Good afternoon. My name is Megan Lowry. I'm a media officer with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Thank you for joining us this afternoon for a webinar on the report that was just released this morning titled, A Vision for NSF Earth Sciences 2020-2030 Earth and Time. You can now download a copy of the report and other supporting materials at www.nap.edu and that URL is also on the first slide of our presentation. A recording of this webinar will be available in the coming weeks, also on the National Academy's website. And you can follow the conversation about this report on Twitter at hashtag Earth in Time. For those of you not familiar with the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, we are private non-profit institutions that provide independent objective analysis and advice to the U.S. to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. For each requested study, panel members are chosen for their expertise and experience and serve pro bono to carry out the study statement of task. The reports that result from the study represent the consensus view of the committee and must undergo external peer review before they are released, as did this report. So I have with me several members of the committee to discuss the report, but before I introduce them I just want to go over a few reminders. Please note that this webinar is scheduled to last one hour. We'll start off with a presentation summarizing the report by committee members, and then we'll open it up to any questions you all may have. Simply click the Q and A. Jim Yoder, chair of the committee and Dean Emeritus of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Greg Borosa, Stanford University, Andrea Dutton, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michael Foote, University of Chicago, George Carroll's University of Arizona, Kate Huntington, University of Washington, Donna Whitney, University of Minnesota, and with that I'll turn it over to Dr. Yoder. Good afternoon everybody. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to our presentation on our report, which we are very proud. Six committee members will summarize our report today, and I thank them for the time they've spent putting together their presentations. Their presentations were also based on the entire committee report, and so all the committee members have some sort of input on this. The 40-minute presentation pretty much follows the organization of our report, and we will be happy to take questions and comments at the end. So let's get started. Michael Foote is next. Unmute yourself, Michael. Let's try that again. I'm unmuted. Could I have the next slide, please? Thanks, Jim. So before we begin, I'd like to introduce a few terms we'll be using, as you can see from this organizational chart. NSF is the National Science Foundation. GO is the directorate for geosciences, one of seven directorates within NSF. There are four divisions within the GO directorate, covering ocean sciences, atmospheric and geospace sciences, polar programs, and the focus of this committee, Earth Sciences, or EAR. Next slide, please. EAR asked the national academies to develop a vision for earth sciences in the coming decade. The committee organized by the academies was charged with three tasks. First, to identify a concise set of high priority science questions to advance earth science research and potentially transform our understanding of the earth. Second, to assess earth science infrastructure. This task involved three components, to identify the infrastructure needed to advance the priority questions, to discuss current infrastructure supported by EAR, and to analyze gaps between existing infrastructure and what will be needed to address the priority questions. Next slide, please. The third task was to discuss partnerships with other agencies within and beyond NSF that could maximize EAR's ability to address the priority questions. In addition, the academies convened a workshop to address future management models for geodetic and seismological capabilities. The workshop proceedings were released in September 2019. Next slide, please. The committee reflected a breadth of expertise in earth sciences, including physical, chemical, and biological perspectives, focus on earth's interior, surface processes, and climate, and laboratory computational and field-based approaches. Next slide, please. In this presentation, we will address a vision for earth science in the coming decade, lay out the details of the science priority questions developed in response to our first task, assess infrastructure needed to address these questions, including possible new infrastructural initiatives, and discuss partnerships that could help EAR leverage its capabilities. Next slide, please. EAR can further its mission to support basic science by considering the earth as an integrated system whose components interact on vast scales of time and space from milliseconds to billions of years, and from nanometers to thousands of kilometers. The statement that we need all hands on deck reflects the integration of sub-disciplines as well as the urgent societal relevance of many of the priority questions. Realizing this vision will depend on scientists who are intellectually and demographically diverse, who are individual investigators as well as those participating in larger research teams and networks, and who have expertise in analytical, computational, and field-based methods. Next slide, please. To identify science priority questions, the committee analyzed community perspectives in a number of ways, including review of white papers and other literature, town halls and listening sessions at national meetings of earth science organizations, and a community-wide questionnaire. The committee honed in on a small set of priority questions that are both of fundamental importance in earth science and poised for progress and transformative impact in the coming decade. Next slide, please. Many of the priority questions reflect earth as an integrated system, technological advances that enable new observations and computational models, and the societal relevance of basic research. Progress on the priority questions will depend on strong core programs and on research agendas driven by individual investigators and groups. We emphasize that the priority questions are not meant to exclude other areas of research. Basic research will always have the potential to lead to unanticipated transformative results. I'll now turn it over to Greg Baroza, who will begin a more detailed discussion of the science priority questions. Next slide, please. Great. Thank you, Michael. So shown here are the 12 questions determined by the committee to be poised for major advances over the next decade. The questions are arranged roughly in order from Earth's core to the clouds and embrace several themes. Questions span geological time, connections between Earth's surface and interior, the co-evolution of geology and life, and the effects of human activities. The questions themselves connect to one another, highlighting the many ways in which different components of the Earth's system connect and interact. So now we'll give a brief overview of each question. Next slide, please. First magnetic field is essential for life because it keeps the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere. It's an ancient feature measured in rocks over 3 billion years old, yet it's changeable, reversing polarity a few times every million years. It also changes in strength on human time scales, which impacts navigation and satellite communications. The field is produced by fluid motion through a geodynamo in Earth's liquid metal outer core and requires tremendous energy to maintain. So where does that energy come from? A consensus has emerged that it arises primarily from the freezing of the fluid outer core onto the solid inner core. However, extrapolation back in time indicates the inner core is less than a billion years old. So if not via inner core freezing, how was the magnetic field produced over most of Earth's history? Would such a change in driving mechanisms be detectable in the rock record? This leads to our first priority question. How is Earth's internal magnetic field generated? Next slide, please. As humans explore the solar system, plate tectonics has emerged as a feature unique to Earth. Plate tectonics frames nearly all geological phenomena from the crust to the deep interior and provides basic controls on Earth's atmosphere and oceans. It underpins efforts to understand the physical processes that determine the surface deformation and magnetism responsible for geohazards, the storage and evolution of elements critical to biological activity in modern society, the evolution of life and biogeochemical cycles, long-term climate change, and the extent of flooding due to present-day sea level rise. Although it provides this unifying framework, we lack a fundamental understanding of when plate tectonics developed on the Earth, how it developed, and why it developed here and not elsewhere, leading to our second fundamental question, when, why, and how did plate tectonics start? Next slide, please. Certain elements have been dramatically redistributed in the Earth at different times in its history, resulting in major changes in the composition of the atmosphere and oceans with consequences for the evolution of life. Minerals that host these elements are transformed by processes related to fluids, to melts, and to deformation, and we need to understand these processes to understand the global cycling system, including how life and minerals have co-evolved. Recent work has clarified the cycling of water and carbon in the Earth, including mechanisms and time scales of cycling between surface and deep reservoirs. The next decade, we'll see innovative research on elements that are critical for the technological, energy, and other needs of society, as well as for creating the conditions for planetary habitability, which leads to the urgent priority question, how are critical elements distributed in Earth? Next slide, please. Earthquakes are a sudden onset geohazard that pose a profound and ongoing threat to lives and property. They are understood to occur as sudden motions of the Earth caused by rapid slip on planar faults. However, recent observations have revealed that earthquake rupture is geometrically and dynamically complex at all scales, and that Earth deforms through ordinary earthquakes, through slow earthquakes, and through diverse mechanisms that are completely assizing. This deformation occurs over a broad range of temporal scales from the seconds associated with earthquakes and rapid slip to millions of years for plate tectonics. The diversity of deformation styles has caused geoscientists to reconsider the very nature of earthquakes and their dynamics and led the committee to pose a deceptively simple question that we are now prepared to address in full, what is an earthquake? Next slide. Volcanic eruptions also pose a grave threat to society and are among the most spectacular and complex manifestations of the dynamic Earth system. Eruption of large igneous provinces that have occurred in Earth's past are far larger than any historical eruption and are linked with some of Earth's most significant mass extinctions. Somewhat smaller, but still massive and catastrophic eruptions have occurred on magnetic systems such as Yellowstone caldera. These eruptions are more frequent, yet they still dwarf any eruption in the historic record and would have horrific consequences for the modern world. Volcanic science stands poised to anticipate the duration, magnitude, and intensity of future eruptions through physics-based modeling of all key processes that drive them. Such models would be informed by the wealth of data that new technologies provide, much of which is now available in real time. This led the committee to pose a fundamental question poised for progress as what drives volcanism. So now I'll turn it over to Kate Huntington, who will present the remaining questions. Thank you, Greg. Great progress has been made in understanding Earth system interactions, linking climate, tectonics, and erosion to understand how they shape and are dynamically influenced by Earth's surface topography. This progress has revealed unexpected connections and brought into focus key scientific questions that must be addressed to understand them. For example, how to rock mechanical properties, short-term actors such as storms, and the rheology and dynamics of Earth's interior influence landscape evolution, and how do landscapes co-evolve with the atmosphere, cryosphere, sea level, and life. The relevance to humans is also more urgent than ever, with critical need to quantify topography's influence on ecosystems and hydrology in a changing climate, and its role in physical processes that underlie hazards posed by earthquakes, landslides, floods, and tsunami. New technology for measuring topography over geologic to human time scales now makes it possible to address these key scientific questions and their implications for urgent societal challenges. The stage is now set for breakthroughs and understanding the interconnected Earth system by asking, what are the causes and consequences of topographic change? Next slide, please. The critical zone is the reactive skin of the terrestrial Earth, which extends from the top of the vegetation through the soil and down to the bottom of actively cycling groundwater. Critical zone properties are driven by the interactions of tectonics, climate, topography, weathering, erosion, and life that over geologic time turn dense bedrock into a water-storing and chemically reactive environment. This frontier area of investigation, which is so important to life and to Earth processes, has enabled pioneering studies of water, nutrient, and carbon cycles and the connections between vegetation and the deep subsurface. But while we know the critical zone is influenced by climate, only recently have we begun to identify the extent and ways in which the critical zone also exerts influence on climate. The land is not just the bottom boundary condition for the atmosphere, but an integral part of the climate system. Moisture, groundwater, and energy and gas exchanges between the land and atmosphere are all influenced by the critical zone. We therefore pose the question, how does the critical zone influence climate as a vital component of understanding how the Earth system has responded to and will respond to global change? Next slide, please. Society is already experiencing major impacts from climate change, and such impacts will be defining issues for the 21st century. Earth scientists are integral to providing deep and compelling scientific context to these challenges. To anticipate future changes, we must understand climate change across the spectrum of time, from deep geologic time all the way to real-time investigations of modern climate change. Evidence of long-term and rapid environmental change in Earth's history helps us to understand Earth's system dynamics and provides magnitudes and rates of change, which are crucial for prediction. In particular, studying regions that are particularly vulnerable to rapid and or sustained transformations, like coastal zones and high latitudes, is also key to advancing our ability to project changes and adapt to them. Earth science is a critical lens through which to study recent and ongoing changes, particularly in transdisciplinary partnerships, to address issues such as geo-health, disaster risk, or urban regeneration and development. Given the rate of accelerating global warming presently occurring, there is a great urgency in posing the question, what does Earth's past reveal about the dynamics of the climate system? Next slide, please. The water cycle is vital to all terrestrial life, and now there is increased urgency to understand how the water cycle is changing due to the influence of people and climate change. How will climate change affect the nature and frequency of extreme events like droughts, floods, and fires and their impacts on human populations? Understanding current and future changes to the water cycle requires fundamental knowledge of the hydro-terrestrial system and how the water cycle interacts with other physical, biological, and chemical processes. The coming decade will see significant advances in modeling hydrologic systems from aquifer to atmosphere and in innovative research that recognizes the inseparability of the water cycle and human activity. Exciting research frontiers include the water cycle response to rapid changes in the cryosphere under sustained global warming and processes that integrate climate, shallow oceans, global water resources, and people. The urgent need now to understand the dynamic interplay of water through the Earth's system and within the context of rapid modern changes compels us to ask the question, how is Earth's water cycle changing? Next slide, please. To date, the Earth is the only known planet with an active biosphere. This biosphere has evolved and interacted with the chemical makeup of Earth's surface for billions of years, cycling elements through microbial activity and processes like photosynthesis, producing greenhouse gases, and influencing the chemistry and mineral diversity of Earth's surface. The next decade will bring advances in the mechanistic understanding of these biogeochemical cycles and the history of Earth as a habitable planet. Challenges will include relating the diversity of microbial communities, genes, and enzymes, rather than just species alone, to the community function, resilience, and geochemical rates of processes. To quantify biology's role through time in mineral formation and weathering, in carbon cycling, and in the composition of the very air we breathe requires a new understanding of biogeochemical cycles, leading us to pose the question, how do biogeochemical cycles evolve? The diversity of life on the Earth is a major characteristic of our planet, and yet we do not yet know how it came to be. Biodiversity varies over time, environment, and geography, including major extinction events. Understanding how and why it varies is central to many Earth life interactions and feedbacks, and it requires quantifying evolutionary rates as well as the timing and rate of geological processes that shape the environments in which evolution occurs. Recent developments make this an especially promising time to advance the study of biodiversity. Biologists and Earth scientists have recognized the need for a melding of data and methods from both fields to understand present-day biodiversity, its history, and prospects for the future, particularly in light of ongoing environmental change. The rapid growth of community-curated data platforms is empowering the quantitative analysis of millions of individual biodiversity observations and their integration with other big data, leaving us poised to address the question, how do geological processes influence biodiversity? Next slide, please. Over the last century, earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and flooding have killed many millions of people and caused many trillions of dollars in economic losses. Rapid urbanization in susceptible areas and increasingly connected and fragile urban infrastructure are magnifying the risk to human life and property. As a result, the expected severity of impacts from geohazards is rapidly increasing. Climate change will increase the frequency and consequences of extreme flooding as the water cycle changes and rainfall in hurricanes become more extreme. There's an urgent need to reverse these trends. Recent analyses show that fundamental aspects of geohazards need to be better understood through earth science research. Even the most thoroughly studied regions, for example Hawaii for volcanoes and Japan for tsunamis, continue to reveal unanticipated results regarding the frequency and severity of catastrophic events. Fundamental science questions must be addressed to have a predictive and quantitative understanding of geohazards to provide the essential foundation needed to reduce risks and to save lives and infrastructure. This leads us to pose this last grand challenge question for the next decade. How can earth science research reduce the risk and toll of geohazards? Taken together, these 12 science priority questions represent an ambitious vision for earth science research over the next decade, motivated by both a deep curiosity about how the earth works and a compelling relevance to the life and human societies the earth supports. Next, George Garrels will talk about the infrastructure needs to make it happen. So the next several slides will describe how we have addressed task two, which has three different components. For task two A, we describe the infrastructure that will be needed to address our science questions, and this was done in the previous presentation and in chapter two. For task two B, we describe the currently available infrastructure and show how it relates to the science questions. We do this in part with table three dash two, a portion of which is shown on the right. Across the top are the 12 science questions, and down the side are the 30 different EAR supported facilities. And then within the chart, boxes and dots show degrees of connection between the questions and the facilities. And then to address task two C, we analyze the capability gaps, which we'll discuss in just a moment. Next slide, please. For task two B, we begin by describing the infrastructure that currently is provided by EAR, GEO and NSF, and also from other partner agencies, such as NASA, USGS, DOE, etc. This information was gathered from agency websites and documents provided by agency representatives from descriptions of NSF awards, which are publicly available, and with input from facility operators. This information provides the basis for describing connections between the available infrastructure and our science questions. One of our challenges in analyzing these connections was to evaluate how well the available infrastructure serves the need of the various research communities as we found that the information needed to perform this type of assessment just was not available. And so this leads to our first recommendation, which is that EAR supported facilities and the entire portfolio of EAR supported infrastructure should be regularly evaluated using stated criteria in order to prioritize future infrastructure investments, potentially sunset facilities as needed, and to adapt to changing science priorities. Next slide, please. We noted that our analysis of infrastructure is somewhat different from previous discussions and that we focus on people as an essential third component. Instruments, of course, refers to the hardware used to make the observations necessary for earth science research. Cyber infrastructure refers to the software and hardware tools that are needed together, archive, analyze, integrate, and model data and metadata. And by humans, we refer to the people who design, build, maintain, operate, and continually improve these hardware and software tools. Describing people as an essential component of infrastructure reflects our view that future earth scientists will need new skills to develop the next generation of instruments and to access and utilize the available information in new ways. In our view, EAR has an opportunity during the coming decade to be creative and intentional in developing this expertise, such that we build an increasingly instrument savvy, cyber-capable, and more diverse and inclusive workforce. Next slide, please. The next several slides will present a set of possible new initiatives that address task 2C. We note that these initiatives are closely tied to the science questions. These initiatives originate from EAR research communities, as expressed in white papers and reports, responses to our community questionnaire, and also presentations and discussions in our public sessions. And we note that pursuing these initiatives will require a new source of funding and or the difficult decisions that go along with sunsetting current programs. Next, I'll hand off to Andrea Dutton, who will present our possible new initiatives. Thank you, George. The recommendations for new initiatives are summarized over the next two slides. I think we're on the wrong slide, though. Can we please go back? These initiatives were chosen because they provide potentially transformative capabilities to address the science priority questions and the infrastructure needs presented within the report. Three of these initiatives, creating a national consortium for geochronology, funding a U.S.-based, very large multi-angle press user facility, and establishing a near-surface geophysics center are well developed, with years of community involvement and support, including white papers, endorsement in previous community reports, and or proposals to NSF. Given their level of development, the breadth of science priority questions that these initiatives can advance, and their ability to increase capabilities, access, training, and or support to the community, the committee recommends funding these three initiatives if possible. Another initiative, known as SC4D, which is an initiative to investigate the processes that underlie seduction zone hazards, has had strong community support in recent years, including a large NSF-supported workshop and three funded research coordination networks, but is still developing its program plan. Hence, the committee recommends continued support of this development. Next slide, please. Three other possible initiatives listed here, continental drilling, the continental critical zone, and physical earth archives, have various levels of community engagement and program development. While these initiatives all have promising potential, they would require further exploration through broad involvement of the earth science community via workshops, white papers, and coordinating mechanisms such as RCNs. Next slide. Now I will turn to summarizing the recommendations that fall under the area of cyber infrastructure. In short, EAR faces a challenge in keeping pace with the rapidly evolving computational landscape. Cyber infrastructure challenges include things like data management and archiving, meeting fair data standards, and evolving computation needs. Hence the overarching recommendation here is that EAR should initiate a community-based standing committee to provide advice regarding cyber infrastructure needs and advances. This will be especially important in the coming years as EarthCube comes to an end. With respect to the issue of fair data standards specifically, the scientific community at large is increasingly recognizing the benefits of open science principles and of adopting fair data criteria, that is data that are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. While some communities within EAR have begun to work towards this goal, there remain challenges in scaling this up to a consistent division-wide practice. Hence the committee recommends EAR should develop and implement a strategy to provide support for fair data practices through community-based efforts. Next slide, please. Finally, I would like to turn to human infrastructure. This is an issue that is absolutely fundamental to the success in implementing the vision put forth in this report, yet it poses some challenges in developing and sustaining a sufficient capacity, expertise, and diversity. Preparing the next generation of Earth scientists for an increasingly technological field will be enhanced by strengthening financial support for technical staff in a way that is competitive with other opportunities that they may have. To that end, EAR should commit to long-term funding that develops and stains technical staff capacity, stability, and competitiveness. The next item is one that appears at the bottom of the list, but make no mistake, if we are to make true progress in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion, then we must elevate this as a priority within the Earth science community. EAR has responded through multiple initiatives to address this issue, yet Earth science remains one of the least diverse STEM fields with respect to underrepresented minorities, and gender diversity drops off significantly with increasing career rank. In short, the representation and inclusion of diversity in our discipline continues to impede scientific progress and education. Hence the recommendation here is that EAR should enhance its existing efforts to provide