The Modified Mercalli intensity scale measures the effects of an earthquake at a given location. This is in contrast with the seismic magnitude usually reported for an earthquake.
The politicization of science for political gain occurs when government, business, or advocacy groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted. The politicization of science may also negatively affect academic and scientific freedom, and as a result it is considered taboo to mix politics with science. Historically, groups have conducted various campaigns to promote their interests in defiance of scientific consensus, and in an effort to manipulate public policy.
James Francis Reilly II is an American geologist, retired astronaut, and honorary United States Marshal who served as the 17th Director of the United States Geological Survey from 2018 to 2021. He flew on three Space Shuttle missions with the NASA Astronaut Corps: STS-89, STS-104 and STS-117.
Jeffrey C. Wynn is a research geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). He is currently based in the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, WA, one of the five USGS volcano observatories in the United States .
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people. AGU's activities are focused on the organization and dissemination of scientific information in the interdisciplinary and international fields within the Earth and space sciences. The geophysical sciences involve four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences. The organization's headquarters is located on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.
The 1933 Long Beach earthquake took place on March 10 at south of downtown Los Angeles. The epicenter was offshore, southeast of Long Beach, California, on the Newport–Inglewood Fault. The earthquake had a magnitude estimated at 6.4 , and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). Damage to buildings was widespread throughout Southern California. It resulted in 115 to 120 fatalities and an estimated $40 million worth of property damage, equivalent to $941 million in 2023. The majority of the fatalities resulted from people running out of buildings exposing themselves to the falling debris.
The question of whether to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been an ongoing political controversy in the United States since 1977. As of 2017, Republicans have attempted to allow drilling in ANWR almost fifty times, finally being successful with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
Marcia Kemper McNutt is an American geophysicist and the 22nd president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the United States.
Yucca Mountain is a mountain in Nevada, near its border with California, approximately 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Las Vegas. Located in the Great Basin, Yucca Mountain is east of the Amargosa Desert, south of the Nevada Test and Training Range and in the Nevada National Security Site. It is the site of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which is currently identified by Congressional law as the nation's spent nuclear waste storage facility. However, while licensure of the site through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is ongoing, political maneuvering led to the site being de-funded in 2010.
The Biological Resources Discipline (BRD) is a program of the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Its stated task is to work with other stakeholders to provide the scientific understanding and technologies needed to support the sound management and conservation of the United States' biological resources.
Thomas Brennan Nolan was an American geologist who was director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) from 1956 to 1965. The mineral nolanite is named in his honor and he was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He was generally known as Tom Nolan.
William Thomas Pecora II was an American geologist who served as 8th Director of the U.S. Geological Survey and later as Under Secretary of the Interior. Pecora had a successful career in both scientific and athletic spheres—he completed in fencing at the 1936 Summer Olympics, and during his lifetime was elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He was an early figure in what is now the Landsat program, and the William T. Pecora Award for remote sensing is named after him.
Flask Glacier, is a gently-sloping glacier, 25 nautical miles long, flowing east from Bruce Plateau to enter Scar Inlet between Daggoo Peak and Spouter Peak in Graham Land, Antarctica. The lower reaches of this glacier were surveyed and photographed by the Falklands Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) in 1947. The entire glacier was photographed by the Falkland Islands and Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition in 1955–56, and mapped by the FIDS in 1957. It was named by the UK Antarctic Place-names Committee after the third mate on the Pequod in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or, The White Whale.
Michael Lee Connor is an American politician, lawyer and engineer. He has served as the United States Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works since November 2021, and served as the United States Deputy Secretary of the Interior from 2014 to 2017, among other positions in United States Department of the Interior.
David Longly Bernhardt is an American lawyer who served as the 53rd United States Secretary of the Interior from 2019 to 2021 in the administration of Donald Trump. He previously was a shareholder at the Colorado law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where he was an oil and energy industry lobbyist and natural resources attorney. He began working for the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) in 2001, and served as the department's solicitor from 2006 to 2009 and deputy secretary from 2017 to 2019.
Andrew R. Wheeler is an American attorney who served as the 15th administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2019 to 2021. He served as the deputy administrator from April to July 2018, and served as the acting administrator from July 2018 to February 2019. He has been a senior advisor to Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin since March 2022. He previously worked in the law firm Faegre Baker Daniels, representing coal magnate Robert E. Murray and lobbying against the Obama administration's environmental regulations. Wheeler served as chief counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and to the chairman U.S. senator James Inhofe, prominent for his rejection of climate change. Wheeler is a critic of limits on greenhouse gas emissions and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Benjamin Huberman is an American science advisor who formerly served as the acting director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and acting Science Advisor to the President under President Ronald Reagan.
David Applegate is an American academic who has served as director of the United States Geological Survey since 2022. He is also a professor at the University of Utah.
David Jay Wald is a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) in Golden, Colorado. He is an affiliated faculty member at the Colorado School of Mines, and served as the editor-in-chief of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's (EERI) journal, Earthquake Spectra, from 2018–2022. He also served on the Southern California Earthquake Center Science Planning Committee, 2014–2020.
