Abstract This short article provides my views – and not necessarily views that are shared by the British Geological Survey, where I was executive director from 2006–19, or by the Earth science community in general. I have outlined some of the trends that I see as important for the geosciences, largely from a solid-Earth perspective. I stress that fundamental discovery science in this sector must be, and will largely continue to be, led by the academic community but that Earth sciences research needs to be more focused on problem solving rather than refining our knowledge of the problems that face the Earth system. Academics and government laboratories have distinct but complementary roles in the pursuit of discovery and in applied geoscience research and training of geoscientists.

Abstract Geological Survey Ireland is a division of a government department and has typical origins as a geological survey founded to map the nation's natural resources. In recent years it has changed focus from more traditional geological mapping activities and methods to carrying out major projects of national societal value using, and developing, the latest technology. Programmes include one of the world's largest seabed surveys INFOMAR, a national groundwater mapping and protection programme, and modern geophysical and geochemical mapping under its Tellus programme. In addition the Survey has developed a successful geoscience research programme and a business cluster, Geoscience Ireland. By focusing on stakeholder engagement, effective communication of the value of geoscience and maintaining scientific rigour, geological surveys can be as relevant today as when they were founded.

Abstract The spatial relationship between different rock types and relevant structural features is an important aspect in the characterization of ore-forming systems. Our knowledge about this geological architecture is often captured in 3D structural geological models. Multiple methods exist to generate these models, but one important problem remains: structural models often contain significant uncertainties. In recent years, several approaches have been developed to consider uncertainties in geological prior parameters that are used to create these models through the use of stochastic simulation methods. However, a disadvantage of these methods is that there is no guarantee that each simulated model is geologically reasonable – and that it forms a valid representation in the light of additional data (e.g. geophysical measurements). We address these shortcomings here with an approach for the integration of structural geological and geophysical data into a framework that explicitly considers model uncertainties. We combine existing implicit structural modelling methods with novel developments in probabilistic programming in a Bayesian framework. In an application of these concepts to a gold-bearing greenstone belt in Western Australia, we show that we are able to significantly reduce uncertainties in the final model by additional data integration. Although the final question always remains whether a predicted model suite is a suitable representation of accuracy or not, we conclude that our application of a Bayesian framework provides a novel quantitative approach to addressing uncertainty and optimization of model parameters. Supplementary material: Trace plots for selected parameters and plots of calculated Geweke statistics are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3899719

Abstract This book is the final product of the Circum-Arctic Lithosphere Evolution (CALE) project. The project’s ultimate goal is to link the onshore and offshore geology in order to develop a self-consistent set of constraints for the opening of the Amerasia Basin. The circum-Arctic is divided into seven regions, each with its own research team; the teams included geophysicists and geologists working together to integrate geological and geophysical data, from onshore to offshore. This work is summarized in the 18 papers contained in this volume.