leadership, investment, and centralized guidance to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Earth science community. Now I will hand off to Donna Whitney, who will discuss partnerships and provide some final thoughts. The next two slides summarize conclusions and recommendations related to task three, which asks the committee to comment on how EAR can use partnerships with other units of NSF and other agencies, domestic and international, to complement and leverage capabilities and expertise. There are already many examples of EAR cooperation within and beyond GEO, and we've highlighted some of these in the report and identified other possibilities for consideration. EAR needs to be nimble and flexible in order to support innovative and impactful research that is interdisciplinary and that may cross geological or geographical boundaries. It's very clear from community input that the boundaries between disciplines, including those represented by EAR programs, are and should be more blurry and permeable than ever. New or strengthened partnerships within divisions of GEO and with NASA, DOE, and the USGS, among other agencies, would help the EAR support researchers working across Earth system boundaries that should not be hindered by administrative boundaries. We want to note that this is already occurring to some extent among EAR programs and across GEO, but that there is need for more innovation and flexibility. Next slide. Based on these conclusions, the committee recommends increased collaboration across and beyond GEO and NSF, so that, for example, boundaries between land and ocean, polar and non-polar regions, and land and atmosphere are not obstacles to research. The research that we envision in the science priority questions encompasses basic and applied science and a vision of integrated research that will advance fundamental understanding of the Earth and provide tangible benefits to society. Next slide. We'll leave you with four final thoughts that reflect some key points of this study. First, EAR's mission is more important and urgent than ever, as the report describes in detail with examples and ideas. Second, the 12 science questions illustrate the significance, breadth, and magnitude of the challenge and opportunities for Earth science research in the next decade, although these are, of course, just some of the many research questions that are poised for significant advance in the next decade. Third, implementing cyber and human infrastructure recommendations will require a commitment of funding and significant changes to the Earth science community, which needs to be more diverse and inclusive and to be trained in key skills necessary to advance research. Finally, EAR already leads investigation of Earth as an interconnected system and is poised to launch the next decade of innovative research. This report highlights the urgency, significance, and impact of research, education, and training supported by EAR and concludes with optimism for what Earth science researchers have accomplished, what we can do in the next decade with the support of EAR. Next slide. One more slide. Thank you. Thank you all so much. We'll now open it up for the Q&A. As a reminder, just click the Q&A button on the bottom of your screen to submit a question. It looks like our first question is, your report calls this an all hands on deck moment for Earth sciences. What do you mean by that? I think we'll ask Andrea to answer that. Great question. So this statement that we need in all hands on deck, it comes from the recognition of the societal relevance that runs through many of the science priority questions and not just the relevance, but I think the increasingly urgent relevance. And I know there are a lot of Earth scientists listening to this webinar today and we're all probably hyper aware of how much Earth science is now permeating our news feeds on a daily basis. But it also represents this integration of sub-disciplines that we're going to need everyone to tackle these questions. Even if you just choose a single question, there's so much integration through all aspects of Earth science. So realizing this vision is going to depend on scientists who are intellectually and demographically diverse, who are individual investigators, as well as those participating in larger research groups and teams and networks, and also those who have expertise in analytical, computational, and field based methods. So this really is an all hands on deck moment in our view. Andrea, our next question is, I do not see any questions that directly connect geosciences with human health. Was this considered? I'll ask Kate to answer that one. I think Donna is poised. I think Donna is probably... Okay, Donna, why don't you take that one? Sure. Yeah, it's definitely there. It's in a number of the questions explicitly. It comes up in conversations about geobiology, water, climate, and it's also in the critical elements question with a very specific mention of connection between needing to understand your chemistry and human health. So it's definitely there. Thanks, Donna. Our next question is, did the group discuss the role of citizen science efforts to help address any of the 12 questions? Okay, I think I have this one right. Kate, will you take that one? Sure. Thanks. So yeah, this is a really great question. And I think it's really roven into the report in terms of how this idea that this is a moment where we really need diversity and inclusion and the voices of everyone to address these challenges. So we're thinking in terms of how these getting an inclusive representation in how we look at science to have the potential to transform what we study and how we do it. This can unlock new perspectives and create new ways of framing our research questions. For example, by building opportunities for citizen science and as well as for things like making information more accessible to decision makers and the public. So we think that as we have more inclusion in academia, our scientists are really going to be able to engage more deeply with effective communities and solve those issues of critical societal importance. Everything from communicating seismic hazard along the west coast or mitigating sea level rise for Gulf Coast communities. And so this idea that the field of our sciences will benefit from increasingly diverse perspectives, including citizen science, is that it's important just as substantially as our field will benefit from advances in computational geoscience or higher precision instruments. Great. Thank you, Kate. We have another question that's in a similar vein to that one. Societal acceptance and use of the earth science knowledge resulting from our research is changing and it is becoming apparent that achieving better scientific literacy requires new approaches to engagement. So in what ways do the committee consider these challenges or consider EAR's role in increasing the broader societal impact of the proposed investments in earth science research through these new initiatives? Well, I think we talked a fair amount about trying to get our how to get a message across to the broader audiences. So that's one answer. Donna or Kate or Michael have any additional comment on that? Sure. I mean, just briefly, the report I think highlights how it's, you know, our ability to address these fundamental science issues and unknowns that underlie things like hazards or accessibility to resources in this changing world. All of that is only useful to the extent to which that we're able to disseminate that knowledge and implement it and use it for policy making and for changing the lives of everyday people in our nation. And so that is certainly a sentiment that I think rings loud and clear in portions of the report, including our vision for what we think the contribution, the critical contribution earth scientists can make over the coming decade. Thanks, Kate. All right, our next question is, what changes do you think are required in business as usual in the EAR community? I'll try that one. We, you know, the academy does not want us to tell EAR how to do their job. We do allude to, in several places, the idea that I think one of the words we use was nimble that in terms of the increasing interdiversity of interdisciplinary diversity in research, that it's important to think about the the boundaries that might prevent proposal funding of a proposal that crosses several disciplines. So as I say, I think it wasn't our job to tell EAR how to do their job, but we do allude to sort of, you know, improved ability to break down stovepipes when necessary to support high quality research. And I'd be happy to have anyone else jump in if they think that they have something to add to that. Yeah, I, if I may just jump in. This is great. So I completely agree with what Jim said. I would say another example is in having to do with data and having to do with computing. So the committee heard about and identified a number of issues related to sort of keeping up with the developments in technology, in particular high performance computing, computational science, and the need to develop deeper partnerships with people who do that as their main line of work. It's essential to what, to really parts of all of the questions that we covered. And the way things are being done now is not going to get us to where we need to be. So they're, you know, we made some recommendations along that line forming a committee to sort of keep pace with the changing landscape. Thank you. Next question is, how do you view the collaboration