Initiatives in the Sedimentary Geology and Paleontology Community
A workshop on major initiatives in sedimentary geology and paleontology (SGP*) is scheduled for October 2011, at Marymount College, Washington, D.C. This workshop is a followup to a workshop that met during March 2011 to review decades-worth of academic and institutional white papers and reports on the current and future state of sedimentary geology and paleontology research. The conveners proposed that the initiatives outlined in the white papers and reports point to this common SGP community challenge: “Understanding the full range of Earth processes as recorded in deep time is vital for addressing urgent societal issues, and these Earth processes must be addressed in a systematic and interdisciplinary fashion”. The intent of these workshops is to develop and demonstrate unity of vision of the SGP community, its focus on critical research questions, and its strategy to garner funding to address this research. A few of the important themes under the unity-of-vision umbrella are paraphrased herein.
It is argued, and I agree, that we can best understand Anthropocene climate and ecosystems by first understanding how climate and paleobiological and geological processes functioned in different deep-time states. Deep-time records — those >2 million years before present — provide unique baseline data on pre-Anthropocene conditions that (1) contribute to true geologic models of Earth systems and (2) provide input to assessment of environmental perturbations and climate variation that are coincident with human land-use practices, energy and mineral resource extraction and consumption, marine harvesting, etc. Deep-time records also permit sampling over the lengths of time that allow consideration of multiple generations, even of long-lived species, throughout various kinds of climatic perturbation of decadal durations, e.g. multiple warming events and multiple anoxic events. The SGP’s overarching fundamental research focus i s the development and refinement of paleoenvironmental proxies toward development of paleoenvironmental models of modern-day utility.
The SGP workshop identified this opportunity: Although drilling lakes and oceans have proved important to understanding Earth systems, drilling and sampling of continental basins is now particularly crucial for the advancement of deep-time science. Continental drilling recovers core in which the effects of modern weathering are minimized, which is valuable for many baseline geochemical, biogeochemical, and geochronologic studies.
The SGP workshop identified this emerging strength: The combination of new sidereal, radioisotopic, and astrochronologic (<0.03% error) methods contribute to improved age models to calibrate Earth systems proxy records whether they are thousands of years or hundreds of millions years old. The power of new radiometric ages, incorporated with astrochronologic and biochronologic records, can produce continuous deep-time age models with Milankovitch-band resolution.
Nearly every white paper and report emphasized the need for significant increased funding for graduate and post-doc research. Because of inadequate research funding, university-level sedimentary geology and paleontology programs have been closed, and attrition among SGP faculty has been substantial. According to statistics from the American Geological Institute, the number of faculty members in SGP declined 51% between 1999 and 2010. Faculty attrition, along with a paucity of grant funding, has made it more difficult to attract and train master and doctoral degree students and to maintain post-docs. And subsequent to graduation, many pursue careers in the energy sector — drawn there by large salaries — thus making it even more difficult to attract researchers to academic careers. These trends, recognized domestically as well as internationally, threaten the viability of the very SGP disciplines and workforce described here as vital to society.
Importantly, the SGP workshops recognize that the physical stratigraphy of the Earth holds deposits of oil, gas, coal, coal, uranium, and minerals such as rare earths and clays, and that stratigraphic architecture controls much of the present distribution and recovery of those resources. Also, the SGP community recognizes that the U.S. will be largely dependent on those resources for many decades to come, though shifts in the global economy and politics are constant variables that affect resource sustainability and access to reserves.
A question begs to be answered: How will the energy and minerals industries partner with the academic and institutional sedimentary geology and paleontology community to optimize humanity’s relationship with these resources into the future? A townhall at the Geological Society of America meeting in Minneapolis in October is planned to present results of these workshop and to publicize the SGP community’s efforts. For more information see the website “Workshop on Major Initiatives in Sedimentary Geology and Paleontology” at http://www.uidaho.edu/sci/geology/sgpworkshop [password - workshop].
* SPG sciences include sedimentology, physical stratigraphy, sedimentary petrology, petroleum and coal geology, specialities in paleontology such as micropaleontology, invertebrate and vertebrate paleontology, palynology, paleobotany, paleoecology, and paleobiogeography, geomorphology, paleopedology, shore and nearshore processes, general soil science, and low-temperature geochemistry and stable isotopes.