Geoscience Reference
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Earth Sciences in the 21st Century
The Earth sciences will become increasingly prominent in the 21st century as
humanity confronts daunting challenges in finding natural resources to sustain Earth's
burgeoning population, in mitigating natural hazards that impact huge populations and
extensive built infrastructure, and in achieving sustainable environmental stewardship in
the context of an evolving Earth habitat. This report adopts the National Science
Foundation's (NSF) Earth science terminology: The Earth sciences involve that part of
geosciences that addresses Earth's solid surface, crust, mantle, and core, including
interactions between the solid Earth and the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.
Topics of the Earth sciences range from directly practical applications to society's
survival—such as detecting and extracting supplies of water, minerals, and fuels to
fundamental intellectual inquiry into the origin, evolution, and future of our planet—that
commonly inform important societal decision making.
The stature of the Earth sciences has grown with each new decade. For the past
200 years, the Earth sciences have played prominent roles in defining the history of life;
unveiling the evolution of the planetary surface; quantifying the nature of natural hazards
such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis; locating mineral and fossil fuel resources;
and characterizing the history of the climate system. Looking forward to the next decade
and beyond, these roles will expand substantially, driving a need for extensive basic
research in the Earth sciences and training researchers and practitioners in the discipline
that will expand well beyond current capacity.
While this accelerating demand is evident to many in the field, and NSF's
Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) program is guided by a thorough understanding of the
importance of the discipline and the many opportunities for it to contribute to the
challenges humanity must confront, the reality is that the Earth sciences receive less
attention than warranted at all levels in the U.S. education system and in the federal
agencies that support basic and applied research and education (National Center for
Education Statistics, 2011). Across the country, high school and university curricula
place little emphasis on learning about Earth and environmental sciences (Hoffman and
Barstow, 2007), which limits the draw of high-quality students into the field. This self-
limiting situation can only be overcome by proactive efforts by federal agencies and
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