**Director Mark Myers Remarks at the Eastern Lands and Resources Council
& Western States Land Commissioners Association, Joint Spring
Conference, April 7, 2008. "USGS Science on the Land "**

**Slide 1 -- Introduction**

. Good morning. I'm honored and very pleased to speak to you today.

. I realize that, as a group, your land management responsibilities are
centered in U.S. lands. Yet the challenges to responsible stewardship of
the land know no boundaries.

. We often think of climate change and a rapidly growing population
around the globe as amorphous problems that someone else must confront.
Yet, as land managers, you are well aware that these are equally
critical issues on the national and regional scale.

. To set the stage for this presentation, I'd like to begin with a
global perspective on the issue of a rapidly growing population and its
effect on the natural environment.

. Once the global and national challenges to the environment have been
outlined, we'll explore the breadth of understanding that USGS science
can bring to these issues.

. Then, finally, in keeping with a global to local and general to
particular progression, we'll look at a few specific instances of USGS
science at work on the land as illustrations of our overall effort.

. Along the way, I trust that you'll learn more about us - the Survey's
mission, our science, and the way we operate -- so that you can employ
our expertise more effectively to accomplish your goals of land
stewardship.

# Slide 2 -- 

. The impact of humans on the planet has expanded to the extent that
humankind has emerged as a globally important force capable of reshaping
the earth, capable of depleting or threatening many of the earth's
resources.

. We are now in a situation of relatively rapid climate change in which
we know with certainty that we will be crossing thresholds beyond which
ecosystems, and the services they provide, will be irreversibly changed.
Climate change will directly and indirectly threaten the stability of
natural resources and human well-being.

# Slide 3 -- 

. If we do not focus on sustainable management of our earth's resources,
the lack of the resources that we have enjoyed in the past undoubtedly
will become a more and more of a threat for people in many nations.

=================

Drawing from the works of hundreds of researchers, the "Global Change"
study (Steffen et al. 2004; Chapter 3) concluded that perhaps 50% of the
world's ice-free land surface has been transformed by human action; the
land under cropping has doubled during the past century at the expense
of forests, which declined by 20% over the same period. More than half
of all accessible freshwater resources have come to be used by
humankind. Fisheries remove more than 25% of the primary production of
the oceans in the upwelling regions and 35% in the temperate continental
shelf regions (Pauly and Christensen 1995).

Steffen,W. et al., eds. 2004. Global Change and the Earth System.
Heidelberg: Springer.

+++++++

***Humans as geologic agents: A deep-time perspective***

Bruce H. Wilkinson; Department of Geological Sciences, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA

ABSTRACT

Humans move increasingly large amounts of rock and sediment during
various construction activities, and mean rates of cropland soil loss
may exceed rates of formation by up to an order of magnitude, but
appreciating the actual importance of humans as agents of global erosion
necessitates knowledge of prehistoric denudation rates imposed on land
surfaces solely by natural processes.

*Geology;* March 2005; v. 33; no. 3; p. 161--164; doi: 10.1130/G21108.1

# Slide 4 -- 

. Modern society is increasingly dependent on non-renewable mineral and
fossil energy resources.

. Economic and population growth of less developed countries functions
as a relatively recent but quickly growing push factor on global demand.

. Responsible extraction of any of the earth's natural resources -- from
coal to gold to gas hydrates -- requires a rigorous commitment to
sustainable development from economic, environmental, and socio-cultural
perspectives.

. Climate change coupled with global population growth present
unprecedented threats -- for example, increased desertification and loss
of biodiversity - to the world's biological resources.

. These challenges are not just vaguely global; they are immediate and
local. They appear at every level of natural resource management -- from
international to county and municipal levels.

# Slide 5 -- 

. The combination of climate change, population growth, and greater use
of irrigated agriculture has resulted in increased stress on water
resources around the world. Water has emerged as a global issue that
requires international multi-disciplinary cooperation on assessment,
research, and management. The problem is exacerbated with the expansion
of population centers in water-scarce regions, such as in central
Mexico, southern India, and southeast Australia.

