A New Age Begins

Figure 38. Thomas Brennan Nolan, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1956-1965.

Figure 39. Marine geologists preparing sampling buckets to study the sea floor, 1962.

Figure 40. An astronaut in the Survey training program for geologic investigations of the Moon, 1963.

Under the Kennedy-Johnson administration in the early 1960's, appropriations were increased significantly, and total funds available for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1964, for the first time exceeded $100 million, more than double the amount available just a decade earlier. In 1964, the Geological Survey again prepared a long-range plan for its future. Research functions were obviously not susceptible to a definite schedule, but some phases of the work, such as the topographic mapping of the Nation, were planned for orderly progression toward completion. Standard 7.5- and 15-minute quadrangle maps had been published for approximately 60 percent of the total area of the United States, and advance prints were available for another 9 percent. The long-range plan called for completing the topographic maps of the United States and outlying areas in either 7.5- or 15-minute series by fiscal year 1976 and the 7.5-minute series for all areas of the United States except Alaska by fiscal year 1981. Research would be continued in mapping systems and cartography, and the applications of electronic measuring systems and data-processing systems investigated. An increase of approximately 50 percent in the collection of basic water data was planned for the decade 1964-1973, as well as the development and testing of digital recording equipment and processing of water data by automation by 1968. Generalized or detailed ground-water information would be available for 75 percent of the country and reconnaissance information for the remainder by the end of 1974. Research would be increased to approximately 25 percent of the water-resources program. Research in economic geology, engineering geology, regional geology, and experimental geology would be doubled to meet the accelerating needs for resources and to provide the basic geologic data for urban expansion, engineering construction, and other purposes. The marine program would map and evaluate the composition, structure, and resources of the ocean floor and study geologic and hydrologic processes that operate within the oceans to understand better the conditions under which ancient sediments and ore deposits were formed. For the attainment of these goals, the Geological Survey recognized that the cooperative relations with States and other Federal agencies which it had long enjoyed were essential.

Figure 41. A major earthquake in 1964, which destroyed this elementary school in Anchorage, Alaska, spurred efforts to predict earthquakes.

On August 28, 1964, the Bureau of the Budget gave the Department of the Interior responsibility, which the Department then delegated to the Geological Survey, for the design and operation of the national network for collection of water data so that water information needed for effective development and management of water resources would be collected in a timely, effective, and economical fashion, and would be readily accessible at a single focal point. The Geological Survey in turn established an Office of Water Data Coordination. The new organization of the Water Resources Division made it possible for the Division to deal more effectively with multidisciplinary hydrologic studies and research needed for better water-resources and environmental management. The Division had also instituted intensive programs in hydrologic training and aided in establishing curricula in hydrology in leading universities.

On September 3, 1964, Congress passed the Wilderness Act, by which 9.1 million acres of national forest lands were made part of the National Wilderness Preservation System to be safeguarded permanently against commercial use and construction of permanent roads and buildings. New mining claims and mineral leases would be allowed only until December 31, 1983. The Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines were authorized to assess the mineral resources of each area proposed or established as wilderness if no prior mineral survey had been made, and a new program of geologic mapping and mineral-resource assessment was begun.

In June 1964, President Lyndon Johnson, in proclaiming U.S. participation in the International Cooperation Year, said "I propose to dedicate this year to finding new techniques for making man's knowledge serve man's welfare. Let this be the year of science."³⁷ In January 1965, he proposed a vast program to build a "Great Society," which he assumed could be financed without additional taxation. Among the measures passed by Congress in 1965 were such conservation measures as the Water Quality, Highway Beautification, Clean Air, and Solid Waste Disposal Acts. In the spring of 1965, however, the United States began to increase its commitment to support the anti-Communist regime in Vietnam, begun in the Eisenhower administration, and in his budget message in January 1966, President Johnson acknowledged that the appropriation of funds for increased commitments in Vietnam would hinder domestic programs.

Figure 42. William Thomas Pecora, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1965-1971.

