United States Geological Survey

United States Geological Survey bureau organized in 1879 under the Dept. of the Interior to unify and centralize the work already undertaken by separate surveys under Clarence King, F. V. Hayden, George W. Wheeler, and J. W. Powell . The functions of the bureau cover the exploration of the country to gather information as to geological structure; the preparation of geological and topographical maps of all parts of the country; the examination and assessment of natural resources; the study of problems of irrigation and water power; the classification of public lands; the investigation of natural disasters; the monitoring of global environment change, and the annual publication of papers, bulletins, and maps based upon surveys made. In 1962 the bureau was authorized to conduct surveys outside the public domain. The Geological Survey is also responsible for directing the National Geologic Mapping Program, using the most sophisticated of cartographic equipment for researching and compiling data.

Geological Surveys. Geological surveys are among the earliest examples of government‐supported science in the United States, with state surveys pre‐dating the federal geological survey by nearly half a century.The North Carolina Geological Survey, begun in 1823, generally ranks as the first, though North Carolina supported only one individual ( Denison Olmsted) part‐time, and did not fund an ongoing institution. In other respects, however, North Carolina's survey typified state surveys to come. First, it was temporary and ended, with a report, in 1825. Nearly all early state surveys worked in fits and starts, flourishing in good times and disappearing during hard times. The longest continuously operating one, New York's, was founded in 1836. Second, the North Carolina survey, while not formally a part of a university, was conducted by a university professor. The association between state surveys and universities became common and, in many cases, endured. Finally, the North Carolina survey sought practical results. Emerging from a program of internal improvements within the state, it was designed primarily to produce geologic information for engineering applications, such as building roads and bridges. Geological surveys in other states focused on minerals and mining, or the relationship between soils and agriculture.

By 1850 twenty states had established geological surveys. Others added surveys in the 1850s and 1860s, particularly in the burgeoning West. Several western surveys, such as Nevada's and California's, focused on mining and minerals. Between 1850 and 1900, thirteen western states created geological surveys, and three more territories—Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma—started surveys soon after achieving statehood in the early twentieth century. Many of these surveys, in both the West and East, pursued two simultaneous, sometimes conflicting missions: generating practical results for utilitarian application while producing basic scientific knowledge, such as geologic maps or paleontologic reports.

Although the federal government did not establish a national survey until 1879, geologists were often associated with pre‐Civil War land and railroad surveys of the Old Northwest and the trans‐Mississippi West, frequently under the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. In the postwar years Washington funded a number of western geological and geographical surveys: Clarence King's Army‐sponsored Geological and Geographical Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel (begun in 1867); George M. Wheeler's Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian (1869), also undertaken by the Army; John Wesley Powell's Geographical and Topographical Survey of the Colorado River (1870), funded by the Department of the Interior; and Ferdinand V. Hayden's Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories (1873). King, Powell, and Hayden were all experienced geologists, and Wheeler, an army lieutenant, recruited the geologist Grove Karl Gilbert to assist him. This proliferation of western surveys prompted Congress in 1879 to create a centralized United States Geological Survey (USGS), first under the direction of King, later under Powell, who made it the nation's premier scientific institution of the late nineteenth century.

By 1900 the state surveys were also becoming more permanent. The word “survey,” at least as applied to state surveys, came to be used as a noun (referring to a “survey” as an organization), implying an enduring existence. Relations between the state surveys and the USGS, which generally concentrated on issues that cut across state lines, such as topographic mapping and water‐resources studies, were not always smooth.

During the first half of the twentieth century, having completed the reconnaissance phase of their work and having gained a good idea of their state's general geology, many state surveys now undertook more detailed investigations of smaller areas. County studies were common, as were studies of minerals, especially petroleum in states such as Texas and metallic minerals in Nevada, Washington, and Wyoming.

After 1950, state geological surveys found their role changing. Some, such as Michigan's, were given increasing regulatory responsibility. Others, such as Utah's, were incorporated into state departments of natural resources, making them less research‐oriented and more an arm of state government. Some surveys, such as Kentucky's and Illinois's, remained a university division. Even those surveys that were removed from the university environment usually maintained an academic connection.

During the 1960s and 1970s, concern about environmental issues—such as the relationship between subsurface geology and groundwater contamination, groundwater depletion, radioactive‐waste disposal, and a host of other problems—gave geological surveys a renewed relevance. Individual surveys carved out scientific niches. The Kansas Geological Survey developed computer software and pioneered the application of quantitative methods to geologic problems. State surveys in Utah and Colorado focused on geologic hazards. The Texas Bureau of Economic Geology did extensive petroleum research often funded by external grants and contracts. In the 1980s and 1990s, state surveys redoubled their efforts in geologic mapping, working with the USGS to develop funding for the National Mapping Act and collaborating on geographic information systems and other new cartographic methods. As the twenty‐first century began, geological surveys were operating in every state, as well as at the federal level, a permanent but constantly changing feature of America's scientific landscape.
See also Antebellum Era; Army Corps of Engineers; Education: The Rise of the University; Environmentalism; Land Policy, Federal; Petroleum Industry; Physical Science; Science.

Bibliography

George Merrill , Contributions to a History of American State Geological and Natural History Surveys, 1920.
Thomas G. Manning , Government in Science: The U.S. Geological Survey, 1867–1894, 1967.
William H. Goetzmann , Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West, 1971.
Michele L. Aldrich , American State Geological Surveys, 1820–1845, in Two Hundred Years of Geology in America, ed. Cecil J. Schneer, 1979.
Anne Marie Millbrooke , State Geological Surveys of the Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981.
Arthur A. Socolow, ed., The State Geological Surveys: A History, 1988.

