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| Earth Sciences in the FY 2000 Budget
David Applegate and Kasey Shewey White, AGI | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
HIGHLIGHTS
INTRODUCTION The diversity of funding sources for earth science R&D reflects the diversity of the overall federal science enterprise, with a variety of agencies and programs supporting different goals and missions. Fundamental, curiosity-driven research into the evolution of the Earth and its processes is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science supports fundamental research on specific topics related to DOE missions. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) within the Department of the Interior, DOE's energy and waste disposal programs, and NASA's Earth Science Enterprise all fund more targeted, applied R&D programs designed to provide the necessary scientific underpinning for decisions on environmental, resource, and natural hazard policy issues.
Table 1. Budget request for principal agencies and programs supporting earth-science R&D
Source: Agency budget materials, Office of Management and Budget. In recent years, support for earth-science R&D has not kept pace with growing federal investments in science and technology. The most striking example is the Department of the Interior, where R&D funding is down over 20 percent in constant dollars over the past five years, a decrease exceeded only by the Department of Defense. In large part, these cutbacks reflect the principal challenge facing earth-science budget requests in Congress: the mismatch between the Administration's environmental priorities and those on Capitol Hill. With the exception of NSF, all of the principal earth science agencies have experienced budget problems due to that mismatch. In tight budgets, new money for programs is principally tied to budget initiatives, and key Administration initiativesfor example on climate change and water qualityhave met with opposition in Congress. The result is that little new money has been approved while core programs have undergone slow erosion due to inflation. Table 1 provides an overview of the President's FY 2000 budget request for earth-science R&D. This chapter reports on the budget requests for the four principal federal entities funding earth-science R&D: USGS, NSF, DOE, and NASA. A number of other federal agencies support earth-science research, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Department of Defense. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) Fossil Energy R&D: The bulk of earth-science R&D in the Office of Fossil Energy takes place in the Oil Technology program. The request for this program includes a slight increase to develop improved, lower- cost exploration and production tools to help prevent domestic oil fields from being prematurely abandoned. A smaller amount is funded by the Natural Gas program. That request includes a $1.5 million increase for research into methane hydrates. Basic Energy Sciences (BES): The geosciences program in BES is slated for a significant decrease in the President's request. This program provides peer-reviewed grants to universities and DOE national laboratories for fundamental geoscience research in geochemistry, hydrology, rock mechanics, and geophysical imagingareas with broad application to multiple DOE mission areas including oil and gas exploration and development, geothermal energy, and environmental remediation. The apparent 9 percent decrease masks a more significant cut to the current program of nearly 40 percent, offset by new and transferred funds for carbon sequestration as part of the Administration's Climate Change Technology Initiative. Renewable Energy: The geothermal research program within the Solar and Renewable Technologies account funds earth-science research into the location and confirmation of geothermal reservoirs. The President has requested funding of $29.5 million for this program, a 3 percent increase over FY 1999 appropriations. This increase is small relative to the overall increase of 18.7 percent in the Solar and Renewable Technologies account. New initiatives would seek to enhance the productivity of geothermal reservoirs through rock fracturing and stimulation and to reduce the cost for drilling in deep, hard-rock environments. Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: Earth-science studies remain an important component of site characterization activities at the proposed high-level nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Following DOE's viability assessment on the site's probable behavior as a repository, activities are now being directed at resolving the site's ability to comply with regulatory limits for radiation release in preparation for a presidential decision in 2001 on whether to begin construction. DOE's FY 2000 request for the project is $331.7 million, up 17.5 percent from FY 1999. Within that request is a major shift in the amount of funding derived from the Nuclear Waste Disposal Fund ($258 million compared to $165 million in FY 1999). U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY (USGS) USGS has been the lone science agency within the Department of the Interior since the abolition four years ago of the U.S. Bureau of Mines and the National Biological Service, which is now the USGS Biological Resources Division (see next chapter). A key function of the Survey is to serve the scientific needs of Interior's land-management bureaus. The Survey's overarching mission is to collect data and conduct research to better understand the nation's environment; water, energy and mineral resources; and natural hazards. Small amounts of applied earth-science R&D also take place within several other Interior agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Minerals Management Service, the National Park Service, and the Office of Surface Mining. The FY 2000 request for USGS features a major budget restructuring that expands bureau-wide functions for facilities and science support activities. Traditionally, such support costs have been included in the budgets of the individual divisions. The budget also would create a new Integrated Science account to encourage multi-disciplinary projects, primarily integrated ecosystem studies and projects that meet the needs of land management agencies. As a result of the transfers to bureau-wide accounts, the divisions all appear to have substantially less money than in FY 1999, as shown in Table 1. If one removes the effects of the transfers, however, the Geologic Division is down $0.3 million, the Water Resources Division is up $4.3 million, and the National Mapping Division is up $16.6 million. Even these figures are low because researchers in each of these three divisions would likely split about half of the $17.4 million in new money requested for the Integrated Science account, with the rest going to researchers in the Biological Resources Division. The R&D request for the Geologic Division includes increases of $1.6 million for pilot real-time seismic warning systems and $1.5 million for development of the National Geologic Map Database and digital geologic maps. Decreases totaling $3.5 million would scale back a variety of coastal and marine programs. The request would save $6 million by terminating mineral resource and environmental impact assessments and coal availability and recoverability studies. Proposed R&D-related changes in the National Mapping Division include an increase of $8 million for development of a disaster information network and a $2 million reduction for the Ohio View high-performance computing consortium, a congressional add-on in FY 1999. The Water Resources Division would receive increases of $3 million to upgrade streamgage stations to create a real-time flood warning system, $1 million for amphibian research, and $0.4 million for hypoxia studies in the Gulf of Mexico. Decreases totaling $5.8 million are requested for the federal-state cooperative program, cost-shifting to customers and partners, and reductions in watershed monitoring and endocrine disruption research. NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA) NASA's Earth Science Enterprise funds significant amounts of earth-science research, primarily related to remote-sensing data interpretation in global change and hazards studies. The program's 3.2 percent increase to $1.5 billion bucks the overall downward trend of NASA's budget. The bulk of the money in the program would go for satellite missions and information systems. Key components with respect to the earth sciences are the Earth Observing Systemsatellites designed to measure key parameters to understand climate changeand the Earth Probes Program, which addresses specific, highly focused earth-science questions. In addition, the research portion of the Earth Science Enterprise currently funds over 1,700 earth-science activities. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (NSF) This agency remains the principal source of federal support for university-based research in earth-science disciplines such as geology, geophysics, geochemistry, and hydrology. In addition to the small increases in the request for the Geosciences Directorate and its Earth Sciences Division, earth-science researchers may also benefit from two major NSF-wide initiatives: Biocomplexity in the Environment ($670 million) and Information Technology for the 21st Century (IT2; $146 million). These programs would provide a separate pot of money available by competition to researchers in all disciplines. Biocomplexity in the Environment (BE) grew out of the agency's Life in Earth's Environment program. According to NSF, it is focused on studying the interdependencies among living organisms and their environment. The direction for this initiative may become more clear over the next year as the National Science Board (NSB) establishes a Task Force on the Environment to help NSF define the scope of its role with respect to environmental research, education, and assessment. The IT2 initiative is described in greater detail in Chapters 8 and 23. Earth science research is also supported by the U.S. Polar Research Programs, which would receive a 3 percent increase to $188 million. The increase is provided for interdisciplinary studies of the Arctic. The Major Research Equipment Account has additional funding to continue the modernization of the South Pole Station, which houses most of this research. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
