ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR GEOSCIENCES
ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING
October 10, 2012
9:00 A.M.
National Science Foundation
Room 1235
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, Virginia 22230
P A R T I C I P A N T S
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
Dr. Louise H. Kellogg, Chair
Dr. M. Lee Allison
Ms. Vicki Arroyo
Dr. Daniel N. Baker
Dr. Mary C. Barth
Dr. Margaret L. (Peggy) Delaney
Dr. Donald J. DePaolo
Dr. Scott C. Doney
Dr. Karen M. Fischer
Dr. Steven D. Gaines
Dr. George M. Hornberger
Dr. M. Susan Lozier
Dr. Norine E. Noonan
Dr. Walter A. Robinson
Dr. Roberta L. Rudnick
Dr. David S. Schimel
Dr. John T. Snow
Dr. Harlan Spence
Dr. Brian Taylor
Dr. Orlando Taylor
Dr. Joseph A. Whittaker
SPEAKERS PRESENT:
Dr. Marge Cavanaugh, AD, GEO
- - -
C O N T E N T S
PAGE
1. Welcome & Introductory Remarks 4
2. The State of GEO 11
3. Division Subcommittee Reports 64
4. 2012 COV Reports 106
5. Wrap Up 128
P R O C E E D I N G S
Introductory Remarks
DR. KELLOGG: Hello everyone, and welcome. We are still getting the Web or the virtual telepresence people to be telepresent, but that will be happening over the next few minutes. So, my name is Louise Kellogg, and I’m the chair of AC-GEO, and I welcome you all to this meeting.
We are doing, as you know, an experiment of having some of the members of the committee participate remotely, and our goal there is to essentially limit the amount of travel funding we -- so more of it can go to other worthy activities such as having program officers go to meetings and having panels be able to meet in person. So, we’ll evaluate the experiment at the end, but meanwhile, the technical staff and Melissa are -- heroically, actually -- are working really hard to make this work, so I really, really appreciate it, and I appreciate everybody coming.
We traditionally start our meeting by having everybody introduce themselves, and since we -- and since the committee mostly knows each other and since the people in the telepresence won’t be able to hear the people in the back of the room anyway, we thought we might just start that introduction around the table and continue through for everybody who’s in the room so that you can all meet each other, and then by then, perhaps all the telepresence people will be back. So, I’m Louise Kellogg, from UC Davis. Should we go this way? Yes. Oh, please use your microphone, because the remote people won’t be able to hear us otherwise.
DR. DELANEY: Hi, Peggy Delaney from UC Santa Cruz.
DR. DE PAOLO: Don De Paolo from UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.
DR. SCHIMEL: Dave Schimel from the Jet Propulsion Lab.
DR. LUNIGER: My name is Guido Luniger. I’m a guest to this panel. I’m a program director for Geosciences back in Germany, at the German Research Foundation, and, well, I’m just joining this meeting. Thanks.
DR. KORSMO: Fae Korsmo, deputy office head, Polar Programs.
DR. FALKNER: Kelly Falkner, Polar Programs.
DR. CONOVER: My name is David Conover. I’m director of the Division of Ocean Sciences, and let me also say that in my career, I’ve always been an experimentalist, so I’m thrilled we’re doing an experiment during this meeting, and as I’ve always told my students, accept the results, however they turn out, and then use them to improve your knowledge. So, that’s what we’re going to be doing.
DR. KELLOGG: That’s exactly what we’re doing.
DR. HARRISON: Wendy Harrison, division director, Earth Sciences.
DR. ABRAJANO: Jun Abrajano. I’m the acting deputy assistant director
DR. MORGAN: Michael Morgan, division director of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences.
DR. TAYLOR: Brian Taylor, dean of SOEST and vice chancellor for research at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.
DR. HORNBERGER: George Hornberger, Vanderbilt University.
MS. ARROYO: Vicki Arroyo, Georgetown.
DR. ROBINSON: Walt Robinson, North Carolina State University.
DR. CAVANAUGH: Marge Cavanaugh. I’m the acting assistant director for the Geosciences.
DR. KELLOGG: So, let’s continue, actually, now.
DR. WHITCOMB: Do you want us to use the microphone? [inaudible]
DR. KELLOGG: I don’t know how [inaudible].
DR. WHITCOMB: Okay, I’m Jim Whitcomb. I’m a section head in the Division of Earth Sciences.
MALE SPEAKER: [inaudible] Sciences.
DR. SHOWSTACK: Randy Showstack, [inaudible].
[inaudible introductions]
MALE SPEKAER: [automated] Welcome to the conference calling center. At any time during this message, please enter your pass code, followed by the pound sign. Your pass code has been confirmed. If you need technical assistance during this call, press star-zero. There are six parties in conference, including you.
[inaudible introductions]
MR. SHERMAN: Matt Sherman, National Capitol Contracting. Glad to be here.
[inaudible introductions]
DR. KELLOGG: Okay. So, as we -- as we sort of prepare for today and tomorrow, as I said, I appreciate everybody’s willingness to undertake this experiment. There’s a great deal going on in -- at NSF and in general and in GEO in particular, and I -- we’ll hear in a few minutes from Marge about the -- about the state of GEO, and there are some slides available, which the people on the -- online will hear. So, if we don’t see them as a telepresence, we will hear them as voices from the ceiling. In fact, maybe I should have people online introduce themselves. It’s going to be a little chaotic. Will those online sort of speak up?
DR. NOONAN: Louise, this is Norine Noonan. I’m on by teleconference because I couldn’t get the video to work.
DR. KELLOGG: Hi, Norine.
DR. TAYLOR: This is Orlando Taylor. Ditto.
DR. KELLOGG: Hi, Orlando.
DR. TAYLOR: Hey.
DR. KELLOGG: I couldn’t hear who that was.
MALE SPEAKER: Exactly.
[laughter]
DR. KELLOGG: And I see a few people on the -- yeah. Okay. So, would those of you online like to introduce -- we just went around the room to introduce everybody, but they weren’t speaking into the microphones necessarily. We see you, [unintelligible]. Can you hear us?
DR. NOONAN: Yes, we can hear.
[talking simultaneously]
DR. KELLOGG: Okay. All right. Thanks, everybody --
MALE SPEAKER: I can hear you.
DR. NOONAN: A little garbled, but -- I think that’s because there’s so many people on.
DR. KELLOGG: [affirmative]
DR. NOONAN: There’s so many people.
MALE SPEAKER: Right. Is everyone -- everyone is back in again?
DR. KELLOGG: Looks that way. We have some people on the -- on by voice only, and some people on by video. Okay. So, I think we are in pretty good shape. So, one of the main things that’s happening is -- actually, maybe I could ask the people who are online to mute their microphone unless they’re going to speak. Otherwise I have to hear myself, and everybody has to hear me twice. Thanks. Okay.
So, one of the very large things that’s happening is a -- an upcoming merger of GEO and Polar and the Office of Polar Programs, and so we have many people here from Polar Programs today and appreciate your being here, and this will be a very important part of our discussion. Can we just have Marge start, essentially?
DR. CAVANAUGH: Yes. I can do that. Do you want me to stay here?
DR. KELLOGG: So, I think because, to allow lots of time for -- lots of time for questions, we’re going to have Marge start the “State of GEO” presentation a little bit early, and that will allow plenty of time for discussion.
DR. CAVANAUGH: Okay.
DR. NOONAN: Louise? Can I ask a question before we start?
DR. KELLOGG: Please.
DR. NOONAN: How do we -- how do we ask questions if we’re on the line? There’s this WebEx meeting thing. Do we just send a note, or -- how does that work?
DR. KELLOGG: I will try and make sure to ask you if there are questions at various times, but you can also -- can you email Melissa? And she’s sitting next to me and will let me know when there are questions.
DR. NOONAN: Okay. Melissa, do you have -- are you -- are you watching the chat on the WebEx meeting thing, or are you watching regular email?
MS. LANE: I’m watching email and anything else. I’m losing my mind. Just email me, and that’ll be the fastest way.
DR. NOONAN: Okay.
DR. LANE: Okay?
DR. NOONAN: There’s a lot of static on the line. I don’t know what’s going on.
The State of GEO
DR. CAVANAUGH: Okay. All right. Good. Well, maybe we should go while we can. Well, good morning, everybody, and I want to --
DR. NOONAN: We can’t -- I can’t hear you at all. There’s so much static on the line.
