**STATEMENT OF**

**DR. THOMAS R. ARMSTRONG, PROGRAM COORDINATOR**

**EARTH SURFACE DYNAMICS**

**U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY**

**U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR**

**BEFORE THE SENATE COMMITTEES ON**

**COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION**

**AND**

**FOREIGN RELATIONS**

**September 26, 2006**

Thank you for the opportunity to address you and the committees on the
issue of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) activities related to the
International Polar Year (IPY). My name is Thomas Armstrong, and I am
the Program Coordinator for the Earth Surface Dynamics Program at USGS.
I also represent USGS and the Department of the Interior (DOI) on the
Arctic Council's Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program's Climate
working group, and activities related to the Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment.

**[Background]{.underline}**

The USGS serves the United States by providing reliable scientific
information to describe and understand the Earth, minimize loss of life
and property from natural disasters, manage water, biological, energy,
and mineral resources; and, enhance and protect our quality of life. It
is within the spirit of this mission that the USGS has developed plans
for participation in the International Polar Year, working with partners
in DOI, with other Federal and State agencies, and with scientific
colleagues around the world.

The IPY will extend from March 2007 through March 2009. This period will
commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1957--1958 International
Geophysical Year. The IGY, as it was called, was modelled on the
International Polar Years of 1882-1883 and 1932-1933 and was intended to
allow scientists from around the world to take part in a series of
coordinated observations of various geophysical phenomena. The work of
scientists from over 60 countries literally spanned the globe from the
North to the South Poles. Although much work was carried out in the
arctic and equatorial regions, special attention was given to the
Antarctic, where research on ice depths yielded radically new estimates
of the earth\'s total ice content. In a similar spirit of discovery and
understanding, IPY '07-'09 is envisioned as an intense scientific
campaign to explore new frontiers in polar science and to improve our
understanding of the critical role of the polar regions in global
processes. Most significantly, IPY is envisioned as an opportunity to
engage the public in polar discovery and help attract the next
generation of earth scientists.

Within current funding amounts, the USGS will participate in the IPY
through extension and enhancement of programmatic activities in
research, assessment, and monitoring in the Polar Regions that support
the scientific mission of our organization and address the themes and
goals of the IPY. These activities span the biologic, geologic,
hydrologic, geographic, and information sciences and will include but
not be limited to:

-   Research and monitoring of the status and distribution of fish,
    wildlife and vegetation; determination of species at risk;
    permafrost evaluation to include assessment of changes in the
    thermal regime and feedbacks with the changing climate, organic
    carbon characteristics and distribution; evaluation of hydrologic
    inputs to the carbon budget- including the influence of large river
    deltas on carbon flux to the marine system, snow and water-borne
    contaminants and freshwater inputs; and the evaluation of surficial
    and geochemical processes in understanding the changing polar
    environment.

-   Integrated monitoring for assessing the relationship between major
    stressors, like climate change, and regional changes in the carbon
    cycle of Arctic watersheds; ground and satellite-based monitoring of
    glaciers and icecaps for volumetric changes and monitoring of
    thermal changes in permafrost; reconstruction of past climate cycles
    and evaluation of current changes from sediment and ice core
    records; monitoring and assessment of changes in rates of coastal
    erosion and surficial processes; evaluation of changes in status and
    distribution of circum-polar vegetation, fish, and wildlife and
    freshwater discharges in the Arctic.

-   Evaluation of the nature of arctic/boreal hydrologic interactions
    and the relationships between climate and plant growth,
    productivity, permafrost depth, and resulting effects on nutrient
    availability and atmospheric heat sources and sinks.

-   Establishment or extension of permanent monitoring infrastructure
    for permafrost, global seismicity, and geomagnetic activity.
    Assessment of energy resources in the circum-arctic area including
    oil, gas, coalbed methane and methane hydrates.

-   While the USGS will not conduct specific social science research as
    a part of IPY, several of our studies will have implications for
    populations living in the Polar Regions. These include our energy
    and mineral assessments, especially studies of coalbed methane
    potential for providing energy to isolated communities; natural
    hazards monitoring; studies of scour modelling due to changes in
    hydrology and their impacts on manmade structures; and 3-dimensional
    assessments of changes in permafrost that may have serious impacts
    on arctic road networks and other forms of infrastructure.

-   An additional element will include the production of geospatial
    information related to high-resolution elevation data and digital
    ortho-imagery for Polar Regions of Alaska and the development of an
    IPY portal on the USGS public web site. The portal will provide
    one-stop access to USGS science data sets; information products
    (e.g., maps and reports); educational resources for teachers; and
    tools and applications (e.g., geospatially referenced index of
    pertinent data, bibliography of key references, scientific
    collaboration tools). The USGS IPY portal will be linked to
    Geospatial One-Stop ([www.geodata.gov](http://www.geodata.gov/)), in
    order to leverage geospatial data and tools available from other
    agencies and organizations.

