(This analysis is a preview of the
Interior section in the forthcoming AAAS Report XXXIII: Research and Development
FY 2009, a comprehensive look at the President's budget for R&D in FY
2009. This analysis contains revised AAAS estimates of Interior R&D, different
from figures originally presented in the President's budget. More tables and continually
updated supplemental materials on R&D in the FY 2009 budget can be found on
the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
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R&D funding in Interior’s lead science agency, the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS), would fall $41 million or 6.9 percent in the FY 2009
budget compared to 2008 (see Table II-16). As
in previous years, the cuts would be concentrated in USGS’ mineral resources and
water resources R&D, partially offset by a sharp increase in global change
research.
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R&D in the Department of the Interior would fall 8.7 percent to $618 million.
The FY 2009 cut to Interior R&D would
mark the seventh year out of the last nine that Interior R&D funding has lost
ground to inflation.
USGS R&D in the FY 2009 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. R&D to support Interior’s land management responsibilities
would total $618 million in the FY 2009 budget, a cut of $59 million or 8.7 percent
from the 2008 funding level (see Table II-16).
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 (NSF), 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. Because of these characteristics,
USGS is left well out of the spotlight that shines on the physical sciences in
the Bush Administration’s American Competitiveness Initiative. While the FY 2009
budget, as in the past two years, proposes substantial increases for key physical
sciences research programs, the President’s budget proposes $969 million for the
total USGS budget, a cut of $38 million from a $1.0 billion 2008 appropriation
finalized in December and also a cut from the 2007 budget of $994 million (see
Table II-16).
USGS
R&D totals $546 million in the FY 2009 request for a cut of $41 million or
6.9 percent (see Table II-16). Just over half of the USGS budget is devoted
to R&D activities, with the remainder going for science support, data gathering
and dissemination, facilities operations, mapping, and natural hazards reduction.
R&D funding would decline in three of the four USGS research divisions,
with the Biological Research Division remaining flat and the lone increase going
to a new program on global change.
The
Geologic Hazards, Resources, and Processes Division would see its R&D funding
cut dramatically by 15 percent or $33 million down to $185 million, but as in
past years this proposal is unlikely to make it through Congress. In what is now
an annual ritual, USGS proposes to cut the $51 million mineral resources R&D
program in half to just $26 million, just as it has in the last several requests.
But in past years, Congress has disagreed strongly with USGS’ rationale that minerals
research could be funded by the private sector, and has repeatedly reaffirmed
the federal role in minerals research with restored funding. In this budget, there
would also be cuts in other geologic programs, including a $5 million cut in the
earthquake hazards program to $49 million, a proposed $3 million cut to the $13
million Earth Surface Dynamics program with the remaining $10 million moving to
the Global Change program, and reductions in volcano hazards and global seismographic
network funding. The lone increase would go to Coastal and Marine Geology, up
$7 million to $47 million for oceans-related research and oceans mapping, a USGS
priority in 2009 in collaboration with other federal agencies with an emphasis
on mapping the outer continental shelf in the Arctic. In
another earth sciences-related division, Geographic Research R&D would fall
$6 million down to $42 million.
Water
Resources Investigations R&D would fall $21 million or 17 percent to $107
million. Congress is likely to reject these cuts as it has in the past, but will
be hard pressed in the 2009 budget season to come up with the necessary dollars
to restore funding. USGS puts forward its perennial proposal to eliminate federal
funding for the water resources research institutes for a savings of $6 million
in 2009, but Congress has rejected similar proposals in past years and has preserved
the federal role in these cooperatively funded institutes. The Cooperative Water
Program would decline slightly to $62 million. This program supports the collection
of basic hydrologic data, studies of specific water-resources problems, and hydrologic
research through USGS partnerships with state governments and other entities.
Funding for the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program would
fall $3 million to $11 million; 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. There would be a steep cut of $10 million
down to $54 million for the National Water
Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA); 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. USGS would also cut
$4 million from the currently $15 million Hydrologic Research and Development
program. The few increases would go to the National Streamflow
Information Program (up $4 million to $24 million) and the Ground-Water Resources
Program (up $3 million to $11 million) to start the first national water census
in three decades on water availability, quality, and use.
Figure 1. (click on the image for
PDF)
USGS
biological research programs would barely increase to $180 million. The largest
increase would go to the new Global Change research program, which was created
by Congress in 2008 with a $7 million appropriation and would nearly quadruple
to $27 million in the 2009 request by taking in climate change activities previously
funded in the four traditional USGS divisions. The program aims to give federal
land managers adaptive management tools to respond to land changes from climate
change, through a national climate change research and observation network.
Other Interior Agencies
Although
USGS is the primary science agency in Interior, four other Interior bureaus also
fund R&D (see Table II-16). These include funds
for minerals and mining research in the Minerals and Management Service (MMS),
wildfire prevention research in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), water resources
research in the Bureau of Reclamation, and R&D for the Florida Everglades
restoration and other park-related projects in the National Park Service.
Impacts of the FY 2009 Interior Budget
Although
physical sciences research would be a high priority in the FY 2009 budget, environmental
research funding would decline along with other domestic programs. The
FY 2009 cut to Interior R&D would mark the seventh year out of the last nine
that Interior R&D funding has lost ground to inflation (see Figure 1),
and would leave the department 20 percent below the funding levels at the beginning
of this decade. 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 steady losses after adjusting for inflation. 84 percent of Interior’s R&D
is performed in-house, with only 8 percent performed at universities and colleges.
Industries, state governments, and nonprofits combined perform the remaining 8
percent of Interior R&D.
Figure 2. (click on the image for
PDF)
Interior
support for research has followed trends in Interior R&D, because nearly all of Interior’s R&D portfolio is research with only a
small amount for development. A third of Interior’s research goes to the life
sciences (see Figure 2), primarily from the Biological Research Division. Life
sciences research increased with the creation of the National Biological Service
in the early 1990s, but budget cuts in subsequent years have eroded support. 60
percent of Interior research goes to the environmental sciences, primarily in
earth-related fields such as geology. Interior support for environmental sciences
research has declined steadily as the USGS budget has lost purchasing power. Interior
used to be a significant supporter of engineering research, but this support was
almost entirely eliminated with the closure of the Bureau of Mines.
Congress
now takes up the Interior budget. There are likely to be few changes in the script
for how Congress responds to the President’s request. Appropriators are likely
once again to try to restore the proposed cuts in water resources and mineral
resources and turn a falling USGS R&D budget to at least a flat one. But they
will be hampered by an extremely tight domestic budget that could limit appropriators’
ability to find additional money.
(More materials on R&D in the FY
2009 budget, historical data and charts, and more information on AAAS Report
XXXIII: Research and Development FY 2009, can be found on the AAAS R&D
Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
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March 3, 2008
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
