[...]... contamination of water, air, or soil.) In this sense, several programs of the USGS are related to the science and technology of dealing with hazardous materials in our society The role of the USGS in the hazardous materials arena lies squarely in the geosciences, the traditional strength of the USGS The remediation of sites that have already been contaminated is a daunting task In addition, the development... concentrates on four main themes: the understanding of natural processes that affect the fate and transport of hazardous substances, the understanding of processes that are useful for remediation of contaminated sites, the use of research results in the decision-making process, and methods to assess the success of the various programs in reaching some of the goals within the critical research areas About... environments in terms of the transport of contaminants and of the biogeochemical reactions that affect these contaminants (i.e., gaining an understanding of the nature of different environments, including processes that affect contaminants); 2) improvements in methods for remediating contaminated sites (i.e., gaining an understanding of the processes and techniques that are useful for containing and for cleaning... about the toxic effects or environmental fate of many chemicals Thus, there are abundant research challenges in the area of hazardous materials The primary role of the USGS in reducing public risks associated with hazardous materials is to provide scientific support, primarily to other agencies As the nation's leading geoscience agency, the USGS provides analyses of the fate and transport of hazardous. .. Moreover, the scientific understanding and methods needed to assess the appropriateness of a given site as a waste-disposal facility are not all yet available The strength of the USGS has been in areas of geoscience: in collecting data that allow assessment of the quality of water, in gaining a fundamental understanding of what natural processes are important in the transport of contaminants (including biogeochemical... formed in 1949 (The 1949 date is deceptively late Forerunners of the WRD, the “Irrigation Survey , the Hydrologic Branch”, and the “Water Resources Branch” date from before 1900.) During the early part of this century, the majority of the contaminantrelated work by the USGS was done under the auspices of the Federal-State Cooperative Program (Langbein, 1981) This program, in which the federal investment... the commercialization of new remedial processes and the development of new measurement processes The research and development work being performed is tied closely to practice Interestingly, the focus of research also can be influenced by the nature of the reward system For example, excellence in research at the discovery end of the spectrum often is “measured” by papers published in high quality scientific... In most instances, contributions are required from all areas A case in point is the study of dispersion in porous media The original studies on the process of dispersion occurred in the early 1950's with simple column experiments and the development of the theoretical-mathematical description of the component processes The role of dispersion at field scales remained poorly understood until the late... program in field-oriented, multidisciplinary research in hazardous materials science as related to problems in the natural environment The USGS is known throughout the world for its experience in monitoring the natural environment and for the collection of high-quality, consistent data sets The USGS is particularly well versed in taking an integrated approach to the study of systems and for including the. .. those involved in research on hazardous materials in the environment: defining the major problems (with regard to risk to human health and About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the original typesetting files Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, . contaminated sites, the use of research results in the decision-making process, and methods to assess the success of the various programs in reaching some of the. with hazardous materials in our society. The role of the USGS in the hazardous materials arena lies squarely in the geosciences, the traditional strength of