Milling Receives Honorary AAPG Membership
| Your Window on AGI Perspectives and Activities | May/June 1998 |
The Earth Science Week web site recorded about 600 hits during April, and Julie Jackson, Earth Science Week coordinator, says she's received over 400 responses to her requests for volunteers. "Earth Science Week seems to be a rallying point," Jackson says. "Teachers, scout leaders, librarians, museum staffers, and naturalists are as eager to celebrate this event as geoscientists are to volunteer."
Earth Science Week flyers, posters, and bookmarks are lining the shelves and walls of university libraries, university geology departments, museums, and school classrooms. Both participants and their ideas are diverse:
Visit the Earth Science Week web site to find out how to celebrate the geosciences: http://www.earthsciweek.org.
AGI Welcomes 32nd Member Society
The North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature (NACSN) will become AGI's 32nd member society during the AGI Member Society Council Meeting on May 18, to be held in conjunction with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) annual meeting in Salt Lake City.
NACSN reviews and develops guidelines and procedures for establishing standards for stratigraphic nomenclature. It produced the North American Stratigraphic Code, published in 1983 in the AAPG Bulletin and adopted by North America's principal geological organizations. It has published three editions of the Code of Stratigraphic Nomenclature, which summarizes the fundamentals of stratigraphic procedure and guides the presentation of results in publications throughout North America.
"NASCN plays a critical and key role in establishing stratigraphic standards," says AGI Executive Director Marcus E. Milling. "We are pleased to have them join the AGI family." Alfred Lenz, chair of the commission, says that NACSN is an organization with a specific focus, but added that it also needs to remain aware of broader concerns in the earth-science community. "As a member of AGI," he says, "this will be much more readily and rapidly accomplished."
The commission, established in 1946, has approximately 30 member representatives from the Association of American State Geologists, AAPG, Geological Society of America, Geological Survey of Canada, U.S. Geological Survey, Geological Association of Canada, Asociación Mexicana de Geólogos Petroleros, Sociedad Geológica Mexicana, and Instituto de Geología de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico.
Perspective:
The future of the earth sciences — a job for the next USGS Director
One of the questions I am asked most these days is, "When is the USGS going to get a new director?" This is a question I cannot answer. However, I can offer some suggestions as to what the new director should try to accomplish during his or her tenure.
Let me begin by asserting that I envision the U.S. Geological Survey, through its anticipation of the earth and biological science needs of the nation and its research on fundamental earth and biological processes, as the nation's leader in the earth sciences. Because federal funds are widely distributed and the USGS is relatively small, leadership in the earth sciences must take several forms: USGS research, coordination with other agencies also engaged in earth-science research and in joint planning of research efforts, establishment of a consensus on the most pressing earth and biological science issues faced by the country and by the world, and comprehensive integration of earth-science data and information. None of these is a small task, but each should receive special attention at a national level from the USGS director.
Furthermore, the unification of the earth sciences is necessary if we are to develop coherent quantitative models for how the surface and near surface of Earth works. That development is, I believe, our primary objective in the coming decades. However, if we are to develop such models, the earth-science enterprise must undergo a transition from widely disseminated, internally competitive, somewhat disorganized cottage industries to a more unified effort that utilizes the expertise, research capabilities, and information infrastructure of those engaged in earth and biological science research across the spectrum of federal, state, private, and academic sectors.
The earth-science efforts of the country are the most diffuse and scattered of any scientific enterprise. Unlike physics and chemistry, which are funded mostly in a few well-defined areas of the federal budget, the earth and biological sciences are funded in bits and pieces in many parts of the budget. This difference is readily apparent if one considers only the major pieces of earth-science funding. Various aspects are funded within the departments of Defense, Energy, and the Interior, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Science Foundation. Depending on how you count the dollars, it is estimated that the country spends about $5 billion on earth-science research annually.
