**33^rd^ IGC, International Consortium of Geological Surveys**

**August 11, 2008**

**An Integrated Strategy for Government-Sponsored Science -- Mark
Myers**

**Title slide:**

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

. We live at a time of formidable challenges for society and the
environment.

**Slide 2:**

***Image: A composite picture of the planet at night. Most of the
electrical light that is produced come from coal fired generation
plants.***

*.* Currently, in 2008, the world's population is estimated to be over
6.7 billion people. In the year 2000, there were 10 times as many people
on Earth as there were 300 years ago. The world population is projected
to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 9 billion by 2040, an increase of 50
percent. (1)

. People in society, individually and collectively, exercise convenient,
sometimes powerful, means to modify nature. The cumulative impact of so
many more people on the planet defines humankind as a global geologic
force capable of reshaping the earth, capable of depleting or
threatening many of earth's most basic resources, such as fresh water,
forests, arable soil, ocean fisheries.

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

\(1\) Statistics from U.S. Census, CIA World Factbook

**Slide 3:**

. 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 4:**

. Apart from their aesthetic value, the importance of ecosystems to
society can be measured through the concept of ecosystem services - the
goods and services of value to humans that come from natural systems.

.The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment sponsored by the United Nations and
the World Bank defined four categories of ecosystem services resulting
from natural systems:

\+ provisioning services such as food, fiber, and water;

\+ regulating services such as water purification and storm protection;

\+ cultural services such as recreation and natural beauty; and

\+ supporting services such as nutrient cycling and soil formation.

. In many cases, these services are not fully valued when conservation,
restoration, resource management, or development decisions are made. In
some cases, markets do not exist for these services. In other cases,
services are affected by actions far from the location where the
services are provided or where the beneficiaries are located. USGS
science has a critical role to play in understanding the processes
within natural systems for the production of ecosystem services.

**Slide 5:**

. The essential goal of government-sponsored science is to link science
to decision making so that the inevitable tradeoffs across conservation,
restoration, resource management, and development are informed and fully
considered.

. This is an important national issue for the USGS. From Alaska's North
Slope to the Wyoming Green River Basin to Florida's Everglades, we want
the best science to be routinely and effectively used in making
decisions that affect people and the environment.

**Slide 6:**

. Our growing and expanding society today 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;

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

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

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

. Objective, interdisciplinary science must play an essential role
during the next decade in helping political leaders and communities, as
well as land and resource managers, understand the local and regional
implications of a changing climate, anticipate its effects, prepare for
changes, and reduce the risks of decisionmaking.

. These issues transcend geographical boundaries. They're global in
nature. And they transcend traditional boundaries of academic science
disciplines.

**Slide 7:**

. Clearly, high-quality scientific information can improve policy
decisions on many issues. However, oftentimes, a lack of scientific
information is not the problem---rather the problem is where to turn for
trusted information. The role of a dependable, consistent source of
science information about the Earth is, I believe, the appropriate one
for any National Survey. No other comparable organization such as a
university or non-government institute can approach the historical
continuity, the official visibility and weight of a National Survey.

. Just like other surveys around the globe, the USGS strives to provide
sound, relevant science information to enable wise decision making in
public policy at all levels of government.

. The reputation of USGS science for excellence and objectivity is our
most important asset. It brings authority to our data and findings; it
creates long-term credibility; it attracts the best scientific minds as
researchers and as collaborators; it strengthens our organization with a
shared ideal.

. Authoritative science information from USGS is readily available to
public. All parties in a policy controversy have access to the same
information.

. The USGS develops, refines, and maintain archives for many systems of
national and global information that would be beyond the capabilities of
state governments or universities. This national-level effort often
forestalls duplicative efforts by other organizations and provides
uniform, integrated, geographically scalable data. Two specific examples
are the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) and the
National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD).

. Scientific information is even more useful for policy making if it is
presented in a timely fashion and in the context of the many political
and economic factors that policy makers must also consider. The USGS has
developed numerous decision support tools to assist policy makers in
making science-based decisions. Two examples of broad-based decision
support tools are Ecosystem Services and Adaptive Management.

. The USGS leverages its resources, especially the scientific expertise
of its 8600 employees, in partnership with more than 2,000 agencies of
State, local and tribal government, the academic community, other
Federal partners, non-governmental organizations, and the private
sector. The two examples I just mentioned, NBII and NLCD, are both
multi-agency efforts led by the USGS.

**Slide 8:**

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

. Our 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
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 9:**

. In the following three slides, I'd like to show you three very recent
examples of integrated USGS science at work on critical policy issues in
the last few months.

