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International Activities

Overview

ooperative and assistance programs

between the USGS and foreign coun

A tries transfer technology to other

nations by providing advice and training. Funds for USGS technical assistance to foreign countries, including all training programs either within or outside the United States, are supplied by other Federal agencies, international organizations, or foreign governments. Some funds appropriated annually to the USGS for research are allocated to cooperative ventures with foreign counterpart organizations that in turn supply funding and (or) personnel and printing services.

Cooperative projects range from individual scientist-to-scientist discussions, correspondence, and exchange visits on topics of mutual interest to jointly staffed, formally organized, bilateral scientific research and multilaterally coordinated investigations that focus on various scientific phenomena. USGS scientists also serve as officers, committee members, or participants in international organizations, commissions, and associations.

Currently the USGS and counterpart agencies in 47 countries have 71 agreements under which cooperative research may be undertaken; another 16 agreements are multinational, regional, or worldwide in scope. In fiscal year 1990, investigations conducted under these agreements include:

Data collection by remote sensing from AVHRR, Landsat, and SPOT imagery,

Surveying and mapping to produce base, topographic, geologic, and other thematic.

maps,

• Surveying and mapping in polar regions to assess changes in glaciers, ice-sheets, and climate,

A worldwide International Strategic Minerals Inventory and, in individual countries, research, assessment, and modeling of mineral resources,

Assessment of worldwide resources of oil and gas under the World Energy Resources Program and, in individual countries, research, assessment, and modeling of energy resources, such as petroleum, coal, peat, and geothermal,

Research, assessment, and modeling of surface- and ground-water resources in various countries and regions,

• Activities to mitigate geologic and hydrologic hazards, predictive investigations and monitoring for volcanic eruptions, and global research on geophysics, seismicity, and earthquakes,

• Exploration research in marine geology, and • Research, assessment, and modeling for climate-change and atmospheric-deposition programs.

The strengthening of earth science institutions in other countries, training of foreign nationals, and exchange of scientists are all integral to USGS international programs. During fiscal year 1990, 155 nationals from 41 countries received training in the United States. Fifty-seven visiting scientists from 15 countries conducted research either at USGS or other installations in the United States as arranged by the USGS. USGS personnel trained more than 78 foreign scientists and technicians, either individually or in groups, in their respective countries. Overseas training was concentrated in those countries that have long-term projects-Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Abu Dhabi UAE, Indonesia, Venezuela, and Bolivia.

In the spirit of international openness and cooperation underway, new and expanding programs in the Soviet Union and in Eastern European countries are providing exciting opportunities for USGS scientists and their counterparts in these nations to enhance their scientific knowledge of the world. The joint studies at Lake Baikal and in the Soviet Far East are examples of the effective scientific cooperation that is being fostered. Finally, continuing partnerships with nations in Central and Latin America underscore the longstanding commitment of the USGS and the Nation to pursue scientific investigations and cooperation in our own Hemisphere.

Lake Baikal in the
Soviet Union

By Paul P. Hearn, Steven M. Colman, and Peter W. Lipman

ocated just north of the Mongolian border in southeastern Siberia, Lake Baikal is the oldest (25-30 million years old), the deepest (1,056 feet), and by volume

nternational studies in sci

Ince and technology are an

important adjunct to the domestic program of the U.S. Geological Survey. Authorization for foreign investigations is provided by the Organic Act, the Foreign Assistance Act, and related legislation. Activities are conducted under bilateral or multilateral agreements that require approval by the U.S. Departments of the Interior and State. The following factors are used to determine if potential studies are in the interest of the U.S. Government and should be pursued:

Domestic research objectives will be expanded in scope and achieved through the comparative studies of scientific phenomena nationally and internationally.

• Information about existing and potential foreign resources of interest to the United States will be obtained and incorporated in worldwide data bases.

Scientific knowledge, understanding, expertise, and reputation of the USGS and of the United States in the earth sciences will be broadened and appropriately recognized internationally.

Relations with foreign counterpart institutions will be developed and maintained, and the programs will facilitate scientific cooperation, technology transfer, and data exchange.

International programs of other Federal agencies, academia, and the private sector will be supported; in particular, the Department of State will receive adequate scientific information required to formulate foreign policy objectives and

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Bathymetric map of Lake Baikal, digitized from a Soviet map. Inset shows location of Lake Baikal in eastern Asia.