Several scientific fields have adopted what I call the "big science" mode of operation that I advocate as necessary in the earth and biological sciences. These include nuclear and particle physics, space and planetary sciences, and astronomy. They have adopted the "big science" approach because they faced (and still face) an enormity of scientific tasks and challenges along with a scarcity of resources — precisely the circumstances we face today in the earth and biological sciences. The transition from disorganized cottage industries to a more coherent "big science" effort will not be an easy one for either individual scientists or institutions, but it is a transition that we must make in utilizing, for example, such disparate assets as the computational power of the (DOE-funded) national labs, the remote-sensing capabilities of NASA, and the ground-based, process research of the USGS in order to develop comprehensive, quantitative models of Earth for use in forecasting and planning.
Given the problems humankind faces in the coming decades and the likely continued scarcity, or at least deficiency, of resources for research, the country — and the USGS — would be better off were there far greater coordination and integration of scattered research efforts in the earth and biological sciences. I would urge the director to take the reigns of national leadership and work with the leaders of other agencies and academia also engaged in the earth and biological sciences, along with leaders from the administration and Congress, to forge a consensus on the earth and biological science priorities for the country, to engage in high-level goal setting and science planning, and to promote the value of these integrated science activities. This is certainly an ambitious objective and not without some risk. Nevertheless, I believe it should be realized, and would perhaps be done best by the director of the USGS as the de facto leader of the country's earth-science community.
*Steven R. Bohlen is Acting Associate Chief Geologist for Science at the U.S. Geological Survey
NRC Releases Guide for Teaching Evolution
The National Research Council (NRC) in April released Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science, a guidebook designed to help middle- and high-school teachers incorporate the teaching of evolution into their science curricula. The guide was written by a panel of 13 researchers and educators that included Marilyn Suiter, director of education and human resources for AGI.
Earth-science teachers, Suiter says, can use the guide in teaching Earth's history — more specifically, in teaching geologic time, measurement and scale, and cycles. Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science uses several science disciplines, including the geosciences, to help teachers give students a better understanding of Earth, she says.
Based on the NRC's National Science Education Standards (1996), the guide "provides excellent support for those educators interested in helping their students to understand and appreciate the development of life on this planet and the diverse environments that support life," Suiter says. "Once acquired, this understanding can be applied to many other systems, thus providing our students with another tool of knowledge — another way of knowing their world."
To order the guide, call (800) 624-6242. Educators can read the guide on the Web at http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/evolution98.
GeoRef Wins NSF grant
The Arctic Bibliography, a comprehensive guide to literature about the Arctic region, is a major bibliographic resource for Arctic research. But, because it only exists in print and on microfilm in few libraries, it is hard to find and therefore rarely used.
AGI's GeoRef, which maintains a database containing more than 2 million geoscience references, has won a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs to convert the Arctic Bibliography into an electronic bibliographic database that can be distributed as a CD-ROM. The electronic format will make the bibliography more accessible and thus foster Arctic research worldwide, says former GeoRef Director John Mulvihill, who submitted the grant proposal to NSF in 1997.
The Arctic Institute of North America and the U.S. Department of Defense compiled the bibliography between 1953 and 1975 as an essential tool for productive research of the area. The bibliography contains a diverse collection of abstracts and references to historical exploration records, contemporary scientific investigations, and literature of the region.
The conversion project is nothing new for GeoRef, says current director Sharon Tahirkheli. Last year, GeoRef converted the 20,000-reference Abstracts of Chinese Geological Literature into an electronic database. The Arctic Bibliography contains 100,000 references. "It's another way to use the expertise that we have in our system," she says. Tahirkheli will run the project with Martha Andrews of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in Boulder, Colo.
Looking Ahead
See an extensive multiyear calendar in
Geotimes.
Milling Receives Honorary AAPG Membership
AGI Executive Director Marcus E. Milling is one of four leaders in the geoscience community who will receive an Honorary Membership Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) during its annual meeting May 17-20 in Salt Lake City. The award is one of AAPG's most distinguished and recognizes outstanding service and contributions to the profession of petroleum geology.
Dr. Milling has been executive director of the American Geological Institute since 1992, when it had 19 member societies. Under his leadership, the Institute's membership has increased to 32. "He applied effectively the basic skills and wide public and private contacts he had developed over a varied career to engineer a truly unprecedented turnaround in AGI," says William Fisher, professor of geosciences at the University of Texas- Austin.