Beginning with the very first geophysical and geological surveys carried
out in Antarctica over a half-century ago, the USGS has maintained a
long tradition of scientific monitoring, assessment, and research in the
Polar Regions. The USGS has an extensive history of activities including
topographic mapping and geodetic control in Antarctica, satellite and
ground-based monitoring of glaciers and ice caps, research on movements,
distribution patterns and adaptation of polar wildlife, operation of a
seismic array at the South Pole, estimations of energy resources of the
circum-Arctic, mapping of the distribution of circum-arctic vegetation,
and the development of paleoclimate records from Alaskan sediments and
polar ice cores.

USGS participation in the International Polar Year allows the agency to
celebrate this enduring tradition with the global polar research
community and to renew our commitment to polar science at a time when
the eyes of the world are focused on these fragile regions.

Numerous USGS programs are involved in research, assessment, and
monitoring in the Polar Regions that support the scientific mission of
the USGS and the Department of the Interior, and address the themes and
goals of the IPY. Some of these specific activities and related products
are listed below.

1.  **[Research and long term monitoring of the polar
    regions]{.underline}**

Products and activities include:

-   **Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of Asia, Alaska, and Iceland**
    <http://www.glaciers.er.usgs.gov/html/chapters.html>

> Glacial ice distribution, including major ice sheets in the arctic,
> subarctic, and Antarctic, are critically linked to water availability
> for both human and ecological needs, as well as changes in sea-level
> worldwide. Changes in these ice masses therefore have global-scale
> ecological and socio-economic impacts. Over the last several decades,
> the majority of the world's glaciers have decreased in size and
> volume. These images, part of a worldwide series, will help in
> assessing the current distribution of glacial ice and rates of glacial
> ice retreat worldwide.

-   **State of the Earth\'s Cryosphere at the Beginning of the 21st
    Century: Glaciers, Snow Cover, Floating Ice, Permafrost and Their
    Impacts on Indigenous Marine Mammals**

> The USGS has been monitoring permafrost temperature in the Arctic;
> three Benchmark Glaciers for climate change, glacier geometry, glacier
> mass balance, glacier motion, and stream runoff; and marine mammals
> for many decades. The results of those monitoring efforts will be
> examined, analyzed and reported on during the IPY.

-   **Yukon River Basin -- Rates and Effects of Permafrost Thawing in
    the Arctic**

> USGS scientists and managers are working with a consortium of U.S. and
> Canadian Federal, State, and Provincial agencies, university
> scientists, and tribal organizations to initiate a major project to
> understand and predict climate-induced changes to the air, water,
> land, and biota within the Yukon River Basin. This collaborative
> scientific effort will provide a benchmark for tracking and
> understanding changes occurring throughout the Arctic and Sub-arctic
> region to biological communities, stored carbon, the water cycle, and
> human infrastructure as a consequence of climate-induced permafrost
> thawing and landscape change.

-   **Petroleum Resource Assessment of the Arctic**

> The USGS World Petroleum Assessment of 2000 estimated that a
> significant portion of the remaining oil and gas resources of the
> world reside in the Arctic. This follow-on study will examine Arctic
> basins in more detail and report on oil and gas resource potential of
> unexplored basins. The initial results should be completed during the
> IPY.

-   **Landsat 7 Image Map of Antarctica (LIMA)**

> The LIMA will create three high-quality remotely-sensed mosaics of
> Antarctica from more than 1200 Landsat scenes in cooperation with the
> British Antarctic Survey. This work is also funded by the National
> Science Foundation.

2.  **[USGS Facilities and Resources for Arctic and Antarctic
    Research]{.underline}**

> The USGS includes numerous facilities throughout the United States and
> Antarctica that are focused on activities that directly link to the
> International Polar Year. These facilities include:

-   **U.S. National Ice Core Laboratory, USGS, Denver, CO**

> The U.S. National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) stores, curates, and
> facilitates study of ice cores recovered from the polar regions of the
> world. It provides scientists with the capability to conduct
> examinations and measurements on ice cores, and it preserves the
> integrity of these ice cores in a long-term repository for current and
> future investigations. Ice cores contain an abundance of climate
> information, more so than any other natural source of climate
> information such as tree rings or sediment layers.
> [[http://nicl.usgs.gov/]{.underline}](http://nicl.usgs.gov/)

-   **U.S. Antarctic Resource Center, USGS, Reston, VA**

> The U.S. Antarctic Resource Center (USARC) is the Nation\'s depository
> for Antarctic maps, charts, geodetic ground control, satellite images,
> aerial photographs, publications, slides, and video tapes. These
> resources are items produced by Antarctic Treaty parties in support of
> their activities in Antarctica and provided to the USARC in connection
> with a resolution of the treaty providing for exchange of information.
> [http://[usarc.usgs.gov](http://usarc.usgs.gov/)]{.underline}

-   **USGS Alaska Science Center, Anchorage, AK**

> The USGS Alaska Science Center is a Center of Excellence for the
> Department of the Interior to address important natural resources
> issues and natural hazards assessments in Alaska and circumpolar
> regions through long-term data collection and monitoring, research and
> development, and assessments and applications. Their mission is to
> provide scientific leadership and accurate, objective, and timely
> data, information, and research findings about the earth and its flora
> and fauna to Federal and State resource managers and policy makers,
> local government, and the public to support sound decision making
> regarding natural resources, natural hazards, and ecosystems in Alaska
> and circumpolar regions. <http://alaska.usgs.gov/index.php>

-   **McMurdo Long Term Research (LTER) Program**

> The USGS provides cooperative support to the McMurdo Long Term
> Research program for water resources data collection and related
> activities. The support provided is in the form of field assistance,
> guidance, and review of surface-water data collection by INSTAAR and
> University of Colorado researchers in the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Taylor
> Valley and Wright Valley) of Antarctica. Cooperation is also provided
> in the form of guidance and support for and access to USGS databases
> and streamflow-records processing applications.

