Defining research and educational priorities in Near-Surface Geophysics: a workshop and survey in light of the Vision for NSF 2020-2030 Earth in Time report

人类社会和地球上的所有生命都依赖于地球的“近地表”环境。土壤、水、地下水、微生物和岩石提供资源，允许建筑，并塑造当地环境及其弹性。这是各种自然灾害的发源地，如山体滑坡、火山灾害、地震和洪水，以及持续的土壤和水污染。地球科学家最近开发了一系列不同的技术，以更详细地探索和研究这种环境，以帮助了解它并改进对这些灾害和挑战的反应。整合这些方法并广泛和集体地标准化和共享这些研究的各种数据和观察结果具有巨大的潜在好处--这既有利于推进科学问题，也有利于直接的社会用途和利益，例如在规划和应对气候变化方面。这项提议将对整个近地表研究界进行调查，并支持举办一次研讨会，以规划和发展未来方法、数据和培训的这种整合。因此，这项提案将支持美国国家科学院在《地球及时共识报告》中概述的国家科学基金会未来地球科学优先事项的建议。关于岩石圈、水圈、生物圈和大气层交汇的地球浅层(或最上层~100米)的高度优先问题，可以通过综合近地表地球物理仪器、数据和培训来解决。我们建议调查不同的科学家，并将他们聚集在市政厅讨论和虚拟研讨会系列中，以创建和传播这样一份清单和计划，以便未来整合不同的方法和数据，包括围绕培训，以解决科学目标以及社会需求和挑战，同时广泛强调多样性和公平。这项工作的成果将有助于确定这一综合的优点和路线图，包括国家科学院报告地球-时间的建议，建立一个近地面地球物理中心，以促进综合近地面研究。研讨会成果的一个目标是确定近地表科学界认为最有价值的科学研究目标，并向地球科学界和相关社区(如工程学和参与减轻自然灾害的社区)提供关于改善近地表地球物理主题的教育和推广的建议。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Human society, and all life of Earth, depends on Earth’s “near-surface” environment. The soils, water, ground water, microbes, and rock provide resources, allow construction, and shape local environments and their resilience. This is the locus of diverse natural hazards, such as landslides, volcanic hazards, earthquakes, and floods, and persistent soil and water pollution. Geoscientists have recently developed a diverse range of techniques to probe and study this environment in increasing detail, to help understand it and improve responses to these hazards and challenges. There is huge potential benefit in integrating these approaches and standardizing and sharing broadly and collectively the diverse data and observations of these studies—both for advancing science questions and for immediate societal uses and benefits, for example in planning and resilience to climate change. This proposal will survey the full near-surface research community and support a workshop to plan and develop this integration of approaches, data, and training for the future. This proposal will thus support a recommendation from the National Academies on future Earth science priorities for NSF outlined in the Earth-in Time consensus report.High-priority questions about the shallow subsurface (or uppermost ~100 m) of the Earth, where lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere meet, could be addressed with integrated near- surface geophysics instrumentation, data, and training. We propose to survey diverse scientists and bring them together in a town hall discussion and virtual workshop series to create and disseminate such an inventory and plan for future integration of diverse approaches and data, including around training to address scientific targets as well as societal needs and challenges while stressing diversity and equity broadly. The products of this work would help define the merits, and roadmap, of this integration, including the recommendation of the National Academies report Earth-in-Time for a near surface geophysical center to facilitate integrated near-surface studies. A goal of the workshop’s outcomes is to identify what the near-surface Earth Science community considers the highest-value scientific research targets as well as provide recommendations to improve education and outreach on near-surface geophysics topics to the geoscience community and related communities such as engineering and those involved in natural hazard mitigation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.