History
Prompted by a report from the National Academy of Sciences the USGS was created by an act of Congress on March 3, 1879. It was charged with the "classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain." This task was driven by the need to inventory the vast lands added to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
Clarence King, the first director of USGS, assembled the new organization from disparate regional survey agencies. After a short tenure, King was succeeded in the director's chair by John Wesley Powell.
The complete list of Directors:
P. Patrick Leahy is currently Acting Director.
Mission
The USGS is the primary civilian mapping agency in the United States, and is best known for its 1:24,000 scale, 7.5-minute quadrangle topographic maps. Their recent program, the National Map, is an attempt to be the ultimate online mapping service for the United States. The USGS also has an vigorous Business Partners program through which they encourage the reselling of their maps so that the public can have quicker, easier access to information. Many sites such as TopoZone have capitalized on this program to provide web mapping services in conjunction with the USGS.
The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program monitors earthquake activity worldwide. The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) in Golden, Colorado on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines detects the location and magnitude of global earthquakes. The USGS also runs or supports several regional monitoring networks in the U.S. under the umbrella of the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS). The USGS informs authorities, emergency responders, the media, and the public, both domestic and worldwide, about significant earthquakes. It also maintains long-term archives of earthquake data for scientific and engineering research. It also conducts and supports research on long-term seismic hazards.
The USGS National Geomagnetism Program monitors the magnetic field at magnetic observatories and distributes magnetometer data in real time.
Since 1962, it has been involved in global, lunar and planetary exploration and mapping.
The USGS also operates the National Wildlife Health Center, whose mission is "to serve the nation and its natural resources by providing sound science and technical support, and to disseminate information to promote science-based decisions affecting wildlife and ecosystem health. The NWHC provides information, technical assistance, research, education, and leadership on national and international wildlife health issues." [1] It is the agency primarily responsible for surveillance of wild-animal H5N1 avian flu outbreaks in the United States.
As of 2005, the agency is working to create a National Volcano Early Warning System by improving the instrumentation monitoring the 169 volcanoes in U.S. territory and by establishing methods for measuring the relative threats posed at each site.
The motto of the USGS is "Science for a changing world."
The USGS also runs 17 research centers in the United States, including the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.
See also
External links