The FY 2000 Budget Request for the Geosciences (GEO) Activity is
$485.48 million, an increase of $12.50 million, or 2.6 percent, over the FY
1999 Current Plan of $472.98 million.
(Millions of Dollars)
The GEO Activity supports research in the atmospheric, earth, and
ocean sciences. As the principal source
of federal funding for university-based fundamental research in the
geosciences, GEO addresses the nation's
need to understand, predict and respond to environmental events and changes and
to use Earth's resources wisely. Basic
research in the geosciences advances scientific knowledge of Earth's
environment, including resources such as water, energy, minerals, and
biological diversity. GEO-supported
research also advances our ability to predict natural phenomena of economic and
human significance, such as climate changes, weather, earthquakes, fish-stock
fluctuations, and disruptive events in the solar-terrestrial environment.
Three goals guide GEO's activities:
·
Advancement
of knowledge about the Earth system, which includes both maintaining adequate
bases of support across all geoscience fields and identifying opportunities
where more focused support can play a catalytic role in advancing scientific
progress.
·
Enhancement
of the infrastructure for the conduct of geoscience research. GEO will identify and make investments in
instrumentation and facilities (including ships, aircraft, computers, radars,
seismographs, and data management systems) needed to do world-class research.
·
Improvement
of the quality of geoscience education and training. GEO will advance the education and training for current
geoscientists, facilitate the education and training for future generations of
geoscientists, and enhance the general public’s knowledge about the integrated
components of the Earth system.
GEO
actively participates in and contributes to the Foundation's three areas of
emphasis: Biocomplexity in the Environment, Information Technologies, and
Educating for the Future.
Biocomplexity in the Environment (BE): includes a set of increasingly coordinated activities in environmental science, engineering and education. Activities related to the environment advance scientific knowledge about the Earth system. Because the geosciences are inherently related to the function of the interrelated systems which compose the environment in which we live, the majority of activities supported by GEO relate to BE. GEO will provide $327.92 million in FY 2000, an increase of $8.27 million over the FY 1999 level of $319.65 million for activities formerly known as Life and Earth’s Environment, and will support programs within BE, including:
·
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, which focuses on
understanding the dynamic processes of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, the
diversity of life on Earth, and responses to long-term changes in land, air,
and water. The emphasis in this
sub-theme is on interdisciplinary approaches to probing the complex interplay of
chemical, biological, and physical factors in Earth's many geographically
distinct regions. Advances in
this area will enable improved methodologies and techniques for the study of
the carbon cycle and life and environments in areas for which current capabilities
are limited or nonexistent, leading to better understanding of biocomplexity
including interactions between the biosphere and atmosphere as well as the
diversity of environments capable of supporting life and the functioning of
natural and engineered systems.
Included in this sub-theme is the multi-agency Life in
Extreme Environments (LExEn) program. LExEn seeks to improve fundamental understanding of the
formation and development of life and an understanding of the physical,
chemical, and geological processes that sustain life. The study of microbial life forms that exist in extreme
conditions on Earth, ranging from volcanoes to polar sea ice to hydrothermal
vents, will provide important new insights about how life originated and
evolved on Earth and whether and how life may thrive on other planets. FY 2000 support for LExEn totals $2.0
million within GEO.
·
Environment and the Human Dimension, which recognizes
explicitly the role that humans play in contributing to changes in the
environment and adapting to and/or mitigating the effects of environmental
change. Major FY 2000 GEO efforts in this area include the U.S. Weather
Research Program (USWRP), the National Space Weather Program (NSWP), and the
National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP).
·
Global Environmental Change, which focuses on
understanding processes and predicting changes in the global environment. Some examples are global atmospheric and
ocean circulation and fluxes in mass and energy between the atmosphere, the
land, the oceans, and the biosphere.
Often supported by geographic information and visualization systems,
investigations are directed toward understanding the dynamics, rates, and
linkages of these phenomena. In
FY 2000, GEO will continue to support research on Variability in the Earth
System. This investment will result in
enhanced capability for remote sensing and a better understanding of the
interplay between short-term phenomena and long-term trends.
Many of the BE-related
activities GEO supports are components of the U.S.
Global Change Research Program.
GEO support for the U.S. Global Change Research Program in FY 2000 will
total $128.49 million.