between divisions within NSF, GE, and are there strategies that need to be developed so we can better address these challenges? I think it's similar to the last question, if I understood the question right. Greg, did that ring a bell with you? Yeah, I could add to that. It does have overlap with the last question. I would say also, you know, we come out strongly in favor of partnerships with other federal agencies, other state agencies that have, you know, overlapping interests, and also with international programs. I mean, we should take full advantage of the, you know, setting the whole earth with our international partners. I'm not sure if that's addressing the question and sort of expanding it beyond NSF, but it's not just within NSF. Oh, we also do have a place in the report where we talk about how we need ways to, for example, in the interaction between the ocean and the land, you know, we need ways to cross the shoreline. And we need ways to fund research that has really interesting ideas on how that interaction works. And there are comparable things. I think in the critical zone discussion, there's the discussion about the importance of the critical zone to the flux of material to the atmosphere, including gases and other elements. Thank you both. Could the committee elaborate more on the need for a very large multi-annual press facility? That sounds like George to me. Is Steve on the panel here? He may be on the call. He's out on the panel though. Okay. So I'll just jump in and say that quantifying the physical and mechanical properties of rocks, minerals, and melts is a cornerstone of EAR research, but the U.S. still lacks certain technological capabilities that are needed to synthesize, not develop samples and to conduct key physical properties and deformation experiments. So we see this as technology that's lacking within the U.S. arsenal for high pressure studies. And we think that this is something that NSF EAR should pursue. Okay, great. Thank you. Did the committee consider any connections with the social sciences, especially as they relate to geohazards? Well, there are inversely all of the questions. There are discussions on the societal impacts and the role of the research in addressing societal needs. And so that would be a good place for direct cooperation with other parts of NSF that are concerned about that. Anyone else want to jump in on that one? Yeah, this is great. I'd say we talk about it explicitly in question number 12 that is reducing the risk and toll of geohazards. It's laid out right there that without that element we will not succeed. And just to point out, it comes up everywhere. For example, even in the critical zone question, the idea that to tackle the problem of the influence of the critical zone on climate, it's going to be earth scientists, biologists, climate scientists, and social scientists who are all going to need to work together to build collaborations across several NSF directorates, geosciences, biological sciences, the social, behavioral, and economic sciences as well. Our next question is, could you talk a little bit more about the national consortium of geochronology? How do you envision that working facilities would include? George, do you want to take that one on? You have to unmute George. Sorry, so I'll just start off with a little perspective that early on in the process, one of our committee members made the observation that previous decade reports, and bros and bros, you may know those acronyms, tended to present information in a spatial framework. And then as we began to mature our science questions, it became apparent that a lot of these questions were poised because of new opportunities to determine the timing of events and the rates of processes in the past, and also kind of combined with that the need to make predictions about when events will occur and what the rates and processes will be in the future. And so this brought to kind of focus the importance of time in our study as indicated by the title of the report as well. The consortium that we imagined putting together would be able to do several different things. I think one of the most important challenges for the consortium would be to deliver the geochronologic information that is needed by earth science researchers, but we also need to be able to develop new techniques, new instruments, new capabilities within geochronology. And so the idea is that we would have a consortium which consists of the lab operators, the people who generate geochronologic information. These would be single PI, geochronologists, and also larger facilities. Working together with researchers who need geochronologic information, and also working together with NSFs, sort of the three members in this consortium. And there would be four main goals we would try to be able to generate the geochronologic information that researchers need in a timely and cost effective manner. The geochronology labs would need to be able to provide the information needed above, described above, but also develop new chronologic instruments, methods, and applications. We would want the members of this consortium to commit to fair data policies for all chronometers, and also develop computational tools so we can process information a little bit better. And we also need to invest in improved education and training by geochronologic theory and practice such that we have a new generation of highly diverse cyber savvy geochronologists and researchers who can effectively use this geochronologic information and also a better public understanding of why geochronology is important for societal applications. Thank you, George. Our next question is, with recent pushes to enhance research transparency, data availability, and outreach in many instances, did the committee discuss the role of geoscientists in producing accessible and open science in years to come? Andrea, is that related to the FAIR? Yeah, there was a recommendation that is specifically focused on this issue of FAIR data, data that's findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. And this is something, as I'm sure many of you know now, is now being mandated by some of the big journals that are out there. And it also increases the longevity of your own data and all the investment that EAR is making into collecting these data, if other people can find it and use it as well. And I think that the more individual researchers do this, they will see the value in making their data available in this way. So this was a focus of recommendations specifically. But also we talked about, you know, some of the other issues that were brought up in that question, outreach, which was also brought up in one of the earlier questions was something that definitely came up in the report. And, you know, it's no longer enough for us to do the research and just expect people to understand it and know what you really need to bridge that gap. And so this plays into the question before about involving social scientists, is how best do we communicate this? And what are the problems in getting people to understand the relevance of this to their lives? And so that will be critical as well. And that's also addressed in the report. Thank you. Thanks, Andrea. Our next question is on a bit of a bigger scale. But what do you want the Earth Sciences community to know the most about your report? Well, I think, I think if you look at the, I'll try to answer and then maybe Greg or Kate can jump in as well or Michael. The, you know, what we really, really spent a lot of time on with the questions and then developing those and making sure that they were based on solid, that it was solid basic science, but also all the questions are somehow linked to a societal need. The information that would be obtained by trying to answer those questions or working on those questions would be critical to many issues that face, face humans today. And, and, and are directly relevant to their well-being. So that's one area. The other is time, you know, we, the name of the report, sub name of the report is earth and time. And that's an important message and that we wanted to get across that that as someone mentioned, I think Greg mentioned it earlier, that, that there is a other reports focused on spatial spatial variability and space. But we really felt with the new technologies that are now available that time was an important focus for this report as well. And maybe Greg, Kate or Michael, do you want to jump in on this one? I'll jump in a little bit. I think the question was what would, what would we like earth scientists to know about this report? One thing I would really like everyone to know, I mean, there's a group of 20 of us who spent a year and a half writing this report, but I really would like our colleagues to know that the, this was a consensus report based on extensive input that we received from the broad earth science community. This was not our pet ideas or anything like that. We really, really tried to sort of scour the community for their ideas about where the field is going and integrate that into this consensus report. Yeah, if I could add to that, I just would like the, you know, our community to appreciate how intellectually compelling, exciting and important the work we are doing is and not to lose sight of that, not to sell it short when you're talking to other people about it. I hope that comes through in the, in the report. And I'll just say that, although, you know, the world has been profoundly disrupted, disrupted in recent months. And yet the overarching