Summary: People invest in new geoscience, as well as ensuring that published information will be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR), to yield energy, materials, water, safety, infrastructure design, and an understanding of Earth and its life. Included are research, which is conceptual, mapping, which is spatial, monitoring, which is temporal, and modeling, which assembles the foregoing, to facilitate management. Mapping is an essential service that is directly and indirectly required by all, as multiple resolution, updated systematic mapping for a jurisdiction. We require ongoing mapping of meteorology and climatology, earth surface features, elevation, underground structures, bathymetry, soil mapping, and geological mapping of sediment and rock. For geology, the forthcoming century seems likely to be a time of concurrent commitment to digital publications, as well as their assembly as evergreen seamless databases to support digital twins, which are indefinitely maintained dynamic models such as groundwater models that incorporate monitoring and support management.

Biography: Harvey Thorleifson did a Masters thesis on Lake Agassiz in Manitoba, and a PhD on Hudson Bay at the University of Colorado. He was at the Geological Survey of Canada for nearly two decades, and he was President of the Geological Association of Canada. He has been a U Professor since 2003, and was State Geologist of Minnesota for two decades. He now leads the International Union of Geological Sciences Commission for Geoscience Information.