Geoscientists have an important role to play in international development, using their knowledge of Earth to improve disaster risk reduction, natural resource management, access to protected water resources, and infrastructure development. The application of this knowledge to development projects, however, requires a range of skills beyond a competence in technical geoscience. Cultural understanding, cross-disciplinary communication, diplomacy, community mobilization and participation, knowledge exchange, and an understanding of social science research tools are good foundations that are necessary for geoscientists to engage in an effective manner, reducing the likelihood of a project failing or not having maximum impact. Topical and disciplinary knowledge, such as understanding social vulnerability, international policy frameworks, and development theory, are also necessary when working in development contexts. The geoscience community should consider practical ways by which these skills can be nurtured at an early stage of a young geoscientist’s training and career. Building good foundations could take place within established geoscience education courses, but also through engagement with extracurricular activities and agencies, such as the not-for-profit organization Geology for Global Development in the UK. By raising the profile of these skills, and suggesting practical ways by which they can be developed, it is hoped that geoscientists will be better equipped to operate internationally throughout their careers.

Many geoscientists apply their expertise to international community development through projects that involve direct interaction with host country agencies, community groups, and individuals. As someone with expertise or financial resources, one often has power to frame the definition of success around one’s own perceived reality regarding human development. Both local counterparts and international geoscientists themselves are often in a position to shape project goals toward their own needs and interests, rather than those of intended beneficiaries. We argue that one-sided engagement is often ineffective and even harmful for target beneficiaries. Awareness of such power dynamics minimizes the waste of resources and unintentional perpetuation of harmful social dynamics. Guidelines are presented in this editorial to help geoscientists partner equitably with groups or communities they intend to serve. The guidelines in this editorial may assist geoscientists to identify the felt needs of their target beneficiaries, define their own role in meeting those needs, define project goals of mutual interest, and make progress toward meeting felt needs. These guidelines include: (1) form relationships and build trust; (2) understand the local context; (3) be observant of internal power relations; (4) examine your motivations and expertise; (5) utilize local expertise in project implementation; and (6) recognize change takes time and investment in monitoring and evaluation. Although equitable engagement is rarely straightforward, especially in an unfamiliar cultural or socioeconomic context, it is crucial if geoscientists are to contribute effectively to global development.

All geoscience practices have evident repercussions on society. Geoscientists have knowledge and skills to investigate, manage, and intervene on the geosphere, defined as the component of the Earth system constituted by the land surface, the solid Earth, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, and the atmosphere. This implies ethical obligations. The adoption of ethical principles is essential if geoscientists want to best serve the public good. Ethical responsibility by all geoscientists requires a more active role while interacting with society. Geoethics, which investigate the ethical, social, and cultural implications of geoscience research, practice, and education, represents a new way of thinking about and practicing earth sciences, focusing on issues related to the relationship of the geoscientist with the self, colleagues, and society in the broadest sense. In this paper, we define some of the main values relevant to geoethics.

Religious faith provides a strong motivation for mobilizing many geoscientists in making the world both a safer place to live and one in which a sustainable use of resources could be developed for the future. The history of science up to the present day is rich in individuals who have seen their scientific endeavors as a natural outworking of their faith. This is unsurprising, for scientists in many/most religious traditions are keenly aware of the interface among the creator (God), his creation (“nature”), and his creatures (humankind). Many of the most pressing problems of our day can be addressed by geoscientists; these include global climate change, water resources, mineral resources, and disasters such as floods, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. In addition, many religious folk are willing to support relief and development work in low-income areas both near and far from home, and they are educated and motivated to do so by common links of religious affiliations that cut across national and cultural boundaries and are global in scope.

Geoscience is poorly understood by the general public. People in the United States have recently gained a global reputation for science illiteracy. Absolutely essential information about living on our planet is not being effectively communicated, accepted, or practically heeded. Geoscientists are typically considered eccentric and irrelevant. Negative attitudes beyond those include associations of geology with global environmental degradation and sinister economic-political interests. This absurd reputation is partly deserved. Geoscience as a discipline and profession is foundational in moving toward more sustainable societies. Educational institutions, professional organizations, and individuals need to act in concert to illuminate the function and wonders of the natural world. Students of the skies, the waters, and the land require many new opportunities to seek benefits for all life and inanimate nature. Such a call is countercultural and idealistic. Philanthropy requires motivation of the heart and resistance to the drive for selfish gain. In the earth-science context, “geophilanthropy” is service rendered by education/training of others, by volunteering one’s time and expertise in problem solving, or by materially supporting geology-related projects. Professional outreach can benefit many sectors of society, including the general public, government and policymakers, industries, schools, and small-scale enterprise (agriculture, etc.). Development projects are a broad international venue for charitable outreach. Less advantaged communities globally are in great need of the educational and applied expertise possessed by professional geoscientists. Involvement of students at all levels in their higher-education careers is an additional benefit that multiplies service for investment in sustainable change.

