Executive Summaries

CSD Community Science Planning

Drilling and coring are essential tools in Earth and environmental sciences, opening new avenues across various scientific fields. These techniques enable diverse scientific discoveries, in topics related to the U.S. energy transition, ecology of the deep biosphere, Critical Zone processes, the deep subsurface biosphere, Earth-life system interactions (paleoclimate, paleobiology, other paleorecords), early Earth system establishment and evolution, archeology and hominin evolution, magmatic systems, plate tectonics, geothermal dynamics, hydrology, fault mechanics and earthquakes, and others.

Drilling and coring are the primary means of directly accessing materials at depth below the Earth’s surface. This provides fresh sample material from deeper locations where subsurface processes, fluids, solids, and biota can be observed and analyzed or monitored in real time through instrumented borehole observatories. They also provide an irreplaceable mechanism for validating surface-based observations and models, which is especially significant for working toward energy transition solutions.

Considerable progress has been made toward community goals defined in past science planning efforts. Our ongoing community science planning process is enabling the CSD community to orient toward new opportunities and articulate science-driven needs in the coming years. Over the past few months, domain-specific working groups met virtually to produce high-level executive summaries that articulate the scientific vision and needs of their community. Continued efforts are working toward fleshing out short manuscripts before the Integration Summit in October 2024. During this workshop representatives from each working group will present their community's vision, document common themes, and integrate objectives to a common framework that can be used to advance community goals.

Scientific drilling and coring are complex operations that require collaboration among researchers and students from various disciplines. These operations demand substantial resources from funding agencies, often requiring multiple funding proposals to meet budget requirements. The best outcomes are achieved when the scientific community directs its intellectual, physical, and financial resources towards the highest-priority targets and frameworks.

The CSD Facility supports project-specific activities and realization of the consensus priorities developed by the drilling and coring communities. The CSD Facility Community Science Planning Process serves to a) orient and organize community activity, b) prioritize facility resource and development planning, and c) prepare funding agencies for proposals that enable the necessary components of project implementation. The executive summaries produced by the discipline-specific working groups explicitly identify and articulate these priorities on behalf of the research communities by identifying the highest-priority science questions and resources required to address these questions.

Working Group Executive Summaries

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