The late 1960's were troubled times in the United States, marked by student unrest, racial demonstrations, racial violence, and increasing opposition to the war in Vietnam. Survey appropriations were not decreased, but the rate of increase was considerably less than it had been. Pecora's administration became an interesting blend of old and new problems and solutions. The Geological Survey had been established in an era of monetary uncertainty, in its first year it had concentrated on a study of some of the great precious-metal mining districts, and it had responded to other monetary crises in the 1890's and 1930's. In 1965, the U.S. gold stock, which had been steadily declining since 1949 despite government efforts to stem the deficit in balance of payments, was a matter of concern. In April 1966, the Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines began a joint program to stimulate domestic production of a group of metals that were in short supply, about 90 percent of the program effort at the start being on gold because of its international monetary importance. On the basis of the Geological Survey mapping, a mining company located by drilling a major gold mine, the first major gold discovery for several decades. Another major project in the Survey's first year had been a study of the iron-ore resources of the United States. In the early 1900's, it had begun studies of western iron ores in an effort to meet industrial demands. After World Wars I and II there had been major studies of iron districts, and in the late 1960's, appraisals of the iron-ore resources of the United States were again prepared, this time for inclusion in a United Nations survey of the world's iron-ore resources.

Sixty years earlier, the Geological Survey had made its first appraisal of the petroleum resources of the Nation. Periods of oil shortages and oil gluts had followed, but World War II had seriously depleted domestic petroleum resources. The continuing concern over energy resources gave rise to a study of world resources of oil, gas, natural-gas liquids, oil shale, and coal. In the ongoing search for domestic resources, new sources were discovered, but their exploitation was not simple. In 1968, for example, a giant oil field was found in Alaska's Arctic Slope, near where the Survey had first made reconnaissance studies in 1923. The oil would help ease impending shortages but transportation of that oil, whether by tanker or pipeline, posed the possibility of damage to the environment. More than 100 billion tons of coal were estimated to be potentially recoverable by open-pit mining techniques, but plans had to be developed to restore and utilize the strip-mined lands. About 1.8 million acres of land in the Western States were classified as potential sources of geothermal energy, but a new industry would be required to exploit them. At the same time, new studies and investigations in space, under the sea, and on land were expanded.

The space program was centered in the Astrogeologic Laboratory established in October 1965 in Flagstaff, Arizona. In July 1969, two astronauts, trained by the Survey, walked on the Moon as the program called for by President Kennedy in 1961 met his objective of landing men on the Moon before the end of the decade. A Survey geologist turned astronaut also walked on the Moon in one of the later missions. Director Pecora took a personal interest in a program aimed at gathering facts about the Earth's resources from orbiting satellites carrying sophisticated remote-sensing instruments, and the Geological Survey was given direction and management of an Interior Department program to achieve this goal.

The marine program led to a report on resources of the sea beyond the Continental Shelf, summarizing the potential and known mineral resources and the technology for their exploration and exploitation, presented to the U.S. Economic and Social Council in 1968.

In January 1969, as the Nixon administration took office, oil leaking from a well on a Federal Outer Continental Shelf lease in the Santa Barbara Channel off California blackened nearby beaches and threatened marine life. Studies by a task force including Survey geologists and engineers led to new and more stringent operating regulations to prevent or control such incidents in the future. The Santa Barbara oil spill was a catalyst in the passage of the National Environmental Protection Act in January 1970.

Figure 43. An oil spill off Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 was a catalyst in the passage of the Environmental Protection Act of 1970.

Figure 44. Vincent Ellis McKelvey, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1971-1978.

In the year that McKelvey became Director, the Geological Survey had an operating budget of $173 million and 9,200 employees. Investigations and mapping were underway in all 50 States, Antarctica, and the Trust Territories, and technical-assistance programs were being carried out in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Great strides had been made toward accomplishing the goals set forth in 1964. General-purpose topographic maps were available for 84 percent of the total area of the 50 States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Streamflow data were being collected at more than 11,000 gaging stations, water quality was being measured at 4,000 stations, and several hundred ground-water investigations were underway. Mineral production from lands supervised by the Survey was valued at more than $3 billion, and annual royalties were approaching $0.5 billion.

