BUILDING INTERCONNECTIVITY AND CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY IN GEOSCIENCE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION AT THE PENNSYLVANIA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

As a governmental research organization, the Pennsylvania Geological Survey takes pride in being able to reach our audiences, maintaining relevancy and efficiency, while progressing and conveying our geological understanding to benefit the whole of Pennsylvania. Two of our major focuses have been geologic mapping and resource analysis. We have successfully kept up with advances in technology, changing priorities, and new geological knowledge with the addition of new scientists, support staff, and updated equipment and software. We have organized into five thematic sections: groundwater and environmental geology, stratigraphic studies, petroleum and subsurface geology, mineral resource analysis, and geologic and geographic information services. Traditional cartography has been supplemented with GIS techniques, pen-and-paper field mapping with ArcGIS Online-equipped tablets, lidar has aided surficial feature identification, and other areas of work have been greatly aided by technological advances.

These advances resulted in increased specialization of our staff scientists and increased specialization of job descriptions to meet the needs of our projects. After retirements and expansion efforts, half of our staff have been replaced over the last three years. We are still learning how to integrate all this new knowledge and experience into our mission to avoid siloing among our staff.

Our goal is to inspire true collaboration across disciplines. This type of staff-wide effort necessitates a mutual understanding of section specialties, abilities, and expectations. Broad cross-training among staff is enabling all our scientists to be lead researchers on team projects that capitalize on group talents. New efforts between our field mappers, GIS specialists, and geochemists have resulted in cross-section training on geochemistry instrumentation and procedures, improved fluency in GIS techniques in the office and during data collection, clearer workflows, more documentation of research efforts, and better writing and implementation of standard operating procedures for future training. We look forward to further integration, and we seek further ideas from the geoscience community on how to sustain these efforts.