GSA Position Statement:
Integrating Geoscience with Sustainable Land-Use Management

This position statement: (1) summarizes the consensus view of GSA regarding integration of geoscience into land-use management; (2) provides information to policy makers and land managers showing the vital contributions geoscientists can make to strong and effective policies for sustainable land use; and (3) encourages geoscientists to participate in land-use decision making at local, regional, state, and national levels.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Geoscientists are integral for making effective management decisions about protecting land and natural resources.

• To effectively address natural and human-induced hazards, natural resource availability, and environmental issues, government agencies at local, state, national, and international levels should integrate geoscience information into land-use planning.
• To improve the scientific basis for land-use decisions, public investments in geoscience research should be increased.
• To reduce potential risk and liability to human lives and the built environment in areas of natural or anthropogenic hazards, reliable geoscience data and information should be available for policy makers, private developers, land managers, individuals, and community groups.
• To enable the public understanding of land-use decision making, easy-to-comprehend geoscience information should be available, especially in vulnerable ecosystems and areas susceptible to natural hazards.

Rationale

Land generates most of humanity's resources vital to functioning communities and society, including food, freshwater, building materials, and energy and mineral resources. Land-use policies and practices directly impact our planet's water, air, and climate. These natural systems are closely interlinked both in their mutual, complex interactions and in their impacts on us.

Uninformed land use practices have high potential to create new hazards (e.g., dam failure) and increase risk in areas such as floodplains and coastal areas that are already susceptible to hazards. Land stewardship is critical for the needs of future generations, and geoscientists play a key role in guiding wise land-use policy and practice.

The land surface is culturally significant to many and provides aesthetic and recreational value to society. It also affects the quality and amount of water delivered to streams, aquifers, lakes, and coastal waters which meet the needs of communities, municipalities, industry, and agriculture. These waters support transportation, power generation, cultural traditions, recreation, food resources, and sustain natural freshwater and marine ecosystems. Uncontaminated land surfaces help preserve the quality of our water resources, while physical features such as dunes and marshes protect communities from storm surges and tides.

The land surface also affects air quality. Air quality is determined by interactions between natural and human activities on Earth's surface and the atmosphere. Examples include dust produced via agriculture, construction, resource extraction, smoke produced via forest fires, and industrial pollutants. These airborne particulates can degrade air quality far from sources as they travel long distances on global wind currents.

Changes in land use can benefit or endanger the current integrity and future availability of Earth's vital resources and ecosystems. Land-use involves but is not limited to:

• agriculture, ranching, logging, resource extraction, industrial activity, river management (such as dams, reservoirs, levees, and canals for water diversion and storage);
• infrastructure development (such as roads, highways, and pipelines);
• groundwater withdrawals and recharge, waste disposal, and urban/suburban development; and
• housing, cultural use, commercial land use, and community development.

These land use activities have the ability to impact earth systems at all scales. Specifically, use of land can affect soil stability and erosion, hydrologic and biogeochemical cycles and processes, as well as the structure of ecosystems, such as croplands, forests, wetlands, streams, shorelines, and estuaries and bays. Land-use practice can also mitigate or intensify risks of natural hazards.

Human activities continually interact with Earth's natural processes, and expanding populations are increasingly impacting Earth's systems. Diverse natural and anthropogenic changes to land resources require multifaceted and interdisciplinary land-management decisions. The geosciences provide an understanding of potential short- and long-term effects of past, present, and future land-use practices on natural resources. Conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, protection of human health and safety, and sustainable socioeconomic growth require integration of geoscience information with land-use planning.

Adopted May 2009; revised October 2014, May 2019, February 2024.

Opportunities for GSA and its Members to Help Implement Recommendations

Geosciences uniquely inform land-use issues because geoscientists address the origin, character, distribution, availability, vulnerability, and connectivity of natural resources. Ensuring sustainable resources requires land-use planning and management decisions based on (1) an understanding of the impacts, both immediate and long term, on natural resources that sustain communities; and (2) stewardship of natural resources to ensure the needs of future generations are protected by avoiding over-allocation, chronic depletion, and/or degradation of those resources. Geoscience studies and data also help decision makers optimize resource use while minimizing unacceptable environmental impacts. Finally, as the human population grows, demand for land and associated resources will increase, as will the need for more science to inform land-management decisions in a sustainable manner and develop strategies for mitigating unacceptable and irreversible changes.

• GSA members should seek opportunities to communicate the value of integrating geoscience with sustainable natural resources management to governing bodies at all levels, government agencies, indigenous communities, private developers, economic development corporations, professional land-use planners, chambers of commerce, and other local decision makers.
• GSA members are encouraged to work with print, digital, social, and broadcast media to promote the value of science in addressing critical land-use issues.
• GSA members who participate in land-use and associated natural resources planning are encouraged to share their experiences at GSA meetings and with GSA's Public Policy Department. Local examples of geoscience contributions to land-use planning are essential to this effort.
• GSA members must clearly communicate with decision makers that a lack of geoscience information has often resulted in costly adverse land-use activities, worsened the consequences of natural disasters, and allowed for needless human-induced disasters.
• GSA members should identify legislation that affects land use and alert GSA's Geology and Public Policy Committee, the Geology and Society Division, and GSA's Associated Societies so they can help improve the scientific basis for land-management decisions and bring this Position Statement to the attention of lawmakers.
• GSA should raise awareness of land-use issues by publishing articles in popular outlets on the links between geoscience, land-use planning, and sustainable resource management decisions.
• GSA should sponsor symposia or town-hall meetings, particularly at the GSA sectional or annual meetings, that bring together geoscientists from land management agencies, the U.S. Geological Survey, universities, and private industry to share ideas about how geoscience has been and can be successfully integrated into land use and natural resources policies.