When NASA first explained its hope that our committee could review its strategy for providing satellite-derived geophysical data sets to the polar science community and provide guidance to make future data sets more useful, the task seemed somewhat ambiguous and daunting. We could not look in depth at every available data set given the time and resources available, nor did it feel particularly useful to comment on what was right or wrong in past decisions. But as the committee met and gathered information, it became clear that our most useful contribution could lie in determining how a better match could be achieved between NASA’s data sets and the needs of NASA’s current strategic guide, the Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) program. By analyzing what information is needed to address the ESE questions from a cryospheric perspective and then mapping those needs against existing resources, we found a way to turn our review into concrete suggestions to guide future activities <...>

Soils can act as a sink for anthropogenic and naturally released heavy metals. Among these are heavy metal oxides and sulfides, which are emitted e.g. by mining industry and metal smelting. The dissolution and transformation behavior of these heavy metal phases specifies their fate in the soil and determines whether the metals become bioavailable or could contaminate the groundwater. To gain more information about these dissolution reactions in soils, in-situ methods are needed. We present here a method to fix particulate metal phases on an inert support. This method allows us to expose and recover metal phases in the environment under controlled conditions.

The stury of sulfide-oxidation reactions, the characterization of the products of these reactions, and the prediction of the fate of sulfide-oxidation products in natural environments are increasingly active areas of research. This research is motivated by the locally severe environmental impacts and toxicity associated with the products of sulfide oxidation. Mine wastes are of particular concern because of past and present disposal practices that have resulted in the widespread degradation of surface-water and ground-water quality. Mine wastes have therefore come under increasing regulation.

Environmental geology is the application of geologic information to the entire spectrum of interactions between people and our physical environment. Those students who become more interested in the subject may go on to become environmental geologists. They will take advanced courses in subjects such as engineering geology and hydrogeology.