San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Shutdown taking toll on science research
Climate, wildfire studies among many disrupted
Writing scientific reports can wait, says ecologist Malcolm North with the U.S. Forest Service. But his applications for funding can’t.
As one of the thousands of federal workers who have been furloughed during the government shutdown, North is worried that he won’t be able to seek out the money necessary to continue his research on California wildfires. He’s studying how to keep fires from turning into deadly conflagrations, and his deadline for submitting a grant request is the end of the month.
“We’re really trying to go after this question of how to reduce fuel loads in the forest with prescribed burns,” said North, who wants to tap a new pot of state financing for fire research. “But at this point, I can’t participate anymore in the grant writing. If we don’t make the grant deadlines, I really have no money to work with.”
Much of the U.S. government’s sprawling scientific establishment has ground to a halt.
The lapse in federal funding due to disagreement in Washington over President Trump’s proposed border wall has meant that many employees are kept from doing their jobs. Besides freezing their paychecks, the result is that the crucial work of scientists on such subjects as wildfires, as well as water, climate, space exploration and more, is not getting done or soon won’t be.
“The partial federal government shutdown is disrupting and delaying research projects and leading to increased uncertainty about the prospects for new research,” said Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former New Jersey congressman, in an email.
The budget stalemate between Congress and the White House, which is now in its third week, affects numerous federal agencies engaged in scientific endeavors. NASA has furloughed about 15,000 of its roughly 17,000 employees, including more than 1,000 at Ames Research Center in Mountain View. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has sent home about half of its 11,000 workers, including many at its coastal offices in California. The U.S. Geological Survey has excused most of its 8,000 employees, including several at its regional headquarters in Menlo Park.
The departments of Energy, Defense and Health and Human Services are not affected by the shutdown since their budgets have already been approved, and employees at shuttered agencies whose work is deemed “essential” also remain on the job. The USGS continues to send alerts about earthquakes and tsunamis. NOAA’s National Weather Service is still issuing weather forecasts. NASA continues to man its space missions.
Work that’s not getting done is considered “nonessential,” but its absence is still having an impact on American livelihoods, if not risking people’s lives, said Jay Famiglietti, former senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
His onetime colleagues at NASA, he said, are not making their weekly contributions to the U.S. Drought Monitor, for example, resulting in a degradation of the weekly drought maps that local and state governments rely on for making decisions about water supplies.
“Most federal water research in the U.S. is now at a standstill, which is inconvenient at best, and dangerous at worst,” said Famiglietti, who is now the executive director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan.
Famiglietti is the coorganizer of a workshop for the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine in Washington on aquifer recharge this month, but he doesn’t know if the event will proceed, because many of those scheduled to attend are with NASA, NOAA and the USGS and they may not be coming.
The federal government has already directed scientists to cancel travel plans for this week’s annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society. The conference, which is being held in Phoenix, is the world’s largest gathering of weather and climate researchers. Typically, hundreds of federal employees speak at the event.
The American Astronomical Society is also expecting numerous no-shows at its annual meeting this week in Seattle.
An untold number of smaller scientific gatherings already have been canceled because of the government shutdown, including a field tour of San Diego County’s Cedar Fire burn scar that was scheduled for this weekend. The event was organized by the U.S. Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service to help improve the scientific understanding of fire behavior and its impacts.
“This means that (scientists) cannot share their most recent research,” said Famiglietti, who described the many meetings affected by the government shutdown as vital to the scientific community. “It means that they will not be staying up to speed on the latest advances in forecasting, or engaging in important discussions with colleagues and collaborators.”
In laboratories and at field research plots across the nation, some science has simply stopped, or soon will, because of the shutdown.
Jon Jarvis, who was director of the National Park Service under President Barack Obama, said that monitoring sites set up 20 years ago to make observations of soil, water, air and wildlife in federal parks are unlikely to continue operating.
“It’s deeply concerning that you’re missing this wisdom,” said Jarvis, who now is the executive director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Parks, People and Biodiversity. “You detect things like mercury in the water or the disappearance of amphibians . ... You can’t say you can come back in March and measure it. It’s different then.”
One immediate concern in Yosemite National Park is the lack of staff monitoring black bears, say Jarvis and others. With trash collection hampered by the government shutdown, bears that have not yet hibernated for the winter may try to fatten up on the rubbish, and increasingly come into contact with people.
Ocean research along the West Coast is also being curtailed. NOAA’s ship Reuben Lasker, scheduled to leave San Diego on Monday for a two-week science expedition, may be among the first casualties.
A crew of federal, state and university researchers makes the quarterly voyage into the Pacific to track ocean conditions and marine life, helping inform fisheries management and climate science. But the boat is unlikely to leave the dock because of the budget impasse.
“It’s a really valuable time series” of data, said Brice Semmens, an associate professor of marine biology at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and director of California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations. “It’s been going on for 70 years. When you drop a year or you drop a season, it can have a huge impact on the information in the series.”
Work that’s not tied to the government, but reliant on federal money, also is threatened by the shutdown.
The National Science Foundation, for example, one of the country’s top funders of scientific research in academia, has closed its offices in Alexandria, Va. It’s expected to discontinue grant payments and consideration of new grant proposals until the government budget stalemate is over.
Tessa Hill, a resident professor and researcher at UC Davis-Bodega Marine Laboratory, said even scientists who don’t get federal money are dependent on the government.
Only last week, when Hill returned to work after the holidays, did she recognize the full extent of the shutdown’s impact, starting with not being able to retrieve data off of an unmaintained NOAA website.
“The field of oceanography and climate science is very integrated between universities and the government,” she said. “Essentially everywhere I turned, either I was trying to work on research, plan my class or call a colleague. I realized (how) reliant I am on these federal agencies.”
“Most federal water research in the U.S. is now at a standstill, which is inconvenient at best, and dangerous at worst.” Jay Famiglietti, former senior water scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory