I think it's a swell idea," says Amold Levine, an author of the OTA report. "But will the money go to [science and technology) efforts and not just used for routine development work? That 2 percent figure doesn't mean a thing until you know where it's going."

Laberge says anything above 2 percent would be unrealistic. He and others my the idea needs advocates outside the Systems Command.

"Support for the 2 percent really needs to come from the people who make decisions-the three and four-star generals that

December 21, 1989-January 10, 1980/Page 15

By Douglas labell STAFF WRITER

Over the 110 years that the U.S. Geological Survey has performed "Earth Science in the Public Service," the nation has grown from a largely agrarian culture with unmapped wilderness areas into a technological society capable of examining Earth's problems from space.

More than 10,000 people now work for USGS, spread across field offices in all 50 states. About 2,200 of these employees are based at the survey's scenic headquar ters in Reston, Va., constructed in 1972 to draw together various USGS researchers scattered about the Washington region.

The survey, which has a fiscal 1990 budget of $490 million, is organized into four scientific branches that focus on

mapping, water resources, information systems, and geology, energy and related hazards" such as earthquakes and volca noes for the Department of the Interior

But USGS Director Dallas Peck, who also serves as chairman of the Earth sciences committee of the White House's Federal Coordinating Council on Science, Engineering and Technology, has placed increasing emphasis on melding USGS historical records and current division research to produce comprehensive pic tares of the causes and effects of global climate change.

"We must remind ourselves that the forces and processes at work on Earth are not mindful of calendars and new fiscal years, nor do they fit nicely within political boundaries," Peck has written. "We must be scientists who view the Earth as whole... able to study regions and smaller areas in great detail, then extrapolate that knowledge to a much broader, sometimes global perspective."

As a result of efforts by Peck and others, such as former White House science adviser William Graham, the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program is slated to receive $191.5 million in fiscal 1990, of which about $13 million will go to the USGS.

Combined with the March 1983 Rea gan administration proclamation that all of the ocean resources surrounding U.S. territories out to 200 nautical miles would become the nation's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the USGS now has unprece

dented scientific responsibilities.

"We consider ourselves providers of factual, non-partisan information," says Peter Bermel, USGS assistant director for programs and a 42-year veteran of the organization. "We are not generally under political pressures, and we don't ride the (annual) budget roller coaster," Bermel explains. "What we do is generally 'good science-we have a fairly broad act, and that's been to our advantage. Some people have spent their entire aduk lives with the survey."

Advanced technology such as Geographic Information Systems, which use personal computers to combine and anelyze map data with other information such as population profiles or roadways, has further broken down the natural barriers

between the survey's divisions. Dave Nys trom, chief of the USGS office of geographic and cartographic research, says this new technology is "bringing all the areas of the survey together in ways we never did before."

High-Tech Mapping

Early in its history, USGS concentrated on mapping the nation's vast uncharted geologic and topographic domain. The survey continues to expand on this legacy by continuously updating these maps while researching how to combine them with modern digital and spatial informa tion such as multispectral infrared satellite images.

"Right now, everything is done with serial photography," Nystrom says. But for the past five years, the survey has worked in cooperation with the Defense Mapping Agency on a broad mapping modernization program intended "to look at satellite technology to drive the revision of all our maps by the mid-1990s," he explains.

USGS has a separate, active map pro duction arm that sells and distributes more than eight million maps per year, through the mail, commercial outlets and via the telephone at 1-800-USA-MAPS. And outside commercial satellite data vendors such as SPOT Image Corp., Reston, Va., now specialize in "geocoding" standard USGS 1:24,000 scale maps and merging them with high-resolution satellite images.

At the USGS's Second National Symposium on Water Quality in November, 99 of 136 international water quality special ists agreed that water-quality problems would be the the major environmental issue of the next decade, driven primarily by concerns over industrial waste and agricultural chemicals.