The concept of sustainability has been redefined over the past two decades, with growing realization that simply avoiding most impacts to human and environmental resources is not enough to counter the long-term losses created by current and past economic activities. The production of mineral resources and fossil fuels would seem to be activities that cannot, by definition, be sustainable, but extractive industries provide necessary contributions to society. By holding extractive industries to higher standards than we do today, they can become part of a globally sustainable approach that will benefit society far beyond the sites of resource extraction. Truly sustainable living in the future can only be accomplished if the current effect of our presence is restorative (net positive impact) rather than just impact-neutral. One way for the mineral industry to participate is for companies to accumulate a capital fund (by saving a portion of the annual depletion) that is used to mitigate damage and restore habitat to a greater extent than would be required to mitigate impacts from current activities alone. This form of sustainability thus becomes restorative. Restorative sustainability requires that all current impacts be evaluated using full-cost accounting. Global impacts cannot be ignored, and the values of priceless things must be honored by preventing their destruction. With respect to social resources, all stakeholders must have a say, and full disclosure is required. Active acceptance by society over multiple generations is important, and costs incurred to ensure true sustainability must be accepted as a cost of doing business.

Recent expansion in the demand for clean-energy and efficient technologies has led to demand for a variety of exotic, rare, or “strategic” metals. Some of these are physically rare, while others are economically or politically unavailable. In order to fill the gap between supply and demand, and to ensure future resources, various unconventional resources are being examined. This chapter discusses deep-ocean and industrial ecology–based solutions for providing these materials and provides considerations of how such resources can be considered within a framework of sustainable development. Specifically, this chapter addresses the importance of the social elements of the rare metals supply chain, examining the elements of local stakeholder impact and the broader, global public interest represented by the technologies utilizing such metals. The chapter also considers how technical and environmental knowledge derived from geosciences can have an impact on stakeholder support for alternative resources.

Electric vehicles have been promoted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lessen U.S. dependence on petroleum for transportation. Growth in U.S. sales of electric vehicles has been hindered by technical difficulties and the high cost of the lithium-ion batteries used to power many electric vehicles (more than 50% of the vehicle cost). Groundbreaking has begun for a lithium-ion battery factory in Nevada that, at capacity, could manufacture enough batteries to power 500,000 electric vehicles of various types and provide economies of scale to reduce the cost of batteries. Currently, primary synthetic graphite derived from petroleum coke is used in the anode of most lithium-ion batteries. An alternate may be the use of natural flake graphite, which would result in estimated graphite cost reductions of more than US$400 per vehicle at 2013 prices. Most natural flake graphite is sourced from China, the world’s leading graphite producer. Sourcing natural flake graphite from deposits in North America could reduce raw material transportation costs and, given China’s growing internal demand for flake graphite for its industries and ongoing environmental, labor, and mining issues, may ensure a more reliable and environmentally conscious supply of graphite. North America has flake graphite resources, and Canada is currently a producer, but most new mining projects in the United States require more than 10 yr to reach production, and demand could exceed supplies of flake graphite. Natural flake graphite may serve only to supplement synthetic graphite, at least for the short-term outlook.

Sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) enters the atmosphere through natural and anthropogenic processes. Mitigation of SO 2 emissions from many industrial activities has produced by-product sulfur and by-product synthetic gypsum essentially mineralogically identical to the primary materials extracted using mines and wells. Regulation to reduce anthropogenic SO 2 emissions was one of the first environmental protection efforts in the United States, which later became mandated under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The availability of by-product sulfur has increased over the years, and following the closure of the last domestic sulfur mine in 2000, it became the only domestic source of elemental sulfur in the United States. The most widely adopted means of reducing SO 2 emissions from coal-burning facilities has been to install flue gas desulfurization (FGD) equipment, which produces synthetic FGD gypsum. The decrease in SO 2 emissions since 1980 has significantly improved air quality in parts of the United States. By-products from these activities have replaced the supply of products, such as elemental sulfur, sulfuric acid (H 2 SO 4 ), and gypsum, through substitution of by-product for primary mining of these mineral commodities. The cascading effect of efforts in the United States to mitigate SO 2 emissions from multiple sources through the enactment of the Clean Air Act, and its amendments, has resulted in more than improved air quality alone. It has also, through the increasing availability of environmental products of SO 2 mitigation, such as by-product H 2 SO 4 , elemental sulfur, and by-product synthetic gypsum, reduced the environmental impacts of mining these materials from mineral deposits.

