Lahars are rapidly rushing rivers of water and rock fragments that slide down volcanoes. They occur on the Aleutian volcanic arc in Alaska and the Cascade Range in the Northwest U.S. Lahars can flow down slopes at over 120 miles per hour and grow to 10 times their initial size.

Lahars can trap people in hazardous areas and move bridges, buildings, and other manmade structures caught in their flow. To better understand how and when lahars happen, scientists use technology to observe, describe, and model the events as they unfold.

Robust data collections are vital for understanding and managing Earth’s natural resources and hazards:

• Earthquake data can help identify quake-prone areas and inform earthquake preparedness.
• Air quality data can reveal potential health risks and hazards from air pollution.
• Water quality data can capture noteworthy trends and changes in safety and accessibility.

Ongoing efforts to build comprehensive and reliable data sets for various sectors of Earth Science help experts make informed decisions that keep communities safe.

Offshore energy is a huge and growing resource. About 18 percent of U.S. oil and natural gas is produced offshore and production is growing. Globally, the offshore provides 30 percent of oil and natural gas.  Offshore wind is also a growing source of electricity, especially in Europe. The U.S. has significant offshore wind power potential, but no commercial wind facilities are in development. Ongoing technological advancements assure all these resources will continue to grow while addressing heightened environmental concerns.

Critical minerals and materials are key components of the innovation economy. Minerals are a part of almost every product we use on a daily basis, either as the raw materials for manufacturing processes or as the end products themselves. Advanced technologies for communications, clean energy, medical devices, and national security rely on raw materials from mines throughout the world. In 2010, China curtailed exports of rare earth metals and sparked major concern about the security of global supply chains for a range of vital minerals and materials.

Geoscience information can be used by federal, state, and local decision makers to assess the positive and negative impacts of onshore oil and gas energy resource development, and to inform policy to both facilitate U.S. energy production and minimize impacts on water and land resources.

In this briefing, the speakers will address key questions that geosciences help to inform, such as:

Energy, water, and land are fundamental, interrelated natural resources critical to the health, economic growth, and security of the nation. The connections and feedbacks among these three resources have impacts on human, environmental, and infrastructure systems. Although the U.S. is endowed with many options for supplying energy to meet national demands, different energy sources have different water and land-use requirements that have implications for local and regional water and land resources.

Join us for a congressional briefing to learn about El Niño. How does it form and what are the roles of the ocean and atmosphere? What impacts can be anticipated from the current event?What are the opportunities and challenges in understanding, monitoring, and predicting El Niño? A panel of leading experts will walk us through these questions and more.

Speakers:

Hydropower is the largest renewable energy resource in the United States and provided about 6 percent of total U.S. energy generation in 2014, according to the Energy Information Administration*. Washington, Oregon, New York, and California are a few of the top hydropower producing states but nearly all states generate at least some hydroelectric power. Research is helping to expand the variety of hydropower technologies, which are being deployed at a range of scales.

Geothermal energy is a relatively untapped resource that could be a significant source of clean power for the United States in the future. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, heat from the Earth’s interior could fuel more than 10 percent of the nation’s current electrical generating capacity. The United States is already the world leader in geothermal energy production, accounting for 28 percent of the global installed geothermal capacity.