Earth Sciences in the 21st Century - New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences - page 5

6. How are Earth's processes controlled by material properties?
7. What causes climate to change—and how much can it change?
8. How has life shaped Earth—and how has Earth shaped life?
9. Can earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and their consequences be predicted?
10. How do fluid flow and transport affect the human environment?
Answering these questions, which the NROES committee agrees are fundamental to the
field, will take sustained and intense effort and the preparation of new generations of
researchers capable of building on current understanding and overcoming current
limitations.
The essential role of EAR is to support basic research on acquiring fundamental
knowledge about the Earth system, motivated by profound questions like those above,
and to foster that understanding, which can be directly applied to national strategic needs.
Strong partnerships with mission-oriented agencies are critical to the flow of basic
understanding into applied research and engineering. The 2001 BROES report (NRC,
2001) identified how basic research in the Earth sciences supported by EAR ultimately
affects human welfare in five major areas:
1. Discovery, use, and conservation of natural resources—fuels, minerals, soils,
water;
2. Characterization and mitigation of natural hazards—earthquakes, floods and
droughts, landslides, tsunamis, volcanoes;
3. Geoscience-based engineering—urban development, agriculture, materials
engineering;
4. Stewardship of the environment—ecosystem management, adaptation to
environmental changes, remediation, and moderation of adverse human
effects; and
5. Terrestrial surveillance for national security—arms control treaty verification,
precise positioning, mapping, and subsurface remote sensing.
Over the past 10 years these issues have only grown in importance and relevance, and
every indication is that this trend will persist through this century. The roles of basic
research in the Earth sciences in each arena were described in detail in the BROES report
and are not repeated here because it is clear than NSF and EAR are committed to
sustaining basic Earth science research. The committee does note some issues of
heightening concern as we progress into the second decade of the 21st century.
Relevance of the Earth Sciences
The world's population is expected to reach 7 billion by the end of 2011, and
about 9.2 billion by 2050, relentlessly increasing the demand for food, fuel, raw
materials, and water. 1 Much of this population will continue to be concentrated near
dynamic coastal zones, and meeting the requirements of this population and
understanding associated impacts on the environment is a key area to which the Earth
1 U.S. Census Bureau.