A member of AAPG since 1966, Milling came to AGI after a 20-year career in the upstream oil and gas industry. Before joining AGI, he served as associate director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas-Austin for five years. From 1980 to 1987, he worked as general manager of the Geological Research Group for ARCO Oil and Gas Company. He joined ARCO after serving as a researcher and research supervisor with Exxon Production Research Company, his first position after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1968. He also worked with Exxon's exploration and production line-operation groups in Texas and New Orleans and played a significant role in important petroleum discoveries for both Exxon and ARCO.
In Brief
AGI Selects Summer Interns
Five geoscience undergraduate and graduate students will be working with AGI this summer as interns. Josh Chamot, a recent graduate of The College of William & Mary in Virginia, will work with the Geotimes staff and on the AGI web site. He plans to attend journalism school at the University of Tennessee this fall. The Government Affairs Program will get help from three interns through the AGI/American Institute of Professional Geologists Geoscience and Public Policy Summer Internships program. The students are Shannon Clark of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Margaret Baker of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and Joy Roth, a graduate student from Rice University in Texas. Also, rising sophomore Sarah Gollust of Wesleyan University in Connecticut will work with Julie Jackson to coordinate Earth Science Week.
AGI Attends NSTA Meeting
During the National Science Teachers Association annual meeting in Las Vegas, April 16–19, AGI spotlighted its education curriculum projects. Forty teachers attended an AGI workshop on EarthComm, AGI's high-school curriculum project; nearly 60 teachers attended a workshop on EarthWorks!, AGI's middle-school curriculum project. Michael Smith, AGI's director of curriculum development, presented AGI's education initiatives to a meeting of the Council of State Science Supervisors.
AGI at International Science Fair
The 49th annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, a science-project competition for students in the ninth through twelfth grades, will take place May 10–16 in Fort Worth, Texas. AGI is one of 70 organizations affiliated with the fair that will sponsor special awards. Among the panel of AGI Special Awards judges are David A. Stephenson, AGI president-elect; Don Byerly, a member of AGI's Education Advisory Committee; and Christopher C. Mathewson, a former AGI president representing the Association of Engineering Geologists. Students who enter the fair compete for over $2 million in scholarships, tuition grants, scientific equipment, and science trips. More information about the fair, sponsored by Science News publisher Science Service, is on the Web at http://www.sciserv.org/iisef.htm.
Second Edition of the Earth-Science Education Resource Directory Available
AGI has released the second edition of the Earth-Science Education Resource Directory, a clearinghouse of reference information on national and regional education organizations and programs in the earth sciences. The directory is a print version of the database maintained by AGI's National Clearinghouse for Earth Science Education. AGI is also working to make the directory available as an electronic database. For ordering information, contact the AGI Publications Center, P.O. Box 205, Annapolis, Md. Phone: (301) 953-1744. Fax: (301) 206-9789. E-mail: geopubs@agiweb.org.
Environmental Geosciences Web Site Growing
AGI's Environmental Geoscience Advisory Committee launched its web site earlier this year (http://www.agiweb.org/environment/index.html), providing on-line summaries of its projects, a calendar of environmental geoscience events, and summaries of legislative issues affecting the environmental geosciences. A recent addition to the site is the AGI Environmental Geoscience Bookstore, developed in cooperation with the on-line bookstore Amazon.com. The list is a focused selection of books that deal with environmental geoscience topics and includes books published by AGI and some of its member societies.
1998 AGI Executive Committee
| President | Susan M. Landon |
| President-Elect | David A. Stephenson |
| Secretary | M. Charles Gilbert |
| Treasurer | William A. Thomas |
| Member-at-Large | Suzanne B. O'Connell |
| Member-at-Large | Russell G. Slayback |
| Member-at-Large | Steven M. Stanley |
| Past President | Edward C. Roy Jr. |
| Chairman, Foundation Board of Trustees |
Thomas M. Hamilton |
| Executive Director | Marcus E. Milling |
Last updated May 6, 1998.