Geological survey Links for USA, UK, Canada and other nations

Geological surveys

US Geological survey ( USA ) Canadian Geological Survey UK Geological Survey Links

US Geological survery

The USGS serves the USA, and other nations by providing reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters; manage water, biological, energy, and mineral resources; and enhance and protect the USA's quality of life. It provides information on volcanoes and earthquakes. The USGS has become a world leader in the natural sciences thanks to our scientific excellence and responsiveness to society's needs. Every day the 10,000 scientists, technicians, and support staff of the USGS are working for you in more than 400 locations throughout the United States.

As the Nation's largest water, earth, and biological science and civilian mapping agency, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collects, monitors, analyzes, and provides scientific understanding about natural resource conditions, issues, and problems. The diversity of our scientific expertise enables us to carry out large-scale, multi-disciplinary investigations and provide impartial scientific information to resource managers, planners, and other customers.

The USGS is organized with a HQ and Eastern Region facility in Reston, Virginia. Central Region and Western Region offices are located in Denver, Colorado, and Menlo Park, California, respectively. Thousands of other USGS employees are working in every USA State.

The USGS works with many Federal agencies and private sector to accomplish its science mission through formal memorandums of understanding and memorandums of agreement.

The USGS carries out international activities as a complement to its domestic programs.

The United States Geological Survey was established on March 3, 1879, just a few hours before the mandatory close of the final session of the 45th Congress, when President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the bill appropriating money for sundry civil expenses of the Federal Government for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1879.

Links

http://www.usgs.gov/ Home page

http://www.doi.gov/ The department of the interior

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ Volcano section of US geological survey

http://water.usgs.gov/ Water resources in the United states of America

http://library.usgs.gov/index.html Index of Library for US geological survey

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/ Info on flow of resources important for US ecnomoy

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ Earthquake Section of US Geological survey Prvides information on latest earthquakes. Shows visual map of latest quakes.

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/

The Brittish Geological survey History

In 1832, Henry Thomas De la Beche, Vice President of the Geological Society, was employed at recommendation of Colby to carry out a geological survey of Devon. De la Beche took the initiative in offering to undertake this survey. The success of the work led to the formal setting up of the Geological Ordnance Survey in 1835 under the Board of Ordnance. De la Beche became effectively its first Director. Charles Lyell, with several other prominent members of the Geological Society supported the establishment of the survey.

In 1839 the Survey was given responsibility for a new Mining Record Office whose principal purpose was initially to collect and preserve plans of abandoned mines. The creation of this office was in response to a mining disaster three years earlier in which many miners lost their lives when old flooded workings in County Durham were unexpectedly broken into. But for Scotland the plans other than for coal and oil shale are now once again in the care of the Survey.

The publication of the Geological Survey Act on 31 July 1845 provided the Survey with a legal framework designed 'to facilitate the Completion of a Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland.'

On 1 April 1905, The Geological Survey of Ireland was switched to the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland.

On 1 November 1919 the Geological Survey and Museum was switched to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which was been created earlier.

In 1965, the Science and Technology Act contained 'further provision with respect to the responsibility and powers in relation to scientific research and related matters.' This act brought into being our present parent body, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), which was confirmed by Royal Charter on 1 June 1965. Under the act the Geological Survey and Museum was combined with the Overseas Geological Surveys (OGS) in the following year and renamed the Institute of Geological Sciences.

A number of changes took place with relocation, between 1976 and about 1985, from London to Keyworth, near Nottingham. On 1 January 1984 the organisation took the rname the British Geological Survey.

http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca

Canadian Geological survey

A comprehensive knowledge of t geoscience of the Canadian landmass and offshore is essential to economic development, public safety, environmental protection and national sovereignty.

"To acquire, interpret and make available that information to all Canadians is the mission of the Geological Survey of Canada "

The Survey celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1992.

In September 1841, the Legislature of the Province of Canada passed a resolution "that a sum not exceeding 1,500 sterling be granted to Her Majesty to defray the probable expense in causing a Geological Survey of the Province to be made." This simple resolution gave birth the following year to the Geological Survey of Canada, Canada's first scientific agency and one of its oldest government organizations.

The decision to undertake a geological survey of the fledgling nation was based on the realization that the development of an industrial economy in Canada an economy able to compete with those in Europe and the United States.

At the time, many viewed the proposed survey as a short-term way to stimulate the mining industry, thereby enriching the provincial coffers.

News that the Province of Canada planned a geological survey reached William Edmond Logan as he visited Montreal in 1841, and quickly let his interest in the job be known. Born in Montreal and educated in Scotland, Logan's career began at his uncle's counting house in London. In 1831, his uncle had sent him to Wales to manage a copper smelting company. Here Logan's interest in geology was triggered. He learned the business of processing ores and mining coal.

He was appointed as the Survey's first director on April 14, 1842. Four months later, Logan arrived in Kingston, then the seat of the Provincial Legislature. There, he laid the groundwork for the Survey by compiling what knowledge already existed on the geology of Canada.

The following spring he established the Survey's headquarters in a "small and dark room" in Montreal. He was joined there by Alexander Murray, a former naval officer appointed as his assistant.

The rapid industrialization of Britain since the late 18th Century showed how essential coal was to economic expansion. With the accepted belief that North America's destiny lay in applying industrial technology to rich natural resources, the search for coal became the Survey's first priority.

By the time of Confederation in 1867 the Geological Survey was widely recognized as the main contributor to the establishment of a viable mining industry in Canada. Yet for nearly 30 years, the Survey had performed its job without any funding stability.

Nevertheless, by 1878 the government purchased a new home for the Survey in Ottawa a former hotel a few blocks east of the Parliament Buildings. By 1881, the move to this building had been completed, and it served as headquarters for the Survey until 1910.

