Earth Sciences in the 21st Century - New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences - page 7

construction implementations has been dramatically demonstrated by the contrasting
impacts of the 2010 Haiti and Chile earthquake disasters. Haiti, struck by a moderately
large magnitude 7.0 earthquake on January 12, 2010, had massive destruction and loss of
life, primarily due to poor construction standards. In contrast, the much stronger
magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile on February 27, 2010, caused far less damage and loss
of life in the largely well-built environment of central Chile. Massive flooding events,
such as that accompanying Hurricane Katrina in 2005—the costliest natural disaster in
U.S. history, with about $81 billion in damages and 1,836 fatalities—and the 2010
monsoonal inundation of southern Pakistan, which flooded almost 20 percent of the
country's land area, directly affecting about 20 million people, are further indicators of
the upscaling of human impacts to be anticipated by natural hazards throughout the 21st
century. The March 11, 2011, Tohoku great earthquake and tsunami in Japan that
devastated the coast of Honshu and precipitated the Fukushima nuclear disaster is further
demonstration of this expanding impact of natural disasters.
Efforts to mitigate natural hazards rely on precise observations and quantitative
understanding of the phenomena that are involved. Broadly based EAR research
programs that address the fundamental nature of the dynamic geosystems underlying
natural hazards are essential for pursuing applied research and engineering efforts to
mitigate the hazards. Most federal programs associated with natural hazards are forced by
funding constraints to prioritize very directed research; without EAR basic science
support, critical basic understanding of the natural hazards would lag, thereby reducing
the effectiveness of mitigation efforts.
Quantifying complex geosystems requires extensive measurement of the fluxes,
structures, and evolution of the systems. Recognition of this has guided EAR toward
developing facilities capable of making the spatial and temporal measurements essential
to understanding the dynamical geosystems. Particular progress has been made in
geophysical observations with seismic, geodetic, and magnetotelluric networks being
established both within the EAR Instrumentation and Facilities program and the
EarthScope project. Major advances have been made in facilities for hydrological
measurements and database gathering, and several Critical Zone observatories have been
established for addressing the near-surface geosystem. Progress in quantifying the
historical climate system and its evolution has largely stemmed from accumulation of
global observations from continental and oceanic drilling, geological fieldwork,
geochemical technique development, and increased understanding of the roles of
geobiological processes. Essentially these endeavors probe Earth's complex environment
and quantify attributes of the dynamical systems that feed into quantitative modeling
efforts. While some aspects of this are intrinsic to monitoring operations conducted by
mission-oriented federal programs, and numerous interagency partnerships are exploited
to provide access to essential data, EAR efforts are guided by the design requirements for
basic research and a strong commitment to NSF-based research facilities.
The BROES report made a compelling argument for the importance of sustaining
three basic Earth science research capabilities: (1) techniques for deciphering the
geological record of terrestrial change and extreme events, (2) facilities for observing
active processes in the present-day Earth, and (3) computational technologies for realistic
simulations of dynamic geosystems. This perspective is reinforced in the next chapter,
which identifies areas of research opportunity for the near term, all of which intersect