(5,600 cubic miles) the largest lake in the world. Lake Baikal is the most prominent feature of the Baikal rift zone, an area extending from northwestern Mongolia to southeastern Siberia, where movements of the Earth's crust have created a series of troughs and depressions. The Baikal rift, which has been the site of numerous large magnitude earthquakes during the past 100 years, is still active. The extreme age of the lake also makes Baikal an incredibly rich page in the world's geologic record; lake deposits will provide critical data for global change research.

Intracontinental Rift Comparison

In 1988 and 1989 geologists from the United States and the Soviet Union participated in a joint study to compare the Baikal rift zone with the Rio Grande region, a geologically similar rift zone extending from Texas to Colorado in the U.S. southwest. The exchange, which included field work in the United States and the Soviet Union, was sponsored by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the USGS. Research focused on the sedimentary

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109°E

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54°N

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record of rift evolution, the relation of volcanic activity to rifting, the study of deep rift structures by geophysical methods, and the relation of the rifts to the overall geologic evolution of the surrounding areas.

Despite contrasts in geologic setting, both rift systems are similar in the timing and structural character of their development and have similar geophysical signatures. Volcanic activity, on the other hand, is much more extensive in the Rio Grande rift area than in the Baikal region. Longer term cooperative exchanges will (1) provide more data on the timing of rifting by using radiometric analyses, (2) determine the exact mechanisms of rifting, (3) examine the deep structure of the rift areas by using geophysical methods, and (4) study the composition of rift related rocks.

Paleoclimate Research on
Lake Baikal

As the Baikal rift has opened during the last 25 million years, as much as 2.5 miles of sediment have accumulated on the bottom of the lake. By studying plant and animal matter

In Lake Baikal, U.S. and Soviet geologists deploy a giant gravity corer from the R/V Vereschagin, a research vessel of the Limnological Institute in Irkutsk.

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PAUL P. HEARN

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Sunset on Lake Baikal near the northern end of Olkhon Island.

preserved in these sediments and the composition of lake sediment and pore water, scientists can reconstruct a record of past climatic conditions.

Baikal is an especially promising site for paleoclimate studies. The high-latitude location (52 to 58° N.) makes the lake particularly sensitive to changes in the Sun's radiative heat input; these changes are caused by long-term variations in the shape of the Earth's orbit. Also, the extreme seasonal contrast of the highly continental climate in southeastern Siberia makes Baikal an ideal location to record annual variations. Finally, unlike most other lake systems existing today, the sediments preserved in Baikal were not scoured by advancing ice sheets during the last ice age. Consequently, Baikal sediments represent one of the longest and most complete continental records of climate change in the world.

During the summer of 1990, scientists from the USGS and from U.S. universities conducted a joint field study on Lake Baikal. They collected samples from miles below the sediment surface and cores of bottom sediments at several sites in the lake.

These data and samples represent the first stage of a proposed 5-year joint U.S.U.S.S.R. paleoclimate study on Lake Baikal. The proposed research will apply micropaleontologic, isotopic, geochronologic, sedimentologic, and geochemical methods to reconstruct a record of climate change in southeastern Siberia during the last 1 to 2 million years. The USGS contribution to this effort is the Climate Change Program. The involvement of U.S. universities is being supported through the National Science Foundation.

PAUL P. HEARN

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At scientific workshops, geologists from private industry, universities, and government agencies made considerable progress on developing a common approach for compilation of the mineral-deposit maps and the preparation of scientific publications.

Ophiolitic Terranes.-Ophiolites are igneous rocks that represent slices of oceanic crust preserved in zones where crustal plates have collided in the past. These rocks commonly host commercial deposits of chromium and other metals. In 1989 USGS geologists began a cooperative project with geologists from the Soviet Academy of Sciences to study Occurrences of these rocks in Alaska and

northeastern U.S.S.R. The project began in 1989 when two Soviet geologists visited key ophiolite localities in Alaska and discussed project responsibilities for the U.S. and Soviet temas. Work continued in 1990 when geologists from USGS and DGGS visited the Chukotka region of the Soviet Far East.

The final product of this project is a 1:2,500,000-scale map of ophiolitic terranes in both areas, including tables summarizing the lithology, geochemistry, age, mineral deposits, and geologic setting of the terranes. The map and tables will be published in Russian by the Soviet Academy of Sciences and in English by the USGS.

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