. Water issues are familiar in the western states, but widespread water
shortages that are magnified by urban growth have recently begun to
appear in the southeastern U.S.

. At first glance, the boy in this picture might appear to be from
Africa, judging from the look of his necklace. But he could just as well
live in our own state of Georgia. Or he could stand in for other
children who live in the Southwest. The challenges that climate and
population growth present for our natural resource know no boundaries.

# Slide 6 -- 

. Today, our growing and expanding society faces many pressing issues
that science can and must help address.

. These issues include:

\+ use of, competition for and natural threats to natural resources;

\+ threats from natural hazards;

\+ and the effects of wildlife diseases, such as avian flu and West Nile
virus;

\+ future availability of water for people and ecosystems, especially in
arid regions of the western United States as well as abroad;

\+ the effects of climate change on land and water resources, habitat,
ecosystems and public health.

. Many of these issues transcend geographical boundaries. They're global
in nature.

. And many of them transcend traditional boundaries of academic
disciplines. Such multi-faceted challenges can rarely be addressed by a
single discipline.

# Slide 7 -- 

. At USGS, we've recently developed a science strategy that we believe
will help our organization address complex environmental problems.

. The strategy is based on a systems approach to evaluate broad causes
and consequences of the use and management of natural resources and
earth processes.

. There are six interrelated thematic components - directions -- in our
science strategy that you see listed in this slide. A seventh component,
data integration, emphasizes the importance of combining the findings of
each science direction to develop a synergy of science.

. The interaction and correlation of these directions both reflect and
reveal the complexity of the Earth's natural, physical, and life
systems. They describe the breadth of our systems approach that calls
upon the full range of USGS science capabilities.

# Slide 8 -- 

. The essential point that I want to make today, a perspective that I
support very strongly, is that all of earth's resources are
interrelated.

. In this first decade of the 21st Century, we face many threats to
earth resources - threats on a global scale such as climate change,
drought, natural disasters, deforestation, competition for energy and
mineral resources. Additionally, there are important human health
impacts that are tied to the quality of our air and our water.

. We believe that this comprehensive, interdisciplinary, systems
approach to a science strategy will pay dividends in making our science
more relevant to environmental issues in public policy.

# Slide 9 -- 

. At USGS we believe that the starting point to understanding the
complexity of earth systems is the concept of ecosystems.

. Ecosystems constitute the Earth's biosphere and support human
existence. The plants, animals, microbes, and physical products from
ecosystems provide people, as components of those ecosystems, with the
energy, water, biomass, medicine, and mineral resources needed to
sustain human societies.

# Slide 10 -- 

. Understanding ecosystems and predicting ecosystem change requires
robust scientific assessments and modeling of ecosystem conditions as
climate and human-induced land changes occur.

. Ecosystems are inherently "interdisciplinary," with geographical,
biological, geological, hydrological, and other components.

. Ecosystems are also inherently "multiscalar," spatially and
temporally. They are usually recognized and managed at site-specific
(local) scales, but are also described at broader scales from regional
to global.

. USGS scientists are mapping ecosystems by integrating their
"structural" components, e.g. landforms, climate, geology, land cover,
etc.

# Slide 11 -- 

. Geographically standardized ecosystem inventories -- as maps or
databases -- enable scientists to pursue:

\+ conservation planning (through GAP analysis)

\+ resource management

\+ predictive forecasting of ecosystem conditions

# Slide 12 -- 

. Using the latest developments in natural science to understand the
land is our heritage at USGS. The first element of our agency's mandate,
according to the 1879 Organic Act, is the "classification of the public
lands."

# Slide 13 -- 

. The USGS serves the Nation as an independent fact-finding agency that
collects, monitors, analyzes, and provides scientific understanding
about natural resource conditions, issues, and problems.