McKelvey's term as Director was marked by an increase in multidisciplinary studies and in the diversity and complexity of Geological Survey operations, as well as an increased effort to make scientific information acquired through years of research available in a form most easily used in the solution of such contemporary problems. The pilot study of the San Francisco Bay region was followed by several similar studies of other urban areas. The marine program assumed new significance, for many regions of the oceans were less well known than the surfaces of the planets. Subsea mineral deposits might be resources for the future, but an understanding of the behavior of marine geologic processes was also of importance if people were to live and build along coasts and out into the sea. The marine-geology investigations included oil-and-gas resource appraisal, environmental investigations assessing the potential impacts of geologic hazards on the development of offshore oil and gas resources, geochemical studies of deep-sea deposits and engineering studies of deep-sea sediments, and the development of deep-ocean remote sensing instruments. Major efforts were made to delineate the hazards associated with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, mudflows, ground subsidence, and floods, and advances were made toward a capability of predicting some of these disasters.

Planetary studies were extended to Mars and other planets. A program to map the geology of Mars systematically, managed by the Geological Survey but involving both Survey and university geologists, was formalized with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1971. A shaded-relief map of Mars was published in 1973, and by the time two Viking spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars in the summer of 1976, at sites selected by scientists at the Survey's Flagstaff, Arizona, office, the Survey had prepared more than 100 maps of Mars, Mercury, Venus, and the Moon in support of space exploration.

The first Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS-1, now Landsat-1) was launched in July 1972, beginning a new era in the acquisition and management of data. The Geological Survey established a data center at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to handle distribution of satellite and other remotely sensed data. Investigations of the applicability of the data to geologic, hydrologic, geographic, and cartographic studies were begun.

In 1973, the Geological Survey moved its National Headquarters from downtown Washington to a new building designed expressly for its needs in Reston, Virginia. It took on primary responsibility for operational research in seismology and geomagnetism by agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and 10 units of NOAA were transferred to the Geological Survey. It also began a Land Resource Analysis program in response to the need for earth-science data in land-use planning and resource management, primarily of nonurban areas not yet critically affected by growth and development but which existing trends indicated were in danger of being seriously impacted in the future.

The long-anticipated energy crisis developed after the Arab-Israeli War in October 1973, when Arab nations embargoed oil shipments to the United States. On November 7, 1973, President Richard Nixon announced measures to address the energy crisis, including increased production from naval oil reserves, approval of the Alaska pipeline, and greater energy research and development efforts designed to make the United States self-sufficient in energy resources by 1980. In 1974, Congress directed the Geological Survey to provide a schedule and objectives for inventorying geothermal energy resources.

In 1974, the National Topographic Mapping Program became the National Mapping Program to meet the increasing demand for basic cartographic data in all forms including digital cartographic data. The National Cartographic Information Center was established to provide a focal point for information on U.S. maps and charts, aerial photographs and space imagery, geodetic control, and related cartographic data. The Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agreed on a program to produce topographic-bathymetric editions of the 1:250,000-scale maps for the coastal zones of the United States, including those of the Great Lakes.

In April 1975, the Land Information and Analysis Office was established to consolidate several multidisciplinary land-resource and environmental programs. One of its main objectives was to interpret and display land-resource information collected within the Department of the Interior in ways that were readily accessible and understandable to a wide range of users.

In 1976, Congress transferred jurisdiction of the Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Interior, effective June 1, 1977. Responsibility for administration of the continuing petroleum exploration program on the Reserve and operation of the South Barrow Gas Field was delegated to the Director of the Survey. The new activity brought with it a 50-percent increase in funds, but most of the increase was for contractual services.

Figure 45. The photographic processing laboratory at the EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 1975.

In September 1977, Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus announced that he had accepted McKelvey's resignation as Director but that McKelvey would remain with the Survey as a research scientist. In April 1978, H. William Menard became the Survey's tenth Director but remained only through the balance of the Carter administration. Menard, who had graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 1942 and received a doctorate from Harvard in 1949, had been a marine geologist with the Naval Electronics Laboratory in San Diego for several years and then had become a member of the faculty of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 1965-66, he was associated with the Office of Science and Technology in the White House. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Menard was a recognized worldwide authority in marine geology and oceanography and had discovered notable topographic and structural features of the sea floor that laid much of the foundation of the plate-tectonics revolution in geology.