Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998

8Brendan Horton

Billed as “The future of Earth sciences: thechallenges and opportunities of multipledisciplines and diversity”, the recent fiftiethanniversary of the American GeologicalInstitute (AGI) in Washington, DC, was notonly a birthday party, it was a chance to assessfuture needs and strategies. The need tomake society aware of the importance ofEarth science issues, and to pursue researchthat is relevant to society, were major themesof this one-day symposium. Other themesincluded multidisciplinary research, lateralthinking, and education and outreach.

Proponents of the multidisciplinaryapproach look set to get their opportunity toprove its value. Rita Colwell, director of theUS National Science Foundation (NSF),recently called interdisciplinary research“nothing short of vital” and said she regard-ed this approach to science as “one of themajor challenges for NSF in the comingyears” (see Nature 396, 202; 1998).

For Mary Lou Zoback of the US Geologi-cal Survey, the grand challenge for the Earthsciences is to focus on themes rather thandisciplines. She suggested several themes,including the need to recognize the signal ofnatural variability, to quantify the anthro-pogenic effect on climate and to look at thefeedback loop between natural and per-turbed systems. Zoback said a problem-based structure was needed at NSF ratherthan one based on traditional disciplines.Colwell seems to agree, having described“departmental structure as a block” to multi-discipinary research. Zoback hopes that atheme-orientated structure will focus moreon the Earth’s surface, integrating the studyof the bio-, litho-, atmo- and hydrospheres

to tackle today’s most pressing problems. Jonathan Price, state geologist for Neva-

da, says multidisciplinary work has beengoing on for some time in the applied geo-sciences, and this does not mean simplybringing together people who study reflec-tion seismology, stratigraphy and plate tec-tonics. Several years ago, the Nevada Bureauof Mines and Geology put together an earth-quake emergency scenario. It included a lotof geology and seismology, said Price, butalso had input from people with expertise inengineering geology, civil and structuralengineering, emergency management, med-icine, building inspection, law enforcement,and disaster relief, as well as businesspeopleand government officials. Price emphasizedthat the skills of traditional Earth scientistswill continue to be important and stated that“realizing what one’s limitations are willbecome increasingly important as the fieldbecomes more multidisciplinary”.

It is not always true that multidisciplinarystudy means a group activity, according toStephen Stanley, a professor of Earth and

planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins Univer-sity in Baltimore. His studies have taken himfar afield into climatology, oceanography,physical anthropology, palaeontology, andother areas. He said: “I’m not an expert in allthese fields, but I consult people who are —and I know how to read. Exciting cross-disci-plinary ideas entail connections, and a groupof individuals lacks the neuronal connec-tions of a single brain. There is often much tobe gained, not by collaborating with others,but by collaborating with yourself.”

Lateral thinking may mean differentthings in different sectors. To Donald Paul,vice-president of technical and environmen-tal affairs at Chevron, it might mean apply-ing geoscience to being a consulting special-ist, a product developer, a systems integratoror a marketing manager. According toThomas Hamilton, chairman, president andchief executive of EEX Corporation, theseconcepts mean being comfortable with sev-eral disciplines and learning the language ofintegrated solutions. In today’s global vil-lage, understanding political science, diplo-macy and culture can be more important to aproject than a specific technology.

Problem solving forthe whole EarthPotter Wickware

New tools and specialisms in the Earth sci-ences have emerged to help manage humani-ty’s predicament with the environment andits resources. Global positioning satellitesand satellite altimetry open up new ranges ofobservation of the Earth in space and time.

Geoscientists are not just rock starsThe geosciences are opening up to approaches that embrace multidisciplinary solutions to emerging and age-oldproblems. This should result in much interesting research, and challenges for scientists and funding agencies.

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The AGI anniversary was anoccasion to encourage itsmembers to get involved ineducation and outreach (E&O), anarea in need of attention in thegeosciences. Wider exposure toEarth sciences should result fromnew US National ScienceEducation Standards, which placeEarth sciences on a par withbiology, chemistry and physics inkindergarten through to twelfth-grade education.

