Boston

Rock star: EarthScope would combine satellite imaging with ground-based studies. Credit: AP/UWE LEIN

EarthScope, a major US initiative to study the Earth's crust that has struggled to win government support, has received a strong endorsement from the US National Academy of Sciences.

“EarthScope will have a substantial impact on earth science in America and worldwide,” says an academy report released on 8 November. The report was produced by a seven-member panel chaired by George Hornberger, a hydrologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Advocates of the $400-million project hope the report will nudge the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA into incorporating the project in their respective budgets for 2003, which are being prepared and will be released by President George W. Bush in February.

Last year, Congress prevented the Clinton administration from starting EarthScope, and the Bush administration has so far shown little sign of supporting it — although mid-level agency officials are in favour of the plan. “We are doing our best to produce a budget including EarthScope,” says Herman Zimmerman, director of the NSF's earth- sciences division.

The NSF component of EarthScope would comprise three main elements: a mobile, national grid of seismometers, called USArray; the Plate Boundary Observatory, which would monitor the movement of tectonic plates in the Pacific Northwest; and the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD), which would drill into the fault south of San Francisco (see Nature 405, 390–392; 2000). These would cost a total of about $200 million over five years. NASA would contribute a further $200 million to EarthScope, in the form of an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) satellite, which would monitor land movement.

The American Association of State Geologists, which met in Boston last week, has also endorsed the project, as has the National Science Board, the governing body of the NSF. But supporters of the project remain worried that it may not obtain sufficient political backing.

→ http://www.earthscope.org