During the past 15 yr, the global requirement for fertilizers has grown considerably, mainly due to demand by a larger and wealthier world population for more and higher-quality food. The demand and price for potash as a primary fertilizer ingredient have increased in tandem, because of the necessity to increase the quantity and quality of food production on the decreasing amount of available arable land. The primary sources of potash are evaporites, which occur mainly in marine salt basins and a few brine-bearing continental basins. World potash resources are large, but distribution is inequitable and not presently developed in countries where population and food requirements are large and increasing. There is no known substitute for potash in fertilizer, so knowledge of the world’s potash resources is critical for a sustainable future. The U.S. Geological Survey recently completed a global assessment of evaporite-hosted potash resources, which included a geographic information system–based inventory of known potash resources. This assessment included permissive areas or tracts for undiscovered resources at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Assessments of undiscovered potash resources were conducted for a number of the world’s evaporite-hosted potash basins. The data collected provide a major advance in our knowledge of global potash resources that did not exist prior to this study. The two databases include: (1) potash deposits and occurrences, and (2) potash tracts (basins that contain these deposits and occurrences and potentially undiscovered potash deposits). Data available include geology, mineralogy, grade, tonnage, depth, thickness, areal extent, and structure, as well as numerous pertinent references.

For hundreds of millions of years, nature has governed the biogeochemical cycles that have shaped the diverse geology and biology of Earth, but now, within a few kilometers of the surface, where the cycles are most complex, humans are mining and redistributing material at such a rapid rate that many elements of the periodic table are already in crucially short supply, or they are under threat to become so in the next few decades. It is not just water and fossil fuels that are affected by our consumption. Top-down and bottom-up analyses make clear that many of the accessible elemental resources of our future are now largely aboveground, stored in the familiar objects of our daily lives. In order to maintain supply lines to industry and to the dinner table, and to preserve our place in the biosphere, biogeochemical cycles must produce as much useful resource as they consume. Doing so will require cross-disciplinary scientists, designers, social communities, and visionary entrepreneurs working together to completely reframe our concepts of mining, consumption, human environments, and waste.

During 2004–2010, we studied the sand dunes of Oman using trenches, optically stimulated luminescence age dating, and modern wind data. This work was undertaken for Petroleum Development Oman to define modern analogs for ancient dune reservoirs that produce oil and gas in the sultanate. An unintended consequence of our work was the recognition of a band of high wind energy along the east coast of Oman that might be suitable for commercial wind power extraction, especially during the peak wind season of the Indian monsoon. Our geological work indicates that this basic wind regime has been in place for at least 200,000 yr and is thus not a fluke of present-day climate.

Water access, sanitation, and security remain key foci of international aid and development. However, the increasing interconnectedness of hydrologic and social systems can cause water initiatives to have unexpected and cascading effects across geographic scales. This presents new challenges for geoscientists working in water development, as distant and complex socioeconomic and environmental relationships, or “telecouplings,” may significantly influence the outcomes and sustainability of development projects. We explore these emerging concepts through a case study in Ethiopia, which receives over half of its annual budget from foreign development assistance and is currently experiencing rapid population growth and environmental change. Using examples from the literature, we identify water development aid initiatives in rural and urban settings and at local and national scales. We then situate these within the telecoupling framework to reveal underlying social-hydrological relationships. Our results indicate that water development is linking Ethiopia’s hydrology with geographically distant communities and markets and creating new and often unexpected flows of people, material, and capital. These are resulting in cascading impacts and cross-scale feedbacks among urbanization, geopolitics, and the water-food-energy nexus in East Africa. We conclude with a discussion of the strengths, limitations, and potential of the telecoupling framework for geoscientists and development practitioners.

Groundwater resources in Haiti are considered abundant, with greater than 2 billion cubic meters per year (2 × 10 9 m 3 /yr) of renewable resources and 56 billion cubic meters of reserves. However, groundwater is not available everywhere and many aquifers are often low yielding, discontinuous, or are at risk from saltwater intrusion, overexploitation, reduced recharge, and contamination. Economic development, population growth, and climate change are factors that will increase stress on groundwater resources. Sector leadership, capacity building mechanisms, integrated water policy, and a clear regulatory framework are urgently needed to manage, regulate, and protect Haiti’s groundwater resources to achieve long-term security. Accomplishing this requires technical support and practical references that summarize the groundwater resources and their vulnerabilities, complexities, and opportunities. This chapter includes a summary of knowledge, information, and experience to aid the development and management of Haiti’s groundwater resources, as well as provides an overview of its complex hydrogeology. Five broad hydrogeological environments are differentiated: (1) Unconsolidated alluvium accounts for 26% of Haiti’s land area—it includes a large portion of the country’s groundwater reserves and is the most exploited for irrigation, industry, and potable water; (2) interior sedimentary units account for 32% of Haiti’s land area and include up to 25% of the country’s groundwater reserves—springs from carbonate aquifers are significant sources of water supply throughout the country; (3) reef carbonate accounts for 6% of Haiti’s land area, with locally available coastal karst aquifer systems serving some of the most rural, driest, and impoverished areas of Haiti; (4) semiconsolidated units account for 21% of Haiti’s land area—their low groundwater potential limits rural and urban water use throughout the country; and (5) igneous bedrock accounts for 15% of Haiti’s land area—its discontinuous groundwater reserves are an important source of water in rural and mountainous areas.

