Findings and Recommendations - Basic Research Opportunities in Earth Science - page 88

The committee recognizes that much work is needed to implement a research
program on the Critical Zone that is sufficiently visionary and broadly based to
address the wide range of fundamental and applied problems involved in the
study of the near-surface environment. In the long term, EAR will have to
coordinate its programs with ATM (paleoclimate and trace gas fluxes), OCE
(geochemical pathways at the ocean-solid-Earth interface, paleoceanography, and
sedimentary processes and chemical transformations in the coastal environment),
and other NSF divisions.
Recommendation: EAR should take the lead within NSF in devising a
long-term strategy for funding research on the Critical Zone.
The study of Critical Zone processes would also benefit from partnerships
between EAR and other federal agencies. NSF's focus on research initiated by
external proposal submission would complement the more directed research on
coastal zone processes carried out by NOAA (characterization and assessment of
coastal change), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (coastal erosion
and flood hazard), and USGS (environmental quality of coastal areas) (see “
Related Federal Research Programs ”). Similarly, soil research sponsored by
USDA (soil properties and carbon sequestration), EPA (soil contaminants and
pathways), the Department of Defense (DOD) (soil erosion, compaction, and
trafficability), DOE (bioremediation and the carbon cycle), NASA (response of
terrestrial life to conditions in space), and a host of private foundations is
typically directed toward practical questions of agriculture, environmental
quality, and land management. The understanding generated from these applied
studies, as well as from basic research funded by EAR, will provide a key
contribution to many outstanding Earth science problems.
MAJOR INITIATIVES
Previous EAR initiatives have funded major new tools for Earth
observations, as well as new mechanisms for multidisciplinary research
( Appendix A ). One outstanding example is the program in observational
seismology run by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS),
which now comprises 100 members, primarily U.S. universities and research
organizations, and manages an annual budget of about $11 million. 8 IRIS
provides the instrumentation and infrastructure for gathering and disseminating
seismological
8 The IRIS consortium, begun in 1984, has been responsible for the deployment of the
Global Seismic Network, a worldwide distribution of 120 permanent, high-performance
seismic stations sponsored by NSF in cooperative agreements with USGS, DOD, and the
Program for Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere.