APPLIED GEOSCIENCE
Figure 5 - Global seismicity with earthquakes larger than magnitude 6 for the period 1900-2012. Many megacities are located close to active plate boundaries. (Source: USGS)
cise mechanisms of natural hazards, risk assessments and mapping, warning systems, mitigation, and construction of hazard-resistant structures.
Water Resources
Underground and surface freshwater resources used for drinking, irrigation and other residential or industrial needs constitute only one percent of the global water budget (Figure 6). Although water is a renewable resource, freshwater resources are unevenly distributed both seasonally and spa- tially, depending on terrain and climate. Geoscientists and engineers will play an important role in detailed studies of the hydrological cycle and water budget, underground res- ervoir mapping and characterization, drilling and extraction of groundwater, water resource management especially in arid environments, optimal practices of watershed modification, desalination projects, and so forth.
Environmental Geology
Despite the obvious relationships between environmental quality and human health, rapid industrialization of the world has created environmental pollutants of various types. Humans are now a geological force impacting every part of the planet from the atmo- sphere and the oceans to mountains and forests. In 2000, atmospheric sci- entist Paul Crutzen popularized the term “Anthropocene” for the influence of human activities on Earth. The term became widely and informally used, and some geoscientists consider 1950 as the beginning of the Anthropocene Age because it marked the accelerating trend of atomic age, space age, popula- tion growth, petroleum consumption,
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atmospheric carbon dioxide increase, telecommunication, international tourism, motor vehicles, and other human- caused factors (Zalaseiwics et al., 2018; Ellis, 2018). Global warming, urban air pollution, acid rains, loss of biodiversity due to destruction of forests (with species that will never come back), desertification, nuclear and toxic wastes, plastic pollution of the oceans, silent erosion of top soil (that will take centuries to recover) and so forth are tragic records of the Anthropocene. Our failure to maintain the Biosphere 2 experiment (Nelson, 2018) demonstrates how precious and irreplaceable the Earth’s biosphere is, and one which we cannot afford to fail. Environmental geology is thus a great contribution of geoscientists to society, and the significance of this field and the workforce needed for its multitude tasks are expected to rise in the coming decades.
Figure 6 - Where is Earth’s water? Water, water, everywhere but liquid freshwater is like a drop in the bucket (after Shiklomanov, 1993).
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