. The USGS is the only integrated natural resources research bureau in
the Federal Government. It supports the science needs of all the other
bureaus of the Department of the Interior.

. The USGS leverages its resources and expertise in partnership with
more than 2,000 agencies of State, local and tribal government, the
academic community, other Federal allies, non-governmental
organizations, and the private sector.

# Slide 14 -- 

. The USGS conveys its science perspectives and findings to other
agencies and non-governmental organizations, to other scientists and to
the public in a variety of ways. To get a sense of the variety, to see
the whole picture, they could be grouped into the five categories that
you see here.

. The USGS produces between 4000 and 5000 publications and professional
presentations per year, including abstracts, outside journal articles,
and formal in-house publications.

. Modeling is a fundamental component of USGS science. USGS scientists
are developing increasingly sophisticated models as a way of
understanding - and predicting - complex systems and phenomena, from
climate change to seismic hazards to watershed analysis.

. The USGS has created and continually maintains many national-scale,
long-term databases. Well known examples include *The National Map,* the
National Water Information System (NWIS), and the Geographic Names
Information System (GNIS). Today we'll look at the National Land Cover
Dataset (NLCD) a little further since it has special relevance to land
management.

. Though the USGS doesn't have direct resource management
responsibilities, we conduct research on management techniques such as
the Land Use Portfolio Model, Adaptive Management, and the concept of
Ecosystem Services. We'll look further at the technique of Adaptive
Management today.

. As I stated earlier, the USGS leverages its resources in many ways
with more than 2,000 other organizational entities. To illustrate this
point, we'll examine review a recent, highly visible example of a USGS
partnership -- the DOI Healthy Lands Initiative.

# Slide 15 -- 

. The National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2001) produced by USGS and the
federal interagency Multi‑Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium
(MRLC) is a massive database that describes the land surface condition
of each 30-meter cell of land in the conterminous United States. To give
you a sense of the precision of this database, nearly six such cells -
each 98 feet long and wide - would fit on a football field.

. NLCD 2001 data portrays 16 classes of land cover in the lower 48
states, the percent of tree canopy, and the degree of surface
imperviousness in urban areas. The database provides us gives a
versatile, impartial look at the state of the land that is particularly
useful for land managers.\"

. The range and accuracy of information in the database enables managers
of public and private lands, urban planners, agricultural experts, and
scientists with many different interests (for instance, climate change
or invasive species) to identify critical characteristics of the land
for a wide variety of investigations. The national consistency of this
information makes possible the sweeping, contextual analysis of national
land perspectives, such as the Heinz Center's State of the Nation's
Ecosystems and the Environmental Protection Agency's Draft Report on the
Environment.

# Slide 16 -- 

. The Department of the Interior's Adaptive Management Technical Guide
is a good example of our work in developing decision support tools. The
USGS served as the lead author for this guide that is designed to help
in the complex land management decisions made by the Department's
bureaus.

. Adaptive management offers a tool to help agencies make better
decisions in this context of uncertainty while agencies are accumulating
more information. The Guide represents an important step in the
Department's efforts to engage partners in the conservation and
management of our Nation's natural resources.

. The Guide includes case studies, such as the BOR's management of Glen
Canyon Dam and the FWS\'s determination of annual waterfowl harvests, to
demonstrate how adaptive management can be applied.

# Slide 17 -- 

. Adaptive management (AM) is a structured, iterative process of optimal
decision making in the face of uncertainty. Its goal is to reduce
uncertainty over time via system monitoring.

. Adaptive management is often characterized as \"learning by doing.\"

# Slide 18 -- 

. USGS is working with DOI agencies and other partners in implementing a
number of AM projects. One large-scale, highly visible project is the
management of flow regimes for the Colorado River through the Glenn
Canyon Dam.

. DOI recently conducted this experiment to inform managers about the
effectiveness of using high flows from Glen Canyon Dam to improve
natural, recreational, and cultural resources in Grand Canyon National
Park.