The importance of E&O is notlost on Michelle Hall-Wallace of the

University of Arizona and KatherineJohnson, director of E&O at theIncorporated Research Institutionsfor Seismology (IRIS) inWashington, DC, both of whom arebuilding programmes for educatingnon-specialists of all levels, withinformation and data available tothe public (see Internet addresses).

Gregory van der Vink, directorof planning at IRIS, has shownwhat can be done using publicdata in an educational setting. Heand 12 students, from a class heteaches each fall at Princeton

University’s Science andTechnology Council andDepartment of Geoscience,published a paper on theincreasing economic vulnerabilityto natural disasters in the UnitedStates (Eos 7799,, 534–537; 1998). Thepaper was presented inWashington, DC, after which acongressman immediately offeredany of the 12 students acongressional staff position,according to van der Vink. Thecourse was developed not forproducers of scientific information

but for future consumers of thatinformation in government orbusiness.

AGI’s Earth Weekhttp://www.earthsciweek.org/Michelle Hall-Wallace pagehttp://geo.arizona.edu/K-12/michellehall.htmlIncorporated Research Institutionsfor Seismology (IRIS)http://www.iris.washington.edu/Princeton Earth Physics Projecthttp://lasker.princeton.edu/pepp.shtml

Encouraging education and outreach initiatives

Shake, rattle and roll: IRIS’s seismic monitor willbe used in educational work (www.iris.edu).

Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998

8

Powerful modes of computer modellingallow experimental strategies involving largedata sets to be devised and quickly refined.The Internet puts communities of scientistsin instant communication with one another.Synchrotron radiation sources with powersmany orders of magnitude greater thanwhen X-rays were discovered allow views ofunprecedented precision into materials.

Nevertheless, the problems of climatechange, flooding, pollution and energyshortage are all too familiar in many parts ofthe world, while strategies for dealing withthem often remain obscure. Research chal-lenges at the most fundamental level awaitthe efforts of geoscientists. For example,Miriam Kastner of the Scripps Institution ofOceanography in La Jolla, California, pointsout that we did not know of the existence ofsubsea vents until 1980. Since then we havediscovered that the entire volume of theoceans cycles through them once every 5 mil-lion years, and through the subduction zonesonce every 200 million years.

“As we learn more about the interactionof the solid Earth and the hydrologic cyclewe’ll understand more about earthquakes,and possibly will be able to predict fine grainchanges over time such as the Little Ice Age,”she says. She adds that already we have foundthat some classic models of climate and geo-chemistry are wrong and must be revised.But this can only be done if scientists fromdisparate disciplines cooperate.

Geoscientists also have a vital contribu-tion to make to human health in the area ofenvironmental toxins and pollutants. Thereis an urgent need for more knowledge of dustparticle size and chemistry, aerosol types,and the bioavailability of heavy metals, phos-phate, arsenic and other substances. Hereagain, scientists must communicate not justacross specialisms but across jurisdictions,because atmospheric pollutants are a globalphenomenon. That the geoscience and med-ical communities have historically been dis-connected from one another shows how“research is Balkanized,” says GordonBrown, of Stanford University’s SynchrotronRadiation Laboratory. He suggests that per-haps the toxicologist is the logical interfacethrough which this interaction will occur.

Charlie Alpers of the US Geological Sur-vey in Sacramento, California, says that clearcommunication to outsiders about researchproblems and findings is also crucial. “Weneed to communicate clearly with the public,and persuade them and their representativesthat what we are doing is worthwhile. Ulti-mately, public agencies and individual liveli-hoods depend on it.” He says he will empha-size the human welfare aspect of what hedoes in a forthcoming short course in sul-phate mineralogy, just as his agency accom-panies many of the reports it publishes withclear fact sheets to make the work compre-hensible to non-specialists, such as students.

Brown seconds this idea, saying that sci-entists ought to be able to make society careabout their work. “Who cares about the dis-tance between atoms?” he was recently askedby a political candidate in California. He gavean example of how the 0.4 Å differencebetween the radii of Cr6& and Cr3& quite pos-sibly allows the latter to mimic phosphate inlife systems, with potentially lethal results.He added that it is important from a publichealth perspective to accurately characterizethe bioavailability of different metals.