DR. CAVANAUGH: Is this on? Okay. Hey, Norine? Can you hear me now?
DR. NOONAN: A lot of feedback.
DR. KELLOGG: You can tell if your microphone is on by the red light. If it --
DR. NOONAN: Yeah, yeah.
DR. KELLOGG: -- you’re not speaking, you should turn it off.
DR. CAVANAUGH: What about this one?
DR. KELLOGG: Oh, perhaps not everybody heard. I’m going to ask the people online to mute if you are not actively asking a question. That’ll help reduce the feedback.
DR. CAVANAUGH: Okay, you want to try this again? Okay. Well, welcome, and I can tell already that this is going to be one of those meetings that’s going to test us in a way that we aren’t usually tested, I think, at these meetings, but nonetheless, we really appreciate your willingness to participate in this experiment in having a hybrid virtual meeting. We expect that we’ll be doing more of this, frankly, at NSF for some of our panels. We have a lot of experiments going on related to virtual panels, and so -- and then we think there are advantages to this, obviously, for involvement and diversity of panelists, as -- and participation of folks who perhaps couldn’t travel to a particular meeting, so in addition to the benefits to our travel budget, we hope that it enables people who might otherwise not be able to be involved to be involved. So, we’ll be looking for your help as this goes on, and we’ll be looking for your comments afterwards, and we’ll be trying to make improvements along with the technology for years to come, I suspect. So, it’s a new -- it’s a new world we’re all getting involved with.
Now, you may remember that at the spring meeting, Tim Killeen was here, and at that time, what he did at this point in the meeting was to give a preview of what was going to be the director’s review report that he gave a few days later very successfully, and very well received, by the way. But as a consequence of that, we didn’t do a sort of a -- our normal kind of update for you on a lot of the things that are going on at NSF and some of the people who are here, et cetera. So, what I have this morning is that update, and it does go back somewhat longer than the ordinary six-month kind of timeframe than we -- that we usually do, but nonetheless -- so, we didn’t really talk so much even about the FY13 budget request, so -- or I think we did, but not in any depth -- so I’d just like to remind you that we did have some guidance from the Office of the President, from OSTP and OMB, and how to construct that budget, priorities to put in that -- into that budget, and you can see some of those on the left: manufacturing, innovation, education, cybersecurity. All were very prominent in the -- in the priorities of the administration, and you know, they fit very well with a lot of NSF’s priorities, or if you like, our priorities align very well with those priorities because of our emphasis on fundamental research, on STEM education, on innovation, on cyberinfrastructure and a diverse workforce.
So, those are the kinds of things that shaped the request that went in last -- wow -- February. Quite a while ago. And the request overall for NSF was for a 4.8 percent increase over the FY12 inactive level, and this is the summary of that -- of that request. I guess one of the things that’s always of interest to the -- those directorates that are heavily involved in facilities is not only the R&RA line that’s related to science activity, science and engineering activities, and the education activities that we do within the directorate, but also the major construction, major equipment and facilities construction line, and of course, we have lots of partnerships with education and human resources as well, so you can see what happened with those. It’s not unusual for the MREFC line to fluctuate considerably from year to year, depending on what projects are in process and what their budgets are for that particular year of their -- of their build.
Also in this budget was a concept or a framework called One NSF. This is something that the director included. He’s -- he wanted to communicate a comprehensive vision for NSF that was focused on the ability of the Foundation to do the kind of research and education that stimulates discovery and addresses societal problems and is usually very interdisciplinary for that matter. And so he looked for ways -- often not very expensive, by the way, but process-oriented or collaboratively oriented -- for NSF to respond to these sorts of challenges and to leverage the resources that we have for maximum impact. So, that was -- and he considers NSF, of course, a leadership organization, as I’m sure we all do. And so under that framework were a number of specific initiatives, and GEO is involved more heavily in the first five or so on this list. I don’t know if he put SEES on the top, but we of course do. [laughs] It’s our -- one of the ones that we’ve helped to shape and promote very heavily. We’ll come back, by the way, to each of these and say a little bit more about them in general and also about what GEO is doing in each one. But we have the efforts and sustainability in cyberinfrastructure, interdisciplinary research, and promoting that research in society, if you like, and also education, as some of the things that we’ve -- we’re most involved in.