Groundwater is the source of drinking water for ~1.4 million people in the Coastal Plain Province of Maryland (USA). In addition, groundwater is essential for commercial, industrial, and agricultural uses. Approximately 0.757 × 10 9 L d ‒1 (200 million gallons/d) were withdrawn in 2010. As a result of decades of withdrawals from the coastal plain confined aquifers, groundwater levels have declined by as much as 70 m (230 ft) from estimated prepumping levels. Other issues posing challenges to long-term groundwater sustainability include degraded water quality from both man-made and natural sources, reduced stream base flow, land subsidence, and changing recharge patterns (drought) caused by climate change. In Maryland, groundwater supply is managed primarily by the Maryland Department of the Environment, which seeks to balance reasonable use of the resource with long-term sustainability. The chief goal of groundwater management in Maryland is to ensure safe and adequate supplies for all current and future users through the implementation of appropriate usage, planning, and conservation policies. To assist in that effort, the geographic information system (GIS)–based Maryland Coastal Plain Aquifer Information System was developed as a tool to help water managers access and visualize groundwater data for use in the evaluation of groundwater allocation and use permits. The system, contained within an ESRI ArcMap desktop environment, includes both interpreted and basic data for 16 aquifers and 14 confining units. Data map layers include aquifer and confining unit layer surfaces, aquifer extents, borehole information, hydraulic properties, time-series groundwater-level data, well records, and geophysical and lithologic logs. The aquifer and confining unit layer surfaces were generated specifically for the GIS system. The system also contains select groundwater-quality data and map layers that quantify groundwater and surface-water withdrawals. The aquifer information system can serve as a pre- and postprocessing environment for groundwater-flow models for use in water-supply planning, development, and management. The system also can be expanded to include features that evaluate constraints to groundwater development, such as insufficient available drawdown, degraded groundwater quality, insufficient aquifer yields, and well-field interference. Ultimately, the aquifer information system is intended to function as an interactive Web-based utility that provides a broad array of information related to groundwater resources in Maryland’s coastal plain to a wide-ranging audience, including well drillers, consultants, academia, and the general public.

Inexpensive geophysical instruments can help meet a need for cost-effective siting of water wells in developing nations. We have developed resistivity, induced polarization, and seismic-refraction instruments that are useful in shallow hydrogeology studies. In addition, our free software can be used to interpret the data recorded by the instruments and produce predictions of subsurface lithologies. This entire suite of geophysical instruments, including a laptop computer for analysis and reports, can be assembled for less than US$600. It is hoped that trained indigenous well drillers and aid workers will use these instruments in support of their efforts to provide water to rural regions of the world that lack safe water.

The long-term success of water projects in water-stressed communities hinges not only on providing access to safe water, but also on equipping communities for sustainable resource management. Coupling research with education facilitates sustainability by growing local hydrogeologic knowledge and supporting prudent management. Adjusting management practices requires time, and it is helped through collaboration and trust between researchers and stakeholders. Research and education were integrated during an evaluation of groundwater resource sustainability and wastewater management practices at Restoration Gateway, an orphanage in northern Uganda. Basic hydrogeologic understanding was established through field work, staff interviews, and literature. An opportunity to collaborate with a visiting surveying and master planning team leveraged time spent on-site for greater results. Hydrologic education occurred formally and informally, through science lessons at the orphanage school and daily interactions with the Restoration Gateway population. Staff were interviewed regarding as-built designs, water usage, and wastewater management practices. Knowledge gained enabled researchers to make recommendations for preserving groundwater quantity and quality. Site-specific information was incorporated into a master plan for future development. Education efforts and trust gained through immersion in the life of Restoration Gateway increased awareness and acceptance regarding groundwater sustainability. In international work, it can be easy to focus on maximizing time for research and associated tasks. This case study presents ideas for spending time in local participation and education. Participation in the local community, involving them in research efforts, and building their hydrogeologic understanding improve the chances of recommendations being adopted and can foster long-term partnerships that enhance groundwater sustainability.