New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences - New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences - page 9

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New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences
The vitality of the current Earth science research community is manifestly
evident in the numerous strategic planning, Grand Challenges, and science vision
documents that have been produced over the past decade (a list of key documents is
presented in Appendix A). Any attempt at comprehensive assessment of new research
opportunities across the discipline would quickly become unwieldy, and the finite
expertise of any committee would result in some oversights. The committee on New
Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences (NROES), informed by personal
knowledge, myriad documents produced by workshops and community organizations,
and both solicited and contributed input from many researchers and program
managers (see Appendix B) has attempted to identify specific areas in the basic Earth
science research scope of the Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) of the National
Science Foundation (NSF) that are particularly poised for rapid progress during the
next decade.
Seven primary topics involving complex dynamic geosystems that can only be
fully quantified by interdisciplinary approaches are highlighted in the following
sections organized by scale and disciplinary participation related to the EAR Deep
Earth Processes and Surface Earth Processes sections: (1) the early Earth; (2) thermo-
chemical internal dynamics and volatile distribution; (3) faulting and deformation
processes; (4) interactions among climate, Earth surface processes, tectonics, and
deep Earth processes; (5) co-evolution of life, environment, and climate; (6) coupled
hydrogeomorphic-ecosystem response to natural and anthropogenic change; and (7)
interactions of biogeochemical and water cycles in terrestrial environments. These
address a range of grand challenge-scale fundamental topics of both curiosity-driven
and strategic Earth Science. Key to many of these topics and to many other Earth
science applications are geochemical approaches to geochronology by exploiting the
variety of stable and radiogenic isotopes that exist in nature to provide relative and
absolute dating of geological materials and events. The expanding demand for
accurate sample dating for many of the research opportunities motivates consideration
of restructuring EAR-supported geochemical facilities that must simultaneously
promote innovation of methodologies, training of next-generation geochemists, and