Water quality studies receive the largest total percentage of USGS's combined direct and federal reimbursable funding, led by a pilot project begun in fiscal 1986 called the National WaterQuality Assessment (NAWQA) program NAWQA goals include developing geographic distributions of surface- and ground-water contaminants and quantify ing the effects of geology on water quality.

Intended to test and refine approaches for a fully implemented future effort, NAWQA will expand over the next two years to cover almost 90 percent of the nation's drainage channels, according to USGS chemist Herman Feltz, former chief of the survey's Water Resource Laboratories.

The USGS water labs test water sam ples submitted from across the country, operate national water data computer net works and perform numerous cooperative projects with universities and state and local governments, one of the survey's primary methods of technology transfer For example, Fairfax County used USGS data to develop regulations on allowable sediment run-off from construction sites, according to Feltz.

While retaining senior scientists to conduct the water tests has not been a major problem, Feltz says "we often find ourselves $10,000 short on salary offers to promising doctoral student graduates.

Precise Geology

One way the USGS attacks this problem is an active student intern program.

"Instead of making an initial commitment (to hiring someone), we make sure there's a definite mesh with the needs of the survey," says Tony Dorrzapf, assistant branch chief of the Reston geologic division's geochemistry laboratories and a USGS employee since 1966.

The geochemistry branch supports USGS field geologists in work such as searches for concealed deposits of "strategic and critical" minerals such as platinum, which historically has been imported from South Africa due to scarcity in this country.

Increasingly automated lab equipment and broader expertise among individual researchers are other solutions to the staff shortage, Dorrzapf says, "but we do a lot less developmental work than we used to. We have to pick and choose the best equipment is going to Denver now because they have a much larger staff ... [and] a lot of people here are doing research on their own time."

Other USGS geologic research contributes to thorny social issues such as where to store high-level radioactive waste. In December 1987, Congress selected Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the primary deposit site to study because of its arid location far above the local water table. But Nevada state officials recently announced they would not allow the waste to be stored there.

"There is no perfect solution," says USGS geochemist Isaac Winograd, who also specializes in studies of ancient climate change. "But we've found nothing to disqualify the site after eight years of study."

Future Promise and Concern

Although private industry can provide money to USGS to perform research. Bermel explains that "the information must (then) be available to the general public... [and] most private outfits prefer to keep the data themselves," so the bulk of USGS's work ends up being used by other federal agencies such as regulatory bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency.

There's certain stability (working for] the government," Dorrzapf says. "It's more of an academic, protected environment. But we do lose people."

"We're in more demand now than ever," says Winograd, who has worked for USGS for 34 years. "But we're trying to do more with the same people-we're strapped."

Page 28 WASHINGTON TECHNOLOGY

By Douglas labell STAFF WRITER

A

original 57 experiments. But since it has orbited so long, LDEF is an invaluable source of information on the long-term effects of the space environment and space debris, so the shuttle Columbia will attempt to rescue it in mid-December before LDEF's orbit degrades further and it burns in the upper atmosphere.

In many ways, Langley can be called the "mother of NASA says Dr. Joseph Heyman, a member of the center since 1963 and director of its non-destructive measurement science branch. "I think Langley is a special place," says Heyman, a

leader in his field who has rejected outside job offers of four times his salary. "It maintains an excitement of innovation, with a certain freedom to explore.

"But it's a very fragile place too," he adds, in the context of tightening federal research budgets and attractive private employment benefits. To maintain its historical excellence, top Langley scientists say the lab must continue to fill technolo gy roles that industry cannot do itself.

For example, Heyman and his new non-destructive evaluation (NDE) lab are developing advanced techniques to peer inside materials without damaging them to quantitatively measure their quality in three-dimensions, using samples donated by private companies.

"We're doing things in NDE that people never dreamed of," Heyman says. "In a sense, industry is supplying us with raw material- it's an ideal opportunity to do what I think the federal labs can do."

Pushing the Limits of Flight