AGI’s Geoscience Policy and Critical Issues programs support well-informed public policy and decision making by providing information and facilitating dialogue between the geoscience community and decision makers at all levels.

Geoscience Policy Program

The Geoscience Policy program works with AGI member societies and federal policy makers to advocate on behalf of the shared interests of the geoscience profession. Geoscience Policy program staff track and analyze policy issues; update the geoscience community through news briefs that cover federal legislation, appropriations, and hearings; and organize meetings, briefings, testimony and written submissions on geoscience policy issues.

Critical Issues Program

The Critical Issues program’s mission is to connect decision makers, especially at the state and local levels, with decision-relevant impartial, expert information from across the geosciences. Critical Issues program staff curate material from a wide array of geoscience information providers to provide website visitors with a variety of information products, including case studies, fact sheets, answers to common questions, maps and visualizations, and the geological surveys database. Critical Issues program staff also organize and host webinars and forums on a variety of topics that bring geoscientists and decision makers together to discuss potential solutions to challenges at the interface of geoscience and society.

The Critical Issues Program is supported by AGI’s Center for Geoscience & Society.

Policy & Critical Issues website information sources

We use, summarize, and link to information and documents from expert, nonpartisan, publicly available sources that include federal and state agencies, AGI’s member societies, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. We also use, summarize, and link to products from other selected organizations that AGI staff, in consultation with program advisers, consider appropriate. The information sources for all of our products are listed on each page, with links to additional resources at the bottom of many webpages to help you explore further. 

If you would like to suggest an information product or source that you find helpful in your work, please contact us at cipinfo@americangeosciences.org.