Rex C. Buchanan

military geology There was a close relationship between the army and some of the founding fathers of British geology. Military objectives and funding generated fieldwork in Britain by J. MacCulloch from 1809, initially as a consequence of the Napoleonic War. From 1826 to 1846 Royal Engineer officers (successively J. W. Pringle, J. E. Portlock, and H. James) pioneered government geological surveys in Ireland. The British Geological Survey was founded in 1835 and sustained until 1845 with military (Board of Ordnance) control. In the Geological Society of London, early influential members included those also active in the reserve army ( G. B. Greenough) or the regular army ( T. F. Colby, J. W. Pringle, and J. E. Portlock) and a veteran in receipt of half pay ( W. Lonsdale). Geology was among the subjects taught to potential officers of the East India Company's army at its Addiscombe College from 1819 to 1935 by J. MacCulloch, and from 1845 to its closure in 1861 by D. T. Ansted. In the British army, J. Tennant lectured on geology to potential Royal Engineer and Royal Artillery officers within the curriculum at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from 1848 to 1868; T. Rupert Jones to cadets of the infantry and cavalry at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1858 to 1870; and Jones also to officers at the Staff College, Camberley, until 1882. Publications by R. B. Smith in 1849, F. W. Hutton in 1862, and articles within the authoritative Aide-mémoire to the military sciences (1st edition 1846–1852, 2nd edition 1853–1862) indicated the importance of geology to a military profession—but military teaching in the subject declined sharply towards the end of the century as perception of its practical value waned.

Professional geologists were first used operationally as such within the British army only in the First World War, primarily as a response to problems of static battlefield conditions on the Western Front in France and Belgium. From 1915, W. B. R. King guided development of potable groundwater supplies. From 1916, T. W. E. David guided the siting of mine tunnels, and later dugouts. A few other geologists served with Tunnelling Companies of the Engineer Corps. All returned to civilian life after the close of hostilities in 1918.

The mobile conflict of the Second World War, 1939–45, demanded a greater range of British military geological expertise than hitherto, primarily in the North African. Italian, and north-west European campaigns but also in East Africa and the Far East, and in United Kingdom home defence. Most of the senior military geologists ( W. B. R. King, F. W. Shotton, J. V. Stephens, W. A. Macfadyen, J. L. Farrington, D. R. A. Ponsford, and W. T. Pickard) served with the Royal Engineers, principally on tasks relating to the development of potable groundwater, quarrying for bulk aggregates, and assessment of terrain for military purposes (including trafficability across beaches and the siting of airfields). Geologists were of particularly significant use in both the planning and operational phases of the D-Day invasion of 6 June 1944, and the subsequent battle for Normandy. All were temporary soldiers and returned to civilian life at the end of the war. Since 1948, however, the British army has maintained continuity in geological expertise through a small group of officers in the reserve army (the Territorial Army, or from 1953 to 1967 the Army Emergency Reserve), for peace-time engineering projects and active service in times of crisis, whether occasioned by military conflict or humanitarian need.

In Germany also, military applications of geology became apparent from the Napoleonic War. Specialist geologists were not employed by the army until the First World War, but then a large military geological service was created for the development of water supplies, mining and dugout systems, specialist geotechnical maps, fortifications, roads, and aggregates—ultimately employing about 250 geologists. Although this service was disbanded at the end of hostilities, Germany re-founded a military geological organization in 1937, had five military geological textbooks by 1938, 32 teams of military geologists by late 1941, and 40 teams by 1943. Teams were deployed on a wide range of engineering tasks, particularly on fortification, earthworks, underground construction, provision of aggregates, and terrain assessment in the many countries occupied by the German army. German military geology was abolished at the end of the war, but re-founded in 1966 within the Bundeswehr, which by the end of the Cold War in 1990 employed more than 20 full-time geologists, in peace-time largely to protect the environment rather than the state.

In the United States, geologists were assigned for service with the American Expeditionary Force in the First World War, but the war ended before their effective operational deployment. In the Second World War, American armed forces were supported by a military geology unit based upon the United States Geological Survey. This furnished the engineers with complete geotechnical folios in preparation for every operation in which American troops took part or planned to take part, except the Normandy landings, for which British expertise was available. The Military Geology Unit had a wartime roster of 88 geologists, 11 soil scientists, 15 other specialists, and 43 support staff. It produced 313 studies—including 140 major terrain folios, 42 other major special reports, and 131 minor studies—in total containing about 5000 maps, 4000 photographs and figures, 2500 large tables, and 140 terrain diagrams. Post-war geological support for the armed forces was similarly based on the USGS, but on more modest scale.

E. P. F. Rose

Bibliography

Rose, E. P. F. (1996) Geologists and the army in nineteenth century Britain: a scientific and educational symbiosis? Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 107, 129–41.
Rose, E. P. F. and and Rosenbaum, M. S. (1993) British military geologists: the formative years to the end of the First World War. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 104, 41–9.
Rose, E. P. F. and and Rosenbaum, M. S. (1993) British military geologists: through the Second World War to the end of the Cold War. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 104, 95–108.
Underwood, J. R. Jr and Guth, P. L. (eds) (1998) Military geology in war and peace. Reviews in Engineering Geology, 13, Geological Society of America.