Submit Content (login required)
Last updated: 04/01/2010
The US Geological Survey (USGS) was established in 1879, just a few hours before the close of the 45th congress when President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the bill appropriating money for the sundry civil expenses that included a brief section establishing a new agency. The USGS was immediately charged with the responsibilities of studying the geological structure and evaluating the economic resources of the public domain.
As the Nation's largest water, earth, and biological science and civilian mapping agency, the USGS collects, monitors, analyzes, and provides scientific understanding about natural resource conditions, issues, and problems. The diversity of our scientific expertise enables us to carry out large-scale, multi-disciplinary investigations and provide impartial scientific information to resource managers, planners, and other customers.
We are an unbiased, multi-disciplinary science organization dedicated to working with others to provide the scientific understanding and technologies needed to support the sound management and conservation of our Nation's natural resources.
Credit: US Geological Survey
The USGS serves the Nation by providing reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters; manage water, biological, energy, and mineral resources; and enhance and protect our quality of life.
How We Are Organized
The USGS is organized with a Headquarters and Eastern Region facility in Reston, Virginia. Central Region and Western Region offices are located in Denver, Colorado, and Menlo Park, California, respectively. Thousands of other USGS employees are working in every State in the Nation.
The Policy Analysis and Science Assistance Branch (PASA)
Most resource management decisions involve the integrated use of biological, sociological, and economic information. Combining this information provides a more comprehensive basis for making effective resource management and conservation decisions. Toward this end, scientists in the Policy Analysis and Science Assistance Branch (PASA) provides unique capabilities in the USGS by leading projects that integrate social, behavioral, economic, and biological analyses in the context of human?natural resource interactions. Resource planners, managers, and policy makers in the U.S. Departments of the Interior (DOI) and Agriculture (USDA), State and local agencies, and international agencies use information from PASA studies to make informed natural-resource management and policy decisions. PASA scientists' primary functions are to:
In response to management and research issues associated with human-resource interactions PASA researchers apply traditional and state-of-the-art social science methods drawing from the fields of sociology, demography, economics, political science, communications, social psychology, and applied industrial organization psychology.
Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and various river basin commissions. Flood forecast maps are currently available online at 47 locations in four states on the NOAA Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service
PASA's mission is to integrate biological, social, and economic research so that resource managers can use the resulting information to make informed decisions and resolve resource management conflicts. The Role and functions of PASA:
Credit: The Policy Analysis and Science Assistance Branch (PASA)
Phadrea Ponds
U.S. Geological Survey Policy Analysis and Science Assistance Branch (PASA)
Fort Collins Science Center,
2150 Centre Ave.,
Building C
Fort Collins, CO 80526-8118
Office Phone: 970-226-9445
email: pondsp@usgs.gov