. On July 23rd, the USGS released the first publicly available petroleum
resource estimate of the entire area north of the Arctic Circle. These
resources account for about 22 percent of the undiscovered, technically
recoverable resources in the world. The Arctic accounts for about 13
percent of the undiscovered oil, 30 percent of the undiscovered natural
gas, and 20 percent of the undiscovered natural gas liquids in the
world. About 84 percent of the estimated resources are expected to occur
offshore.

. The USGS Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal is part of an ongoing USGS
project to assess the global petroleum basins using standardized and
consistent methodology and protocol. This approach allows for an area\'s
petroleum potential to be compared to other petroleum basins in the
world. The USGS worked with a number of international organizations to
conduct the geologic analyses of these Arctic provinces.

. This information helps us make better informed decisions about our
future use of oil and gas and about related decisions that concern
endangered species, native communities and the health of our planet.
Furthermore, with this assessment, we've provided the same information
to everyone in the world so that the global community can participate in
making those difficult decisions.

**Slide 10:**

. At the request of the Department of the Interior, the USGS conducted
extensive research, using its biological, geospatial, and modeling
resources, to project future sea ice and its relationship to polar
bears.

. USGS scientists reported three key findings which contributed to the
Secretary of the Interior's May 15 \[2008\] announcement that listed
polar bears as a threatened species \[a species that is likely to become
an endangered species in the foreseeable future\]. First, sea ice is
vital to polar bear survival; second, the polar bear's sea ice habitat
has dramatically melted in recent decades; third, computer models
suggest sea ice is likely to further recede in the future.

. Our research on Arctic species, like the polar bear, and on the
impacts of a changing Arctic ocean has focused on potential habitat and
population declines with sea-ice loss due to global warming. Another
USGS area of research in the Arctic is the oil and gas assessment
conducted though the Energy Resources Program, which I just mentioned.

This assessment group will continue to look at changes in the Arctic
environment and how they will affect what fossil fuels are
technologically and economically recoverable. Our Coastal and Marine
Program is beginning to gear up for a new expedition in seafloor mapping
in order to understand impacts of changing Arctic conditions on Law Of
The Sea issues, on oceanic hazards such as submarine landslides and
coastal erosion, and on the geologic framework for oil and gas studies.

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

Sources: text of Sec. Kempthorne's 5/15 announcement and his 8/3 speech
at ESRI Conference; text of T. Armstrong podcast on Northwest Passage

**Slide 11:**

. The magnitude 5.4 earthquake that rocked southern California on July
29 generated a new level of awareness for The Great Southern California
ShakeOut, a weeklong series of special events featuring a massive
earthquake drill at 10 a.m. on November 13 in Los Angeles. It is being
sponsored by the Earthquake Country Alliance, of which the USGS is a
founding member.

. The ShakeOut drill centers on the ShakeOut Scenario, a realistic
portrayal of what could happen in a major earthquake on the southern end
of the San Andreas Fault. Created by over 300 experts led by Dr. Lucy
Jones of USGS, the scenario outlines a hypothetical 7.8 magnitude
earthquake originating near the Salton Sea (extreme southern
California), which would have the potential to devastate the region.

. With a goal of at least 5 million participants, the ShakeOut drill
will be the largest in U.S. history. Southern Californians are signing
up at www.shakeout.org/register, to pledge their family, business, or
organization\'s participation in the drill. In the first 6 weeks of
registration, over 1.9 million people are registered to be part of the
drill.

. This exercise vividly illustrates the benefit of bringing
government-sponsored science to public policy.

**Slide 12:**

. As I stated at the outset, the global issues of climate change and
population growth present critical challenges for science and society.
Because difficult challenges demand robust responses, I'd like to
propose some new directions for national geological surveys -- and I
include my own -- that will advance our relevancy to the most crucial
issues in public policy.

. The perspective of ecosystems and ecosystem services shows us that the
traditional categories of extractive natural resources are too limited.
Furthermore, energy and mineral resources need to be understood in a
broader context of the comprehensive life-cycle of the energy or mineral
commodity. Assessments need to address the occurrence, formation
processes, and extraction methods, as well as how the waste products of
energy and mineral resources influence landscape, water, climate,
ecosystems, and human health.

. National geological surveys are well-positioned to survey alternative
energy sources such as wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal.

. With climate change and global population growth, societal risk and
vulnerability to natural hazards will rise. National geological surveys
are likely sources of information related to the resiliency of
communities to natural disasters.

. Geological surveys around the world are, themselves, versatile,
invaluable resources for knowledge of the earth that can be used
effectively in making wise decisions for the environment and for people.