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Remarks Prepared for Delivery by
The Honorable Gale Norton
Secretary of the Interior
March 3, 2004
USGS Celebrates 125 Years

I'm here to congratulate you as you celebrate a milestone-the beginning of your 125th year of existence. In human and government terms, 125 years is a very long time. But let's put it into perspective. I don't have to tell you geologists and other scientists that in earth terms you are not even a speck on the age chart of this 4.5 billion-year-old planet.

We can mark the passage of time…the Jurassic Period… the Pleistocene Epoch to the Groat era-but who is counting?

What is remarkable about the U.S. Geological Survey, is not its advanced age but its advancements and accomplishments during that 125 years.

Most of the Federal government deals with urgent issues-those items whose short-term impact commands headlines. USGS addresses the truly important long-term issues. Most deal with California's budget shortfalls and gubernatorial politics. You consider whether the San Andrteas fault will cause California to disintegrate.

You have surveyed the red earth of the West and mapped the red planet of Mars.

The astronauts who landed on the moon in 1969 were trained to pick up moon rocks by your geologists.

In your 125 years, you have gone from the traditional chain, compass, and transit land surveying tools to an orbiting satellite capable of high-resolution measurements of the entire globe.

When your mission called for it, you changed and adapted. Yet in your traditional roles, you continued to refine and define your art and science.

Back in 1879 you were charged with "classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources and products of the national domain."

That year the Federal Government still held title to more than 1.2 billion acres of land, nearly all of it west of the Mississippi River. Only 200 million acres had been surveyed, the population was less than one person per square mile and the region's most precious resource was-water.

John Wesley Powell studied and worried about the arid lands of this country even before the Geological Survey came into being. The United States Reclamation Service was created as part of the Survey in 1902 in order to provide the water and energy needed for development in the West. Five years later, it was separated from USGS and became the Bureau of Reclamation.

Chronic water supply problems are still one of the greatest challenges facing the West in the coming years.

You continue to play a critical role in assessing groundwater availability, monitoring surface-water levels in streams, and developing tools and techniques to protect biological resources while meeting water supply needs.

The work of the Survey has always made an impact on the nation-from the challenge of producing more energy products after World War II, to assignments involving the reaches of space and the depths of the ocean floor.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, coastal storms, erosion and flooding pose serious threats to lives and property and undermine local and national economic health.

The Geological Survey has made tremendous strides in enhancing the quality and timeliness of information provided to communities so they can improve their warning systems, planning processes, response efforts, community education and building modifications.

The California fires had barely stopped smoking last year when you began warning of mud slides that would result when the rains came.
You have produced new maps of the damaged areas that evaluate the probability for debris-flow activity and you have given them to state and federal emergency service providers.

The maps provide additional tools to help identify risk potential and develop mitigation strategies. They can also be a part of planning escape routes.

When I was in California for the Rose Bowl Parade, we announced that volunteers through the Take Pride in America program had agreed to donate 400,000 hours of their time to help after the fires. Many of these volunteers are replanting hillsides and staking the ground to help prevent erosion and slides-based on your maps.

This is just one example that the work you perform is critical to the well-being of the nation.

USGS also provides some of the most exciting "gee-whiz" experiences in the nation. I was awed by the ability of the ice core laboratory to look back at weather patterns of the ice age-charting how a sudden warming allowed agriculture and culture to flourish.

I watched a computer re-creation of earthquake monitoring-watching tremors' effects spread around the globe.

As Interior's science bureau, the US Geological Survey provides the information and technologies that are critical to our mission. You make sure that our increasingly complex resource management decisions are informed by credible and exacting science.

Your work has provided vital information to help shape our national energy policy. The Survey's national and global energy resource assessments of oil, natural gas, coalbed methane, gas hydrates and coal resources are important. You help evaluate the risks associated with the production and use of these energy resources.

The health of our environment has its roots in the science the Survey provides and the work accomplished on the ground. A solid understanding of the complex interactions of water, soil and living things is essential to restoring and preserving diverse ecosystems across the nation. You now deal with invasive species and climate change.

Divers seek the depths of the Great Blue Hole of Belize to bring forth sediment cores that have preserved thousands of years of earth's history. From the air the Great Blue Hole appears as a nearly perfect dark blue circle, fringed by a reef in a turquoise sea. The sediment cores are studied to learn about the frequency and intensity of Caribbean storms and to learn more about African dust that blankets the region.

USGS Researchers examine the bulge in the Yellowstone area and assure us that large explosions have not occurred within the last several thousand years-and we continue trying to learn what the next 1000 years has in store.

The fields of study that consume you are as old as this earth and as young as today's weather forecast. You cooperate with an impressive number of other Federal agencies, other governments and other nations.

Right now the USGS Astrogeology team is at the National Aeronautical and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

But in their minds they are nestled in a small crater on Mars-living, breathing, and sleeping vicariously with the Mars' rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. The first five months of this year the rovers are exploring the climate history and searching for evidence of ancient, water-rich environments that could have supported Martian life.

Yesterday the rocks they have been examining yielded evidence that areas of the planet were once covered in water.

What an exciting moment for those geologists!

We study the past both on earth and on Mars to help understand the present and look to the future. I doubt that John Wesley Powell ever conceived of a robot on Mars with a pick.

Nor do we know what the future holds.

We do know that as scientists you are dedicated to the accurate, relevant and impartial study of the landscape, our natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten us today and in the future.

I'm here on this auspicious date to thank you for your work and to say: "carry on." The next 125 years awaits you.


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