Although the interdisciplinary approachis mandatory for effective science and policy,it can take getting used to, admits Joe Smith,of the Department of Geophysical Sciencesat the University of Chicago. Fifteen yearsago the American Geophysical Union’s pub-lic affairs committee asked him to organize ascientific session on the ‘nuclear winter’issue. Once involved, he was appalled tolearn of the magnitude of the problem thatscience had helped to create, and it was at thistime that he began to alter his view of scienceand the responsibilities of the scientist.

Especially now, when the Earth sciencesare expanding so greatly in concepts andinformation density, he believes it is impor-tant for the Earth scientist to “think out theinterconnections between what he or shedoes and the various pieces of the tapestry ofhuman life”. Even though it may be easier towork on idealized problems, he has come torealize that members of the US NationalAcademy of Sciences like himself have a dutyto use their expertise for human welfare.

The cost of future research may be con-siderable by the historical standards of geo-science. For example, the current third gen-eration of synchrotron radiation sourcescosts about $15 million per cluster of experi-mental workstations, each of which shouldbe manned by two dozen scientists and engi-neers, says Smith. Available funds are too

scanty to serve the growing number of envi-ronmental geoscientists who require datafrom these instruments.

As relative latecomers to the sciencefunding competition, Earth scientists face astruggle to win adequate support. Smith ispreparing a presentation to the NationalAcademy of Sciences to raise $100 millionover five years to support staff at synchrotronradiation centres, with matching amounts tosupport research, teaching and public out-reach at universities and experimental sta-tions. He says this sum is a tiny fraction of themoney spent on nuclear weapons manage-ment, and is in the range of the cheapestrocket mission to an asteroid.Potter Wickware is a science writer in Oakland,California, USA.e-mail: wickware@worldnet.att.net

A risk propositionBrendan Horton

A geoscientist’s career can veer off academicand government tracks into involvement inindustry and even insurance. According toJohn Mutter, deputy director of ColumbiaUniversity’s Lamont–Doherty Earth Obser-vatory, there are concerns to be aware ofwhen too much of your funding comes froman industry–academic collaboration, espe-cially for researchers intent on landing a rareacademic post. But many scientists arediversifying their CVs to leave open employ-ment options outside the academic world.

“More and more people are building infunding from the private sector,” says Mut-ter, not only because it diversifies one’sfinancial support, but also because peoplesee the potential for a career in the privatesector. While Lamont’s partnerships havetraditionally been dominated by the oilindustry, “if we spoke two or three yearsfrom now, I’d [probably] be telling youabout valuing climate information”, saysMutter. With few exceptions, the industriesmost affected by climate have no researchculture to enable them to understand it.

The winds of change that blew aroundChris Barton, a research geologist with theUS Geological Survey since 1985, may nothave been hurricane force, but they werestrong enough to make him a G. K. GilbertFellow at IBM with Benoit Mandelbrot, the‘father of fractals’. He followed this up withanother fellowship at Lamont. These fel-lowships helped Barton’s research to evolvefrom studying the physical phenomena ofclimate catastrophes to studying the magni-tude of financial losses from these events,which in turn has affected the way reinsur-ance companies and the Federal EmergencyManagement Association evaluate risk.(Reinsurers insure major corporations andprimary insurance providers.)

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Further information on geoscience careers

GeoWeb Interactive: Jobs forGeoScience/Engineeringhttp://www.ggrweb.com/job.html

Earthworks http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/eworks/

USGS Main homepage http://www.usgs.gov/

USGS Mineral Resourceshttp://minerals.er.usgs.gov/

NAS Geoscienceshttp://www.nsf.gov/home/geo/start.htm

AGI Careers in Geoscienceshttp://www.agiweb.org/career/carehome.html

Graduate School and the Job Marketof the 1990shttp://www.agu.org/eos_elec/97117e.html

The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatoryhttp://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/

The Columbia Earth Institutehttp://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/

Alternative Careers in Science, edited byCynthia Robbins-Roth http://www.amazon.com