(This analysis is a preview of the Dept. of
the Interior section in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXX: Research and Development FY
2006, a comprehensive look at the President’s budget for R&D in
FY 2006. This analysis contains revised AAAS estimates of R&D, different
from figures presented in the AAAS Preliminary Analysis
of February 10. More tables and continually updated supplemental materials
on R&D in the FY 2006 budget can be found on the AAAS R&D Web
site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
- R&D in the Department of the Interior would fall 5.5 percent to $581
million in FY 2006 (see Table II-16).
- There would be a cut of 4.8 percent for R&D in Interior’s lead science
agency, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The cuts would be concentrated
in USGS’ mineral resources and water resources R&D, with modest
increases or flat funding for other R&D priorities.
- R&D funding
for Interior would be flat or declining for the sixth year in a row.
USGS R&D in the FY 2006 Budget
The Department
of the Interior manages most of the publicly owned lands in the United
States, from the national park system to Indian lands to publicly owned
mines. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is the primary sponsor of R&D in
Interior. USGS is one of the leading federal sponsors of earth sciences
research, along with the Department of Energy, the National Science
Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Within
the earth sciences, USGS is particularly important in geological hazards
research, including research on earthquakes and volcanoes. USGS is also
a leading sponsor of water resources research and biological research.
Nearly 90 percent of this research is conducted within Interior labs
to address the science needs of Interior’s other agencies.
In the FY 2006
budget released in early February, the Bush Administration requested
$934 million for the USGS total budget in FY 2006, $2 million or 0.2
percent less than this year (see Table II-16).
In addition to the FY 2006 request, a few weeks ago the Administration
requested an extra $8 million in emergency 2005 funds for the National
Earthquake Information Center as part of its $81 billion Iraq war supplemental.
R&D accounts
for nearly two-thirds of the USGS budget, with the remainder going to
non-R&D activities such as environmental data collection, mapping,
and natural hazards reduction. The
Bush Administration proposes a cut of 4.8 percent for USGS R&D activities
to $515 million. The request proposes to cut funding for R&D
in two USGS divisions (Geology and Water Resources), keep funding flat
in Biological Research, and boost funding for the remaining division
(Mapping).
Unlike past requests
in which nearly every USGS R&D program would have been cut, the
budget cuts are more selective in the FY 2006 request, leaving most
programs with flat or slightly increasing funding. R&D in the Water
Resources Division would fall $7 million or 5.7 percent to $119 million,
mostly from the proposal to eliminate the $6.4 million water resources
research institutes program, a proposal Congress has rejected before.
Funding for the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program would decline $1 million to $13.1
million, but again Congress has rejected similar cuts in previous years.
The program is a collaborative effort of USGS scientists, university
and private-sector researchers, and state, local, and other federal
agency scientists to conduct long-term research on water resource contamination
in surface and groundwater environments. Other water programs would
remain near current funding levels. The budget proposes a slight increase
for the National Water Quality Assessment Program
(NAWQA) to $63 million to bring it back to last year’s funding level.
NAWQA is charged with monitoring the nation’s water quality, and its
data are used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and many
state regulatory agencies. Similarly, R&D in the Cooperative Water Program would stay even at last year’s funding level
of $64 million after a cut in the 2005 budget. This program supports
the collection of basic hydrologic data, studies of specific water-resources
problems, and hydrologic research through USGS partnerships.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
R&D in the
Geologic Hazards, Resources, and Processes Division would fall $27 million
or 13.0 percent down to $179 million, mostly because USGS would cut
the $54 million mineral resources R&D program in half to $25 million.
Congress has disagreed strongly with similar proposals in the past two
years, and restored funding to proposed cuts; a similar reaction is
expected in the FY 2006 budget process. Funding for R&D on earthquakes,
volcanoes, landslides, geologic mapping, geology, and earth surface
dynamics would stay flat or increase slightly.
Among the other
divisions, Mapping and Geography R&D would increase 22 percent or
$8 million up to $43 million, but this would only restore funding to
the 2004 level after a cut in 2005. The ups and downs in this division
are in the land remote sensing programs, which operate satellites but
also fund R&D on data retrieval, archiving, processing, and imaging.
The Biological Research Division (BRD) would see its funding increase
just $1 million to $173 million.
Impacts of the FY 2006 Interior Budget
The FY 2006 cut to Interior R&D would be the sixth year in a row that
Interior R&D funding has lost ground to inflation (see Figure
1), and would leave the department nearly 25 percent below the funding
levels of a decade ago. Interior R&D has declined sharply since
FY 1994, primarily because of the elimination of the Bureau of Mines
in FY 1996 and the merging of the former National Biological Service
into USGS in the mid-1990s. After a large increase in FY 2000, Interior
R&D has been mostly flat since then, resulting in losses after adjusting
for inflation.
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF)
As a result,
Interior funding of research has been flat or declining in the disciplines
it supports (see Figure 2). USGS work in earth sciences, water resources,
and mapping falls mostly under the environmental sciences category,
which accounts for two-thirds of Interior’s research; budget cuts and
flat budgets have eroded this portfolio in recent years. Biological
research in USGS is classified under life sciences, which accounts for
most of the remaining Interior portfolio; this portfolio has held up
better in past budgets. USGS and the other Interior bureaus fund small
amounts of other research; the steep drop in engineering research in
1995 is due to the elimination of the Bureau of Mines. The FY 2006 requested
cuts would continue these recent trends.
-
March 2, 2005
(More materials on R&D in the FY 2006 budget, historical data and
charts, and more information on AAAS Report XXX: R&D FY 2006,
can be found on the AAAS R&D web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
AAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