Confederation in 1867 brought together the existing Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as the new Dominion of Canada, with Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island joining within the next decade, dramatically increased the Survey's realm of operations.

Entering the 20th century, the Survey's permanent staff numbered only 30 and funds available for field work seldom exceeded $60,000 a year. This naturally put constraints on the number of studies that the Survey could carry out.

As Canada entered the Great Depression, the need for mineral development work became even more pressing.

Faced with an election in 1935, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett decided to follow the example of President Roosevelt of the United States, who in 1933 had launched massive public works schemes to generate employment and stimulate the economy. The Survey was one of the beneficiaries of this approach. It received $1 million at the very last moment for the 1935 field season 10 times the amount that had originally been budgeted.

The 1950s were a time of scientific and technological growth unimagined only a few years earlier.

Unhindered by the economic restraint of earlier years, the Survey was now able to expand its research into fundamental geological problems, outfit its laboratories with the best new technology available thus increasing their analytical capability, and undertake ambitious field work. Bright new graduates were recruited, and the Survey's budget quadrupled from the tight wartime budgets.

George Hanson was instrumental in pulling together preliminary plans for a modern new home for the Survey, and Jim Harrison brought them to fruition. Specially designed to house a dynamic scientific agency, the new building, on Booth Street in Ottawa, was a great improvement over the overcrowded Victoria Memorial Museum Building, which had been constructed in 1910 to house a smaller Survey and its museum.

As a result of its new airborne capability, the Survey was able to mount numerous large-scale multidisciplinary reconnaissance operations during the 1950s and 1960s. The most ambitious was the 1955 "Operation Franklin" in the Arctic. Headed by Yves Fortier who was later to become Director of the Survey (1964 - 1973), the 28-person expedition, in single field season, studied strategic locations and mapped 260,000 square kilometres of the High Arctic.

Fundamental geoscientific theory underwent a revolution in the 1960s, one that has triggered controversy and debate even up to present time. The new concept of plate tectonics and continental drift sparked a significant advance in the Survey's work. It provided a broader context for understanding the geological forces at work in Canada and gave new insight into mineral exploration. J. Tuzo Wilson, the Canadian advocate of the plate tectonics theory, summarized its implications: "The replacement of ideas about a relatively stable earth with fixed continents by ideas about a highly mobile one with moving continents will profoundly affect many ideas about the origin, sources and distribution of ore-bodies and petroleum deposits.

Reorganization was again the order of the day in 1966, when Parliament gave a new focus on Canada's energy needs. As a result of this new focus on energy policy, the Survey became heavily involved in resource appraisal.

At the same time, the ground rules for government agencies were changing drastically. The days of virtually unlimited expansion ended as inflation began to cut deeper into budgets.

Starting in the 1970s, international debate centering on the ownership of the ocean resources required the Survey to provide geoscientific information necessary to support Canada's claims to offshore. New boundary areas came into dispute, for example, the Gulf of Maine, the Grand Banks off St-Pierre et Miquelon in the east and the Straits of Juan de Fuca off the West Coast. Canada's offshore boundaries eventually extended 200 miles (320 km) from the coast.

Streamlining of operations was another measure taken. In April 1986, the Earth Physics Branch of Energy, Mines and Resources was merged with the Geological Survey of Canada.

The "green" revolution of the 1980s gave new urgency to research with an environmental slant. Priority is now given to questions relating to global change and a new environmental geochemical program is looking at natural radioactivity, hydrogeology and baseline geochemical data.

Through a wide range of research looking at natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, "magnetic storms", volcanoes, tsunami, floods and ground instability, the Survey also contributes to a better understanding of how the environment affects us. The results are used to set building standards and for emergency planning.

The Survey was one of the originators of LITHOPROBE, the largest geoscientific research program ever undertaken in Canada. Established in 1984, this innovative program traces its beginnings back to deep earth studies, such as the Upper Mantle Project, of the 1960s. LITHOPROBE allows scientists to "see" into the earth, to incredible depths of up to 50 kms.

The Survey continues to be a very active partner in LITHOPROBE. The program now involves more than 300 scientists from universities, government and the petroleum and mining industries. It is widely regarded as one of the most successful scientific research projects in the country and, indeed, in the world.

Mapping has always been one of the Survey's core activities. By the early 1990s it became clear that the Survey's basic geological mapping programs had been seriously eroded over the past two decades in the face of other priorities. In response, the Survey took a lead role in developing a new National Geoscience Mapping Program (NATMAP).

The computerized Geological Survey of the 1990s is, of course, a very different organization from the one established by Sir William Logan 150 years ago. Nevertheless, similarities between the Survey of today and of yesteryear are obvious. The mining and petroleum industries continue to be major clients, and mapping the geology of Canada remains a primary concern.

http://www.gsi.gov.in/ Indian Geological survey Currently an organization under the control of the Union Ministry of Mines, Government of India, and the roots of the Geological Survey of India may be traced to 1836 when a Committee, named Coal Committee, followed by more such committees, was formed by the East India Company to study and explore availability of coals in the eastern parts of India. The phrase “Geological Survey of India” was first used in a report by one of such committees in a report in the year 1848-49. On 4th February 1848, Sir David Williams was appointed the Geological Surveyor of the Geological Survey of India. After his demise in 1848, McClelland took over as the “Officiating Surveyor” until his retirement on 5th March 1851.

Links

Chinese Geological Survey

www.cgs.gov.cn/Ev/English.htm

Moscow State University Geological Faculty

http://www.geol.msu.ru/

http://www.sgs.org.sa/ Saudi Geological survey

http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ Microsoft Terraserver

http://earth.google.com Google Earth

http://www.ga.gov.au/ Australian Geoscience

http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php National Geological surveyof Canada

Anagrams of Geologcial survey

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