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APPENDIXES
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Funding for Research in the
Hydrologic Sciences
BACKGROUND
In an effort to provide some context for its findings, conclusions,
and recommendations, the committee sought to consider and include
information in this report on the current (FY 1988), approximate lev-
els of funding for research in the hydrologic sciences. To accomplish
this, the staff conducted a survey of the agencies and departments of
the U.S. federal government that were expected to have some level of
research activity in the hydrologic sciences.
The agencies and departments were given the committee's work-
ing definitions of "hydrology"$ and "research"" and further informa-
tion on the scope of the committee's interests. They were asked to
provide basic information about their current research programs, in-
cluding approximate current levels of funding.
Specifically, the committee defined research in the hydrologic sci-
ences as the development of understanding about (1) the paths along
Hydrology the science concerned with the waters (solid, liquid, and vapor) of the
earth; their occurrence, circulation, and distribution; their chemical and physical prop-
erties; and their reaction with their environment, including their relation to living
things.
This definition was used in the survey, which was begun in the early stages of the
committee's work before it had adopted the more comprehensive definition of hydro-
logic science presented in Chapter 2.
"Research the development of understanding through the conceptualization and
testing of new ideas.
317
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318
APPENDIX A
which water moves on and in the land masses of the earth; (2) the
rates of movement along various paths; (3) the chemical, biological,
and physical character of the constituents transported by water; (4)
the controls on the rates of movement of and interactions among
water and its transported constituents imposed by the atmosphere,
the biosphere, and the oceans; and, conversely (5) the impacts on the
atmosphere, geosphere, and biosphere, caused by the presence or
absence of water in or on the land. While the committee recognized
that scientifically significant information can sometimes be generated
in project work, the agencies and departments were asked to exclude
from their responses project-related activity that was not of the type
that would be reported in the open scientific literature. This infor-
mation is generally unavailable and unknown to the scientific community.
The agencies were not asked for project details, but instead were
asked to attempt to classify their efforts to the extent possible accord-
ing to the eight contemporary categories of the hydrologic sciences
adopted by the committee (e.g., earth crust, climatic processes, living
communities, and so on). Further, the agencies were asked to indicate
what research was performed in-house by agency staff and otherwise.
SUMMARY OF INFORMATION PROVIDED
Presented in Table A.1 is a summary of agency responses to the
survey. Note that the table provides only total amounts of research
funding levels for the agencies surveyed (with the only breakdowns
by agency being the separation of in-house and out-of-house efforts)
and the approximate levels of funding by research category across
the government.
DISCUSSION
The total amount of funding reported by the federal agencies was
approximately $127 million. Of this amount, about $35 million went
to sponsor research conducted outside the funding agency. However,
not all of the $35 million left the federal sector some federal agencies
conducted research at the behest of their sister agencies, which consumed
a small amount of this "out-of-home" funding. A significant amount
of that research tabulated as "out-of-home" was also conducted at
the national laboratories. Discussions with representatives of the
federal agencies indicated that somewhat more than half of the remaining
$30 million was dedicated to research that directly supported the
operational missions of the funding agencies. Therefore, approximately
$10 million to $15 million (about 10 percent) was made available to
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APPENDIX A
319
the nonfederal sector for research that was not necessarily problem
driven. For purposes of comparison, in FY 1988 the National Science
Foundation provided "unfettered" research funding to the atmospheric-
and ocean-science academic communities of $95 million and $135 million,
respectively.
To provide additional perspective, the total federal budget for ba-
sic research in FY 1990 approximated $10 billion. Therefore, the total
amount of funding for research in the hydrologic sciences (about
$127 million) is about 1 percent of the total federal expenditures for
basic research.
Although the committee believes that the majority of hydrologic
research is either conducted or sponsored by the federal agencies
surveyed, additional research in the hydrologic sciences may be car-
ried out under the aegis of states, industries, and private foundations.
A more exhaustive search may have produced a slightly larger total.
Discussions with the federal representatives also indicated that they
had difficulty in accurately partitioning the research funds that they
managed into the eight categories of the hydrologic sciences adopted
by the committee. Therefore Table A.1 does not report funding by
agency for the individual categories, but instead indicates with a symbol
(~) that an agency conducts or funds hydrologic science in a given
category. In spite of the lack of accuracy of the individually reported
numbers, it is interesting to note that the two categories receiving the
largest amounts of funding were "Earth Crust" and "Chemical Processes."
These categories encompass about one-half of the total, which is not
surprising in light of the current federal interest in ground water
contamination.
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320
APPENDIX A
TABLE A.1 Federal Funding for Research in the Hydrologic Sciences
(figures in $ million for Fiscal Year 1988)
o
.
u, ~ c'
~ us Lo _
O ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ 0 ~ / ~ ~ S ~ ~ ~ U C
I O I O I O I O I O I O I O
TOTAL
FUNDING 1.2 2.3 48.3 4.2 0.2 0.2
Earth Crust
2
Land Forms
3
Climatic
Processes
4
Weather
Processes
5
Surficial
Processes
6
L. .
1vmg
Communities
7
Chemical
Processes
8
Additional
Topics
.
NOTE: I = In-house
0 = Extramural
6.3 7.9 5.8 0.8
· · · ~
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APPENDIX A
321
o _
._
._ ~ ~ _ ~ o
s ~ _
=. E —~ E ~ y ~ ~ o I E ' ~
I O I O I O I O I O I O I O I O TOTAL
0.7 1.9 1.1 8.7 9.5 5.0 21.1 1.1 92.1 34.9 127.0
· · 16.0 6.7 22.7
.
.
15.2 2.3 17.5
~ · 4.8 1.4 6.2
6.0 1.7 7.7
e 4.6 2.8
· ~ ~ ~
14.8 10.4 25.2
29.2 9.1 38.3
1.5 0.5 2.0
Representative terms from entire chapter:
agencies surveyed
