Executive Summary

The revised U.S. Geological Survey Strategic Plan (2000 - 2005) reflects a renewed commitment to the USGS´s role as the National´s principal natural sciences and information agency. USGS conducts research, monitoring, and assessments to contribute to our understanding of the natural world -- our lands, water, and biological resources. USGS data and information are used daily by managers, planners, and citizens to understand, respond to, and plan for changes in our environment. This Strategic Plan now more concisely discusses the USGS´s goals and the strategies that will be used to achieve them. It reflects the high priority the USGS places on meeting customers´ needs for reliable and impartial information.

The USGS´s two mission goals, Hazards and Environment and Natural Resources, were derived from organizing USGS activities in a way useful for natural sciences customers. The goals are the framework for marshalling the bureau´s expertise in geology, biology, hydrology, and geography to meet societal issues.

USGS hazards activities are describing, documenting, and understanding natural hazards and their risks. The USGS studies earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, geo-magnetic field changes, flood, droughts, coastal erosion, tsunamis, wildland fire, and wildlife disease. The Hazard Long-Term Goal is to: "Ensure the continued transfer of hazards related data, risk assessments, and disaster scenarios needed by our customers before, during, and after natural disasters, and by 2005 increase the delivery of real-time hazards information by increasing the average number of streamgages reporting real-time data on the Internet during each quarter to 5,500 and installing 500 improved earthquake sensors to minimize loss of life and property."

Hazard Goal achievement strategies include adding telemetered streamgages and earthquake sensors to existing networks, measuring the reliability, delivery times, and accuracy of real-time hazards information, and making key scientific datasets, such as maps and geospatial information (or the underlying information used to develop them), easier to interpret and integrate. USGS environmental and natural resources activities deal with physical, chemical, biological, and geological processes in nature and with the impact of human actions on natural systems. Studies include data collection, long-term assessments, ecosystems analysis, and forecasting future changes. The Environment and Natural Resources Long-Term Goal is to: "Ensure the continued availability of long-term environmental and natural resource information; and systematic analysis and investigations needed by customers, and, by 2005, develop 20 new decision support systems and predictive tools for informed decision making about natural systems."

Environment and Natural Resources Goal achievement strategies include continuing to improve the quality and use of long-term datasets and interpretive products including water quantity and quality assessments, mineral and energy information, biological data and information, water use information, and high-quality digital maps depicting the character of the Earth´s surface. Emphasis will be placed on delivery information in ways to provide decision-makers a better understanding of current and future conditions, and provide options for adopting a course of action or response to these conditions (decision support systems).

The USGS conducts an extensive, ongoing program of internal and external proposal, project, and program reviews with a goal of conducting independent external peer program reviews approximately every five years in addition to frequent independent internal management reviews. The National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration conduct a number of the bureau´s external reviews.

A number of program evaluations contributed to the formulation of the 2000-2005 Strategic Plan. Many of them stressed the need for more integrated and coordinated science at the USGS, improved applications and science delivery, and expanded partnerships and collaboration by the USGS with its partners and customers.

Development of the U.S. Geological Survey Strategic Plan (2000-2005) included public and employee involvement through approximately 200 regular stakeholder meetings. Written review comments were solicited and received from other bureaus in the Department of the Interior, other Federal agencies, USGS employees, private corporations, the university community, environmental and other non-governmental organizations, and private individuals. Within the USGS, the Bureau Executive Leadership Team and other managers conducted an extensive review.

The U.S. Geological Survey´s Strategic Plan (2000-2005) is a concise guidebook for achieving full integration of our science activities and developing high-quality, easy-to- use and understand information products, data, and assessments for the Department of the Interior and our many cooperative partners and customers.

Finally, in this new Strategic Plan, the USGS´s original vision and mission statements are rewritten to more clearly state the bureau´s core values and mission, and a Strategic Direction statement was developed. The eight business activities from the first USGS Strategic Plan are combined into two mission goals with clear strategies for achieving each goal. In addition, key factors that influence achievement and crosscutting relationships to other bureaus and agencies are discussed.

Glacial and polar ice can be excellent archives of past climatic and environmental conditions when atmospheric conditions are "frozen" into the snow and ice. Here scientists retrieve an ice core from the Upper Fremont Glacier Wyoming for analysis. Study of this archived ice core in combination with lake-sediment records adjacent to the site may provide a unique record of ecosystem response(s) to a rapid climate shift in a high-altitude, mid-continent ecosystem.