Information Technologies (IT): In
FY 2000, GEO will provide approximately $7.0 million to support focused
information based activities. Highlights include:
·
$1.3 million
for enhancement of Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)
systems including the global seismic network and data management system;
·
$2.4 million
for expansion of computational capability for management and modeling of
climate data.
·
$3.0 million
for development of ocean collaboratory capabilities; and
·
$400,000 for
computationally challenging research topics in the earth sciences including
dynamic modeling of earth system processes and management of very large data
sets.
These efforts build on funding of $82.56 million in FY
1999 for activities formerly grouped under the title Knowledge and Distributed
Intelligence; total FY 2000 funding of activities related to Information Technologies
totals $85.43 million. Overall FY 2000
activities include research on:
Intelligent systems, those that
generate observations and model components of the Earth System and organize
this information for effective use; Integrated Information Systems, which
enable storage and access of massive amounts of retrospective and real time
information about the Earth System; Collaboratories, which link disciplinary
communities and allow the sharing of observations, tools, and methods for
analysis and prediction; and the Next Generation Internet, prototypes of which
are being used in the geoscience community to tie together the components of
GEO’s IT research.
Educating For the Future
(EFF): GEO supports a range of programs which encourage innovative
approaches to meeting the challenge of educating students for the 21st
century. A FY 2000 total of $14.10
million, including an increment of $620,000, will support programs such as
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), Integrative Graduate Education and
Research Training (IGERT), and the Faculty Early Career Development Program
(CAREER).
A successful example of GEO supported EFF activities is
the Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS)
program established in 1995 in partnership with the University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research. The goal of this
four-year program was to create a direct pipeline that brings ethnically
diverse students into careers in the atmospheric and related sciences,
including engineering, mathematics, and social sciences. Recent partnerships with other federal
agencies helped increase the number of student program positions from 12 in
1995 to 18 in 1998. In FY 1998 the Atmospheric Sciences Subactivity supported
14 high school students, 11 undergraduate and three graduate students from
diverse backgrounds. The career
development of all SOARS participants is being tracked to determine the
effectiveness of the SOARS approach.
GEO supports its activities through the following key program
functions:
(Millions of Dollars)
1 Includes only costs charged to the R&RA Appropriation.
Research Project Support
Research projects supporting individual researchers and small
groups of investigators advance fundamental knowledge across a wide range of
topics. Research projects in
Atmospheric Sciences improve the understanding and prediction of climate,
weather, and the global environmental system.
Earth Science research projects advance knowledge of the
structure, composition, and history of the solid Earth and of the geological
and hydrological processes that modify Earth.
Research projects in Ocean Sciences improve knowledge of the global
climate system, coastal environments, the character of the ocean floor,
processes that control the chemical composition and motion of ocean waters, and
the production of marine organisms.
Almost two-thirds of GEO’s funding is directed toward research
project support in all GEO disciplinary areas. Over 1,200 awards are made each
year, with an average annual award size of approximately $84,600 and a duration
of 2.6 years. Although some
GEO-sponsored research projects represent a single discipline, a significant
fraction are multidisciplinary efforts drawing on the talents and perspectives
of several researchers, who together provide valuable knowledge about the
complex interactions among different facets of the integrated Earth system.
For example, a high risk, rapid response cruise was
recently made to the Juan de Fuca Ridge, where seismic monitoring indicated
that a major seafloor eruption had taken place. The cruise not only found the area in which a recent eruption had
taken place, but also observed and sampled dense concentrations of bacteria
issuing from a new hydrothermal vent system.
It appeared that these bacteria were living deep in the ridge crest
rocks and that they had been released by the faulting associated with the
earthquake. The notion of very high
concentrations of bacteria living within seafloor rocks had been postulated
before, but had never been observed or sampled. Volatile gases released during these eruptive events may be the
nutrient source for communities of sub-seafloor organisms, many of which are
Archaea bacteria, one of the most ancient forms of life on this planet. Based upon the massive and sustained output
of microbial biomass from the new vents, oceanographers have estimated the
potential biomass associated with the ridge crest and suggest that this deep
biosphere is a significant component of Earth’s biomass. While these systems
and the bacteria living in them have implications for the origin of life on our
own planet, they may also be models for life elsewhere in the universe.
Priorities for FY 2000 include increased support for the U.S.
Weather Research Program, the National Space Weather Program, Research
Experiences for Undergraduates, and several programs associated with the U.S.
Global Change Research Program, including Earth System History, Global
Tropospheric Chemistry, and Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics. Support will be maintained for ongoing
programs in coastal ocean processes and environmental geochemistry and
biogeochemistry.
In addition, GEO will continue to support the National Earthquake
Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), totaling $10.90 million in FY 2000.
In FY 2000, GEO will continue its efforts to address Foundation-wide concerns about grant sizes by increasing the average size and duration of the awards and providing more support for researchers. In accord with the Foundation's FY 2000 Performance Plan, GEO will continue to provide increased attention to the percentage of competitive research grants going to new investigators. These efforts will contribute to increasing the efficiency of the Foundation's merit review process and achieve greater cost-effectiveness for both NSF and the university community.
GEO-supported
centers include Science and Technology Centers (STCs) and Long Term Ecological
Research sites.
(Millions of Dollars)
1The reduction of support reflects the
planned phase-out of the first class of STCs in FY 1999, as well as planned
reductions in the second class of STCs.
GEO supports three Science and Technology Centers:
·
Center for Clouds, Chemistry, and Climate (University of California at San Diego),
whose objectives include improving the understanding of the roles of clouds and
chemistry in climate change.
·
Southern California Earthquake Center (University of Southern California),
which has emerged as a focal point for
earthquake research in southern California.
It has fostered unprecedented cooperation among the major southern
California universities, Federal, state and local agencies, and private
corporations.
·
Center for High Pressure Research (State University of New York at Stony
Brook), which brings together
multidisciplinary teams from universities, national laboratories, and industry
to study the effect of pressure on the properties of natural and synthetic
materials. The Center is the U.S. focus
of fundamental research on processes in Earth’s deep interior, through
controlled experimentation under simulated natural conditions.
The research agendas of the three STCs require a center
environment to address the multidisciplinary and highly complex scientific
objectives. Approximately 250
scientists and students use the three centers each year, with additional participants in workshops,
conferences and special projects, such as visits of pre-college students and
field projects.
Long
Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites support projects requiring long periods
of study; the sustained nature of the studies allows scientifically sound
evaluations of major environmental phenomena.
The LTERs are "research platforms" representing many disciplines that enhance our understanding of
general ecological phenomena which occur over long temporal and broad spatial
scales, provide information for the identification and solution of
environmental problems, and enable interdisciplinary collaborative
activities.
In
FY 1998, GEO and the Biological Sciences (BIO) Activities collaborated to
establish a new LTER site that focuses on ecological systems at the interfaces
of land masses and coastal oceans, including the Laurentian Great Lakes. This
new site is expanding our knowledge of the organization and function of
land/ocean‑margin ecosystems, the linkages between these systems and
adjacent terrestrial and marine systems, and the impacts of major natural
environmental perturbations in these regions.
In FY 2000, GEO and BIO will collaborate to establish up to three new
coastal LTER sites at a total cost of up to $2 million.
Research
Facilities
The GEO Activity supports user facilities necessary for the
conduct of research in the geosciences.
These include large national user facilities such as the National Center
for Atmospheric Research and the U.S. academic fleet, and smaller facilities in
atmospheric, earth, and ocean sciences.
NSF support provides for ongoing operations and maintenance, including
upgrades to existing facilities as well as regularly scheduled repair.
(Millions of Dollars)
1Other GEO
facilities include multi-user accelerator-based mass spectrometers and
synchrotron beamlines, and facilities to support the scientific use of the
Global Positioning System.
FY 2000 plans
for Research Facilities include:
·
A total of $68.15
million for the continued operation and maintenance of observational and
computer facilities at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR). NCAR is a world center for
atmospheric research, and maintains an active visiting scientist program. The facilities available to university,
NCAR, and other scientists include supercomputers, instrumented research
aircraft and ground-based portable observing systems. In FY 2000 NCAR will
focus on: 1) global change research, including climate system modeling and the
operation of the computation facilities for the Climate Simulation
Laboratory; 2) the U.S. Weather
Research Program (USWRP) and the National Space Weather Program (NSWP), which
aim to achieve a better understanding and improved predictive capability of
costly and disruptive storms on Earth and in space; and 3) continued support
and development of observational and computational capabilities. In addition, the primary building housing
NCAR will continue a three-year, $12.0 million refurbishment. Begun in FY 1999, FY 2000 support for the refurbishment will continue at the FY
1999 level of $4.0 million.