. The USGS Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center worked
collaboratively with the Department of the Interior's Bureau of
Reclamation, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
to prepare for and conduct the experiment.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

These agencies as well as the Arizona Game and Fish Department, Northern
Arizona University, Utah State University, and other cooperators will
work together to conduct and evaluate a range of research activities.

# Slide 19 -- 

. In the Green River Basin of Wyoming, requirements for energy
development and recreation face increasing competition with the needs of
species, habitat, and long-term conservation goals.

. The Healthy Lands Initiative conducted by the Department of the
Interior aims to achieve a sustainable balance among these competing
natural resource goals.

. The Healthy Lands Initiative (HLI) is in the President's FY 2008
budget submitted to Congress and includes six BLM locations. HLI is a
multi-bureau initiative with the USGS, BLM and FWS.

. Projects will be located in New Mexico (\$3.5 million), Wyoming (\$4.5
million), Utah (\$2.0 million), Oregon/Idaho/Nevada (\$1.9 million),
southern Idaho (\$1.8 million) and Colorado (\$1.3 million).

. The HLI will take a landscape-level approach to land and water
management to facilitate needed energy development while protecting
wildlife and aquatic habitat.

. The Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative (WLCI) was initiated
prior to HLI and will facilitate implementation of HLI in Southwest
Wyoming.

# Slide 20 -- 

. Southwest Wyoming is home to substantial energy resources that are
being developed at a fast pace. This area currently produces 85 trillion
cubic feet of natural gas a year, enough to heat 4 million homes.
(estimated mean resources - USGS)

. While the energy boom and bust cycle is well-established in the West,
the current trends of global competition and Wyoming's natural gas
reserves combine for a long-term, rapidly increasing energy production
future.

# Slide 21 -- 

. At the same time -- and in the same neighborhood - sagebrush habitat
supports significant numbers of plants and animals that have close
association with the Endangered Species Act. Threatened or Endangered
fish in the Colorado River System include the bonytail and the humpback
chub. Furthermore, some of the world's best big game hunting for deer,
elk, and pronghorn antelope is found in the Upper Green River basin.

# Slide 22 -- 

. USGS scientists are beginning an ecoregional assessment project to
model at a landscape scale the relationships among sagebrush habitats
and wildlife species located in this habitat. This project will provide
the foundation to begin understanding the cumulative effects of energy
extraction and habitat loss on the health of species such as sage
grouse.

. The USGS will incorporate data from this project into an information
management system that will be available to BLM, FWS, and other land and
resource managers, providing them with the tools they need to evaluate
management options and make sound decisions that protect landscapes and
species while ensuring that energy resources are available for the
Nation.

. USGS specifically investigates how oil and gas extraction impacts the
landscape and how that development could influence the landscape in
terms of habitat patch size, fragmentation, and other changes that have
an effect on wildlife populations.

. The strength of ecoregional assessments rests on an effective
combination of broad-scale depiction of species and habitat
distributions, with the potential to identify concurrent influences from
natural disturbances, such as wildfires, and human activities across
large areas.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

*Kate Kitchell, FRESC:*

A forthcoming report is undergoing peer review, with release anticipated
in 2008. It will include:

List of species of conservation concern

Delineations of species ranges

Estimates of habitat requirements of species

Identification of regional threats and effects on threats on habitats

Estimates and maps of the risks of habitat loss or degradation posed by
example threats

Calculations of effects of potential threats on individual species of
concern. about species ranges

**Management Implications:** *Partners: BLM, US Forest Service*

*USGS Center FRESC*

# Slide 23 -- 

. Today I've explained how the USGS has developed what we believe is a
versatile, powerful approach - a science strategy based on systems
analysis - to enable us to grasp the complexity of the Earth's natural,
physical, and life systems.

. Climate change, population growth present critical challenges at all
scales of land management.

. We need

\+ all available data and technical means

\+ the best management techniques

\+ an integrated science perspective to make wise decisions for the
land.