December 4, 1997

The largest grant, worth $77,868, comes from the National Science Foundation. It will allow scientists from the UGS to define the hunter-gatherer antecedents to agriculture in northern China by investigating ancient weather and environmental records of a region that has marked similarities to the Great Basin of North America. While much is known about the hunter-gatherer antecedents here, little is known about that area of the world. This study is part of a continuing research project which seeks to compare the two areas to determine ways climatic change affects people in environmentally similar, but historically different, areas of the world.

It is the first time the NSF has awarded a grant to the UGS. Archaeologist David Madsen, a senior scientist with the Environmental Sciences Program of the UGS, is the primary author of the proposal and will be the principal investigator on the project. He will be making his seventh research-related visit to China. Co-investigators are from China's Ningxia Archaeological Institute.

Madsen is also the principal investigator on a $35,000 one-year project aimed at defining the Gilbert Shoreline and Old River Bed deltas on Dugway Proving Grounds of western Utah. The study is being done in cooperation with Professor Jack Oviatt of the Department of Geology at the University of Kansas.

The Old River flowed into ancient Lake Bonneville when early peoples first entered the region around 10,000 years ago. The study will be used to help managers locate sites on the U.S. Army base that supported the earliest human inhabitants of this region. Madsen is already leading an effort in cooperation with the Army to study Camels Back Cave in the same area. The cave is an extraordinary resource that contains evidence of human occupation dating back at least 7,500 years.

Finally, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the UGS a $20,000 contract to test "the creation, operation, and maintenance of a digitized repository for the National Pipeline Mapping System." John Hanson will be the project geologist on the contract.

The project is being managed by the transportation department's Research and Special Programs Administration's Office of Pipeline Safety. The OPS is responsible for administering "a national regulatory program to assure the safe and environmentally sound transportation of natural gas, liquefied natural gas, and hazardous liquids by pipeline," according to the OPS. The pilot project involving the UGS will look at various mapping alternatives. The goal is to create a method of housing and managing pipeline information for all states, with individual states responsible for their information but linked to the NPMS for maximum cost- and management-efficiency.

The UGS has extensive experience in digital pipeline mapping. In 1994, the Survey produced a digital pipeline map of Utah that showed oil and natural gas (gathering, transmission, and distribution) products, carbon dioxide, and phosphate pipelines; pipeline diameters to within 2 inches; and pipeline operators. The Survey also manages geospatial databases using computerized geographical information systems, and has access to data pertaining to pipeline safety, such as seismic vulnerability, Quaternary faults, wetlands, landslide potential, and other environmental concerns.