·
$15.32
million to maintain support for: multi-user atmospheric facilities including
observatories in Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Greenland, and Peru; aircraft and
radar facilities at universities; and facilities for disseminating atmospheric
data to university research and education programs. These facilities are critical to studies of the atmosphere and
Earth’s nearby space environment (geospace).
·
$32.0
million to support infrastructure associated with the Ocean Drilling Program,
including operation of the JOIDES
Resolution. Studies to be
undertaken in FY 2000 include documenting the history of the Antarctic ice
sheet and climate changes associated with ocean circulation in the
circum-Antarctic area, deformation and fluid flow studies off Japan, and
installation of an ocean seismic station in the north Pacific to understand
earthquake processes and exploration of hydrothermal activity and related
sulfide mineral deposits in the western Pacific, coupled with deep biosphere
sampling.
·
$44.0
million for the continued operation of the academic research fleet. Approximately 325 projects with about 2,500
scientists and students will use the fleet's 28 ships. The projects range from individual investigator
studies of coastal waters to integrated multi-investigator studies of global
ocean processes. NSF-funded researchers
are the primary users of the ships, accounting for about 75 percent of their
total use. NSF ship operation funds
support the costs associated with the use of the fleet by these researchers.
·
$12.60
million to continue support for the Incorporated Research Institutions for
Seismology (IRIS). IRIS originated in
1986 to install a global network of seismometers (Global Seismic Network, or
GSN), provide portable seismometers for regional studies, and establish a data management
system to provide on-line, distributed access to data on global seismic
activity. IRIS facilities provide rapid
analysis of earthquakes, aid in monitoring nuclear proliferation, and permit
imaging of the internal physical structure of Earth. In FY 2000, an increment of $1.3 million for IRIS will enhance
operation and deployment of the Global Seismic Network, continue making
available portable seismic arrays to facilitate research, and enhance the Data
Management System which makes available data on seismic events to researchers
world-wide.
·
Other Geosciences
Facilities support will be maintained, including facilities to support the use
of the Global Positioning System for scientific research, and multi-user
analytical facilities such as accelerator-based mass spectrometers and
synchrotron beamlines.
In
addition, planning and development activities for two possible new
observational facilities is underway and will continue in FY 2000. The first new facility being planned is a portable modular phased-array
incoherent scatter radar that can be assembled at a given site, disassembled,
and relocated. The radar would be used
extensively by the upper atmospheric research community to investigate
processes associated with space weather.
The second new facility being planned is a new high-performance mid-size
jet. The jet would be capable of providing measurement access to the entire
globe in order to address many of the most critical geoscience research topics, such as climate, weather, and
atmospheric chemistry as well as newly emerging areas of importance such as
biocomplexity.
Education and Training
GEO
places a high priority on programs for education, training, and human resource
development. This emphasis helps to
ensure that the next generation of scientists is adequately prepared for a
future in which the borders between scientific disciplines is increasingly
blurred, and that is increasingly dependent on technology and on the sharing
and analyzing of information utilizing currently-emerging technologies. This emphasis on education and training also
aids in the development of a scientifically and technologically literate
populace.
(Millions of Dollars)
Examples of GEO efforts to integrate research and education throughout
its activities include:
·
$1.0 million
directed to support the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training
(IGERT) program, which reflects an emphasis on multidisciplinary training in
all areas of NSF-supported research.
·
Continued support for
Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS), which
brings ethnically diverse students from groups underrepresented in the
atmospheric sciences into careers in atmospheric and related sciences.
Students participate in scientific research with a mentor from NCAR or the University Consortium for
Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and are supported at their home institution during
the academic year. The goal is to
graduate these students with Masters of Science (MS) degrees. It is expected that a significant number
will continue on to Ph.D. programs in atmospheric sciences and ultimately to
careers in the field.
·
In FY 2000
GEO will augment an ongoing program to enhance geoscience education at the K-12
and undergraduate levels building on the success of past efforts which included
a collaborative program with the Education and Human Resources Activity to
develop digital libraries.
The Administration and Management key program function includes the cost of Intergovernmental Personnel Act appointments, contractors performing administrative functions and, in FY 2000, award-related travel.
Number of People Involved in GEO
Activities
GEO Funding Profile
1 Statistics for
award size and duration are for Research Grants only.