879.

Rabbitt, Mary C. (1980). Minerals, Lands, and Geology for the Common Defence and General Welfare, Vol. 2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. A detailed history of geology in relation to the development of public-land, federal-science and mapping policies, and the development of mineral resources in the United States during the first twenty-five years of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Rabbitt, Mary C. (1986). Minerals, Lands, and Geology for the Common Defence and General Welfare, Vol. 3. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. A detailed history of the period 1904–1939 in the U.S. Geological Survey and the relation of geology to the development of public-land, federal-science and mapping policies, and the development of mineral resources in the United States.

Sarewitz, Daniel. (1996). Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the Politics of Progress. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. A perspective on modern science policy in terms of what types of science should be pursued, who makes such choices, and how science can be evaluated in the context of broader social and political goals.

INTERNET RESOURCE

Rabbitt, Mary C. (1989). "The United States Geological Survey, 1879–1989." U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1050. Available from www.usgs.gov. A brief history of the relation of geology during the first 110 years of the U.S. Geological Survey to the development of public-land, federal-science and mapping policies, and the development of mineral resources in the United States.