ment, global change, water availability and watershed management, and pasture, forage, and rangeland systems.¹³ The Forest Service, which manages public forests, grasslands, and ecosystems, conducts research and development projects in watershed science, landscape management, and soil research, among others, and provides cooperative support for grants awarded under the NSF program Coupled Natural and Human Systems (see also Chapter 4).

The USDA supports external research through cooperative research agreements and competitive grants and also supports various online resources to provide information, forecasts, and databases for the public on various agricultural topics.¹⁴ Development of online mapping tools has allowed researchers to access various soil, agricultural, and land-use datasets in geographically referenced map coordinate systems.

Church, M. 2008. Presentation to Committee on Challenges and Opportunities in Earth Surface Processes. Washington, D.C., March 17.

Larsen, M. 2008. Presentation to Committee on Challenges and Opportunities in Earth Surface Processes. Washington, D.C., March 17.

National Research Council (NRC). 2007a. Earth Science Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 456 pp.

NRC, 2007b. Assessment of the NASA Applied Sciences Program. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 160 pp.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 2008. Submitted to the committee, March 14. On file at the National Academies Public Access Records Office.