-   **Antarctic Seismic Data Library System (SDLS)**

> The SDLS is an Antarctic Treaty effort under the auspices of the
> Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) to collate and make
> openly available for research purposes all marine multichannel seismic
> reflection data (MCS) acquired in Antarctic regions (i.e., south of 60
> degrees South). The SDLS was implemented in 1991 under USGS
> sponsorship, but since about 1996, the SDLS has been run jointly by
> USGS (with National Science Foundation --Office of Polar Programs and
> USGS funding) and Osservatorio Geofisico Sperimentale (OGS, Trieste,
> Italy). The seismic library has branches in 10 countries, with two
> branches in the United States. The MCS data are sent to the SDLS by
> data collectors, put onto CD-ROM and distributed to SDLS branches
> where they can be viewed and used under the SDLS guidelines specified
> in SCAR Report #9 (and addendums). To date, 60 CD-Roms holding more
> than 120,000 km of stacked MCS data have been produced for SDLS
> branches.

-   **Web-enabling the US Antarctic Photography Collection from the USGS
    Earth Resources Observation Science (EROS) Center**

> For more the 30 years, it has been USGS's privilege to archive and
> serve the US Antarctic Program, the international Antarctic research
> community, and the public with access to the US Antarctic aerial
> photography collection held at the USGS Center for Earth Resources
> Observation and Science (EROS). This collection consists of an
> estimated 400,000 frames of historical aerial photography dating back
> to the 1940s. This collection is the best collection of Antarctic
> aerial photography held by any country and its value to the Antarctic
> research community will only increase with time as work and research
> continues in Antarctica.
>
> However, neither online metadata, browser images, photographs, nor
> film products are available via the Internet for the US Antarctic
> Program Antarctic aerial photography collection. New technology and
> improved digitizing methods have made it possible to digitize the
> original aerial film rolls creating browse and medium resolution
> images of each frame. We propose to link the digitized USAP aerial
> photography browse and medium resolution image files to the USARC
> paper map-line plots and web-enable the digitized collection in such a
> way that users could download images over the Internet at no cost to
> the user. Implementation of the proposal will result in an integrated
> on-line query, browsing and delivery capability for all historical
> USARC photography in the USGS EROS Center.

-   **Antarctic Geographic Place Names**

> The USGS operates the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (USBGN)
> conjointly with other Federal agencies. In accordance with
> recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN),
> the USBGN approves all new names to be used Antarctica by the United
> States government.
>
> In addition to work being done by the USGS, other agencies within the
> Department of the Interior are planning to carry out activities
> incorporating International Polar Year components. Most notably:

-   **Fish and Wildlife Service Initiatives with the Arctic Council**

> The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) is the lead agency for
> the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna Working Group (CAFF) of the
> Arctic Council. As a contribution to the International Polar Year, the
> Service has taken a lead role in the international development and
> implementation of the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program,
> which will serve to guide and coordinate monitoring activities in the
> Arctic region, facilitate common methodologies and address gaps in
> existing data on status and trends. In addition, the Service, in
> cooperation with representatives from other Arctic countries, will
> convene an international group of experts to develop an action plan
> for mapping the boreal forest, a northern ecosystem critical to
> migratory birds and other trust species. The Circumpolar Seabird
> Information Network, another new initiative led by Service (and
> approved as well as jointly funded by the Arctic Council countries),
> will greatly expand the international knowledge base of the Arctic
> Region, and it ability to address issues regarding bird species of
> conservation concern.

-   **Minerals Management Service Research**

> The Minerals Management Service will continue its innovative
> mission-focused environmental and sociocultural research in and around
> the Beaufort-Chukchi Seas area of the Arctic to support management and
> development of offshore gas and oil resources. Research planning
> activities for FY 2007 -- 2009 include collaboration with the National
> Oceanographic Partnership Program, individual agencies and research
> scientists to incorporate IPY components when feasible. Plans include
> studies of marine mammals and birds and their ecosystems, mesoscale
> meteorology, river plume transport processes, ocean circulation,
> sea-ice modeling and potential collaboration with the developing
> arctic component of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS).
>
> This concludes my testimony. My intention was to leave you with an
> accurate portrayal of just some of the Department of the Interior's
> many science, monitoring, and assessment studies and related support
> infrastructure that are firmly within the scope and spirit of the
> International Polar Year. I thank you for the opportunity to speak
> with you today, and I look forward to answering any questions that you
> may have.