Findings and Recommendations - Basic Research Opportunities in Earth Science - page 93

established in 1980 for investigating ecological processes operating over extended
periods (months to centuries) at a variety of spatial scales (from 10 m to
continental). 14
The research areas discussed in Chapter 2 illustrate the potential utility of
natural laboratories in the context of Earth science. For instance, the USGS
maintains a long-term, multidisciplinary program for the study of earthquake
processes on the San Andreas Fault at Parkfield, California, located at the
transition between the creeping and locked sections of the fault. Special arrays of
surface and borehole instrumentation have furnished insights into seismogenic
processes at scales much smaller than typical seismological investigations. Owing
to the enhanced understanding of earthquake processes achieved through these
observations, the Parkfield natural laboratory has been chosen as the site for the
SAFOD component of the EarthScope initiative, which will use deep drilling to
conduct in situ investigations of the San Andreas Fault zone at seismogenic
depths of 3 to 4 km. On a somewhat larger scale, Southern California has been
used as a natural laboratory for earthquake studies by the Southern California
Earthquake Center, a consortium of eight universities jointly funded by EAR, the
USGS, and NSF's Science and Technology Centers Program. The Office of
Naval Research sponsors modeling, experimentation, and multiyear field work at
two continental sites with the object of linking process studies with studies of
Holocene deposition patterns. Some sites proposed for critical facilities, such as
the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository and the Ward Valley facility for
radioactive waste, have become de facto natural laboratories by virtue of the
comprehensive investigations mandated by environmental and hazard-
vulnerability concerns. Extensive field work at these and other DOE sites, which
includes the mapping of hydrological and chemical fluxes in all three spatial
dimensions on time scales ranging from hours to millennia, is producing a much
more comprehensive understanding of the geochemical processes within the
Critical Zone. 15
The scientific advances made in the study of these natural laboratories
illustrate the potential for multidisciplinary research of near-surface processes
14 The network promotes synthesis and comparative research across sites and
ecosystems, as well as among other related national and international programs. Several
federal agencies cosponsor LTER activities with NSF, and 17 other countries have formal
LTER programs. Each of the 21 current sites has a data manager and principal
investigator. They are funded and reviewed separately on a six-year cycle, and the entire
network is reviewed every five years. Recent LTER awards range up to $4.2 million, with a
median of $1.8 million. Projects are multidisciplinary and actively encourage
collaborations with other investigators; support for such collaborations comes from the
relevant disciplinary programs.
15 See, for example, Groundwater at Yucca Mountain: How High Can It Rise? National
Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 231 pp., 1992.