perspective of this report remains one of optimism. And I think it's still rings true. We are ready to embrace this, this idea of being able to understand earth as a interconnected system and really understand the wondrous nature of our natural world. At the same time, that pursuit is intimately linked and sort of inextricable from the potential we have for advancing what we need to do to help society. And so the fact that we we are now really poised to advance and do both in such exciting ways, like Greg says, is really special that we can embrace both that wonder of the natural world aspect, as well as the critical insight and information we need to for the future of modern society. Thank you all for those comments. So we have time, I think, for two more questions. Next one is beyond earth sciences, science and technology are evolving. For example, we are presently in the midst of a digital revolution with the increasing prominence of machine learning and deep learning approaches in dealing with large complex data sets that are prevalent in earth systems. Does your group consider four side analysis of what future earth science might look like? Greg, why don't you take that one? Yeah, absolutely. So we talked a great deal about that data, about how we can use techniques of AI like machine learning to extract as much information as we can from the data sets that we have, which are poised to grow tremendously sensor technology. So yeah, absolutely. There's a lot to be done there. And the committee recognized can't do it all ourselves. It's a rapidly changing, rapidly evolving field. We have to do all we can to piggyback on all the great developments that are going to help us answer the questions we need to answer. But we can't stay at the cutting edge of such work by ourselves. So we need to develop partnerships and we need to deepen those partnerships from where they are now. I think that's the answer to the committee. And if I could add to that, I don't think from our vantage point today, we can see all the ways in which this is going to go in the next 10 years. And that was part of the reason for the recommendation that there be a standing committee for NSF, particularly with respect to cyber infrastructure, and particularly in light of the fact that the EarthCube initiative is coming to the end in the next couple of years, which has been a geo level initiative, right? But it still affects EAR. And so the idea of that is that we can change and evolve and respond as things change over the next 10 years that we can't necessarily foresee today. That's a great point. So we already touched on this a little bit earlier with Michael's comments. But our last question today is, how were the thoughts and needs of the Earth science community taken into account by the committee? How did you go about gathering that data and processing it in your analysis? Kate, why don't you take that one? Sure. So of course, our committee represents a broad range of disciplinary expertise and the instrumental computational and field methods. Remember, it's not just those of us who are on your screen today. This is the shared consensus effort of a large group. And that large group dived into really omnivorous reading of white papers and reports over the past couple of decades, as well as review papers and literature to ensure that not just the communities who are already organized and having produced, you know, had workshops and produced reports in recent years, but they're cutting edge ideas and really the pulse of what they're talking about was incorporated. We also had a community online survey that had hundreds and hundreds of responses. We conducted listening sessions at many, several national conferences. We had open sessions of our committee meetings that included invited speakers. For example, we had one focusing on early career professionals. We targeted groups. I had one targeting groups that are specifically multiple ones can target targeting groups that are historically underrepresented in science. We had sessions with people from industry, different geographic areas and different types of colleges and universities. And with this, you know, our great, our sort of look into the literature deeply and broadly, as well as our reaching out to all of these sources, as well as a large number of colleagues in many fields, mid career and other levels. This report is, like Michael says, is really a report that does not belong to the committee, but to the earth science community. And I think really does capture what we need to do to satisfy our curiosity about these things and really the cutting edge of what the breadth of the community is really looking for and the challenges we're prepared to face. Thank you so much, Kate. It looks like those are all the questions that we have time for today. Once you exit this webinar, you will be redirected to our report page. And again, you can access the committee's report for free at any time from National Academy's press. That's NAP.edu. And with that, I'd like to thank our speakers for their time today. And thank you all again for participating and joining us. Adios.


The Micro Small Business Fund supports capital investment projects in the tourism sector. It can be used either to upgrade existing or create new high quality product. My name is John Lloyd, I'm the Managing Director of Inigo Jones Slateworks. We're a slate company that produces items from natural well slate and we're also now a tourist attraction. I'm Chloe Francis Oakley and I'm the owner of Cobbles Kitchen and Daddy. Cobbles is a restaurant in Orwell by Sea in the Vale of Glamorgan. Basically it's a scheme where we spend £80,000 and we're getting a £26,000 grant from the Rural Development Fund. The object of the scheme is to improve our tourist attraction, basically especially for overseas visitors. The Tourism Investment Support Scheme is a grant initiative offered by the Welsh Government and the European Community to help businesses in Wales become more attractive to tourists. So we applied for that to expand our offering and help us to become more attractive business tourists. The process of applying for the fund is very simple, basically to fill in an application form, expression of interest, and thereafter you get more questions and you give answers to those questions. So it's quite a simple process to be fair. The funding helped us pay for a massive upgrade to our kitchen so we relocated our kitchen and installed a top of the range kitchen and extraction facilities and we upgraded our courtyard area so it's all landscaped with cobbles. The funding is absolutely essential for a rural company like ourselves. Basically in a rural area and tourist related it's seasonal and basically you have to make your money in a short period of time. We use all local suppliers for our ingredients. There was local builders working on the project and we employ 27 local people. Basically we work with local attractions and attractions of Sidonia which is a marketing consortia to promote the whole region. And also we're members of the Gwynedd Bidsas Network which is an organisation for all types of businesses in Gwynedd. Since the expansion of cobbles, the flagship store I'd like to call it, there have been opportunities that have risen to locations elsewhere. So we are looking at expanding our offering into whether coastal areas or rural areas in Wales. We're always looking to improve and upgrade and it just depends how it goes sort of thing. The more successful they are, the more we can invest in the future if the profit line is there. I think it's really important that the Welsh Government is supporting rural areas because Wales is more rural than urban. And often these areas get overlooked so it's really good that we can feel the support of the Government to help businesses like ours.


Lakeland Public Television presents Currents with host Ray Gildow, sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, offering tax preparation for individuals and businesses across from the City Hall in Niswa and on the web at niswatax.com. Hello again everyone and welcome to Lakeland Currents. We live in an absolutely amazing period of time. If you think about it, the number one taxi company in the world does not own a taxi. Uber. The number one hotelor in the world doesn't own a single hotel room, Airbnb. They don't have one single room that they own. And yet when we deal with the issue we're talking about tonight, mental health, in many ways we still live in the Stone Age. And so our guests this evening are here to talk about mental health issues, specifically in maybe Crowing County, but this is something that can carry across a very, very wide range. I'm happy to introduce Adam Reese, a guitar exceptional player, who's the President of Ascension Health Central, which is the central region of Ascension Health, and we'll come back in a minute and talk about that. And Dr. Peter Henry, who is the Chief Medical Officer for this Ascension Health Central, but also for the broader Ascension Health, as I understand. Welcome to the program gentlemen. And maybe we could just give a little background about what Ascension Health is. I remember this used to be the St. Joseph Hospital and now it's a member of a much broader organization. Maybe one of you could talk about it. Sure. So the headquarters for Ascension, it's in Duluth and that was a merger of St. Mary's Hospital in the Duluth Clinic and that continued to grow. Their presence not only completely surrounds that upper eastern part of the state, but actually goes into western Wisconsin as well. And then as you sweep across you in the central area, St. Joe's Hospital, we have small clinics as far south as Pierce, for instance, as far east as Emily, as far north as Hackensack, and west in Pillager as well, and then there's some others in between. And then you just keep marching across and then our next sort of hub is in the Fargo area and they have a series of clinics and smaller hospitals as well surrounding them. So it's a large area, thousands of employees. What makes Ascension unique is that it is primarily a rural delivery system. Most of these large integrated systems are metropolitan based. And for those of us who are passionate about rural health, we've really enjoyed the Ascension system. I would just add that we have roughly 15 hospitals and about 64 clinics in our organization. So we do have a very large geographic area that we provide care to people. And roughly how many employees would you say are involved in the idea? It's around 13,000 between 13,000 and 14,000. Wow, that's impressive. Well I was at the meeting when your hospital gave the presentation on mental health in Crow Wing County and actually I was floored by the information presented there. And in a way I probably shouldn't have been because I grew up in Brainerd. And I remember when we had a large state hospital here where we dealt with the severe cases of mental illness. And I've been in places like Washington D.C. where I see people living in cardboard boxes. And we had this era we went through nationally where we started closing these hospitals and putting mentally ill people, and again I'm talking probably more of the severe cases out in the street so to speak. Well we really have done that literally and so when you came and said that one in four Crow Wing County folks were affected by mental health issues that was amazing to me. So maybe you could start with that. Yeah so we do regularly surveys and they're part of our community health needs assessment. And the survey you're referencing was quite extensive. We partnered with Crow Wing County Public Health and we have about 62,500 people in Crow Wing County and I can't remember the exact sample size but it was significant. It was in the six, seven hundred people range and it was again simply they were disclosing they were answering what kind of issues and concerns they have and they disclose that again this one in four number is struggling with some kind of mental health condition. Now that can be severe, it could be sort of psychosis at one end. It could be technically more less severe, more minor, however for that individual for instance if it's acute anxiety that can have a profound impact on one's work situation or at the home life as well. And everything in between. We know there's very high prevalence of depression in Crow Wing County. What's interesting is that there's been state surveys and I'm pretty sure the state average is about one in five. So this one in four, one in five, you can see we're not that much different. That's still very significant to me. It's different and it's significant as you point out Ray but what I find fascinating is that we never talk about it. You know it's interesting it's self-reported in our survey that we did within the Crow Wing County and the surrounding service area that we have that the self-report at about one in four instance but even go back to when I was in medical school a number of years ago when I was in training it was clearly recognized at that time about 30% of the people that come into a family physician or a primary care office with a complaint whether it be a somatic or physical complaint are really there as a direct result of a mental health condition. So one out of three even. So this is not an unrecognized problem within the medical community but I think the public and the knowledge as to how this affects so many people within our society and anxiety is probably one of the key ones especially in our younger population as well. I know the last couple of years there's been a lot of debate at the legislative level with the governor specifically Moose Lake and some of those institutions and again we're not always just talking severe cases here we could be talking like you said anxiety and other things but there's been a reluctance I think from the national level and from the state level to fix this. It seems like we're just shoving these folks into your kinds of system a health care system that isn't really designed to handle the number. I know Adam you talked about having people in I think in your emergency rooms staying there for extended periods of time could you just talk a little bit about the impact that has? I can briefly talk about the emergency department. Pete's actually the emergency room physician. In that area you know I've been here in the Brainerd Lakes area going on 19 years at St. Joseph's Medical Center and I've worked in the emergency department throughout that time and I will tell you up until roughly two years ago we almost never had anybody who had to be boarded in our emergency department. We had facilities where we could place them on a relatively short time frame to get them the ongoing care. What kind of facilities would that be usually? Well you know in the past when I first got here we had the state facilities we had the Brainerd facility because it was very close so those facilities were readily available there was room and patient beds available that we could transfer them. As the number of beds for mental health inpatient care has declined dramatically over the last 10 to 12 years that ability to move people from our emergency department and acute care settings into longer term where they can get all the services that are necessary to treat their mental health issues has dramatically decreased. And up until two years ago I was director of the emergency department assuming my position as the chief medical officer we really never housed anybody in our emergency department and now it is essentially there's very few days that we don't have somebody that's on who's being boarded in our emergency department and we're attempting to provide the care that they need but it's not the right place to do that. And that's not isolated to our facility here. This is across all of our Ascension facilities and it's also not just a rural area this is a huge issue within the metropolitan area and emergency departments there as well. Many emergency departments for example our emergency department in Duluth at St. Mary's has modified its structure so it can house people so they have a separate piece of their emergency department that is dedicated to housing mental health patients that can't be placed in the appropriate long-term care facility. 24 bed emergency department of which I believe four to six is dedicated directly to the care of mental health issue patients. And at one time this is a level two trauma so it's the major regional trauma center. We had 10 beds occupied by mental health patients and so then you were down to 14 beds that were allowed to treat the other conditions. So maybe just you know in defense of legislators of the past we probably were at one time over bedded in psychiatric facilities and with the advent of these anti-psychotic medication and others and Pete could comment more on that the treatments improved drastically and we didn't quite need what we had in the past and so they're probably at one point where some appropriate reductions. The challenge though Ray is that the reductions just continued year after year, decade after decade and we're now in a situation where Minnesota which many believe is probably the best healthcare in the country or one of the best. When it comes to mental health services we have less locked inpatient beds than any other state in the whole country which is just shocking. And so the crisis that Dr. Henry is talking about is really profound and a quick fix isn't going to work and so you know I appreciate the steps that the bipartisan legislature made and there will be a modest increase for instance for these community behavioral health centers. One actually in Baxter, they were designed for 16 beds, they were sort of defunded down to about 10 beds and hopefully they'll be able to get back up to 16 beds but when you're talking about an extra six beds here, an extra six beds there it's a step in the right direction but it's still a drop in the bucket. The level of this crisis is huge. And it's impacting people in different ways but just to share with you, Pete's talking about the emergency department. We have these patients in our ICU as well occasionally but a real travesty is that many of these individuals end up in the prison system in our jails and they can't get the care they need and had perhaps they had better treatment, we could have kept them out of that system. And the cost actually to care for these patients in the emergency department or in our jails is far higher than actually in an inpatient setting like at Enoka or St. Peter and so we're in this odd situation where we don't have the right resources, we're using other resources that really weren't designed for these patients and in addition we're costing the state more money than it really needs to use for this population that's now being underserved if you will. So it's certainly near and dear to our heart and our colleagues' hearts. We care about these people and we desperately want to do a better job to serve them. I can only imagine that a medical doctor is not really trained to deal with many of these issues you're dealing with but you don't have a staff of psychologists or a whole, I know you had, I think it was a psychologist or psychiatrist that was at the presentation I was at and he was talking about his load and it's just incredible. So I can imagine that medical doctors having to deal with these issues when that's not really what their background is is also very very frustrating isn't it? Well I think that most physicians who are staff in emergency departments are trained to deal with the acute psychosis and psychotic episodes that require treatment in the emergency department and most of these patients as Adam alluded to many of them have additional medical conditions that need to be treated so they end up in our intensive care unit but usually that can be stabilized within a day or two and beyond that then they require their ongoing mental health care and that's where the issue is because there's a wide spectrum as to general anxiety, mild depression, severe depression, depression with suicide ideation and then you get into the all the psychotic issues and then the violently psychotic issues and so protecting the communities. For years we had facilities where people who required more intensive treatment who were really at risk of harming themselves or others could be housed and treated and as Adam stated the number of beds for that has gone down dramatically partly related to the fact that we have much better medications that can treat these conditions. There still is however a small subset of these patients that really can't be treated in a community-based behavioral setting, a group home or assisted living facility or something along that line. They really require intensive treatment in a locked facility and they are at risk of harming themselves, other patients and also staff and that's where really the major crisis I believe in my opinion is coming is that we don't have places to put those people. So they now stay in our jails because they are so violent. When they're in our jails they don't get ongoing treatment, they don't get their medications that they need to, they don't get all the behavioral and psychotherapy that's available in a assigned unit for that and it's the same thing in our emergency department. We do what we can on our borders because we have them seen daily by mental health professionals but the other many modalities that go into mental health treatment can't be administered in our emergency departments, they really need to be in these specialized facilities for that and you know we for years have a system that we have different levels of care provided in different areas. So we are not a tertiary or what's called a quaternary facility like some of the large metropolitan areas or the Duluth facility in St. Murray's. We have capacity to treat fairly sick patients but there is a limit to the amount that we can treat and the same thing applies to mental health. We can apply and treat a majority of mental health conditions here in our own mental health unit but certain subsets that are very violent, that are at risk to themselves, to the community and to their family members and to staff need to be housed in a facility that is designed for that. And we've really limited or most of those beds are not available and NOCA treatment center is one of them which currently does not have the capacity to take on these patients. So they sit in our emergency departments. So I think crisis is an appropriate term. Absolutely and we get into these odd situations. So we have the grace unit, that's our inpatient psychiatric facility, for the most part was designed for voluntary admissions and now we're seeing more involuntary patients and some of these violent individuals. Those individuals historically, we still try to do this, try to transfer them to for instance NOCA but with the lack of beds, we're not able to do that and so these individuals can spend I think what upwards of 40 days? On average they're in our facility for 30 days. And you're maybe even in the ER? In the ER, the length of stay that we've had here and are at St. Joseph's is the maximum I believe was 11 or 12 days. Well that's still a lot. That's a long time but in our Duluth facility we've had someone there almost a year. Wow. And housed in our emergency. And that's not at all what that was designed for. Not at all. No. So what ends up happening Ray is that these individuals are taking up this space that also could have been used for many local and regional patients and so what they're finding is they're then forced to be transferred to a facility in Duluth, the Twin Cities, maybe Rochester, you know some other part of the state and they're separated from their family and their loved ones and because of the acute bed shortage we find ourselves accepting patients from those same locations. So a person from southeastern Minnesota finds themselves up here and the person from up here is down in southeastern Minnesota and so it really is, we're just not serving people as well as they deserve to be served but that's kind of the reality that we're in. I was reading that in the future the fastest growing disease in the world is going to be depression so that would suggest that these issues are going to expand and not going to go away. What would your recommendations be to people who can make the decisions to help solve the problem? Well I think that there's a huge spectrum of mental health so depression, most mild depression, mild depression can be adequately treated in the home setting.  A lot of this on the front end if we do a good job of treating depression, anxiety and even some of the more significant psychiatric illnesses on the front end we can prevent the more serious illness but there is a limit to that. There are still going to be a number of patients that are severely psychotic that cannot be housed. So the answer is that it's going to cost money and I think my message to the legislators is that this is a crisis. It is a not an isolated issue related to Brainerd or our surrounding area. This is a statewide and national issue and that at some point in time we need to commit as a community to putting dollars into place to treat this. We're not going to get smaller. Our younger generation, the millennials, they've shown that anxiety is probably the number one mental health condition that they'll be facing in the future and currently and we need to start addressing that on the front end. Even if you just look at the dementia and the Alzheimer's issue with the baby boomers, that's a crisis waiting to happen as well. And many of these people with mental health conditions such as Alzheimer's end up in our facilities as well because they don't have adequate treatment facilities to get placed in there. And Adam you mentioned earlier that treating them on the back end is actually more expensive than it would be to have that treatment right up front. Right, so really I don't think there's one answer. I think as Pete is sharing with us we definitely need more investment on the back end. No question about it. On the front end though it turns out that not only can we do a better job of collaborating primary care doctors for instance with behavioral health specialists in the community, therapists, counselors, social workers. But we as a community can take some ownership for this as well. And there's been a fair amount of research that suggests that in many communities including ours mental illness has a lot of stigma and so we don't talk about it and not talking about it actually can make things a lot worse because that individual is really struggling and they're losing perhaps social support mechanisms. And so trying to make it okay to talk about these things, being a good friend, being a good family member, that alone is very powerful. We also have lots of other people in this community that want to help whether it's through our churches, all sorts of other organizations. And so we have a broad-based community health approach. We call crowing energized. It's a movement here that a number of agencies are collaborating on. It's co-chaired by Ascension Health and the Public Health Department at Crowing County. But we're trying to share with businesses and other organizations that we can do simple little things in our everyday life that will make us more resilient and will actually help us combat perhaps some more milder forms of depression, help us cope with anxiety and other kinds of significant life challenges that come along. And so I really think that all of us if we can work on destigmatizing it, being just good friends, good neighbors and considering some of these very simple tools that are being shared through crowing energized, and if I could do a little plug, crowing energized is non-profit, anyone can Google it and materials are on the web. So the point here is that it's going to take a community, isn't it, to solve this problem? Do you see a movement back to, for the more severe cases, to more facilities like we used to have, do you see a movement to, I'm not just saying go back and have the full Fergus Falls operation or the brainer operation, but there needs to be beds or places for the more severe person and they don't have a place to go now. If a note is full, do you see some investment in that kind of operation again? Well, my hope is that there will be investment in the operation because I believe treating on the front end and a lot of the things that we talk about that crowing energized is promoting will help, but there is a crisis now that's not going to be met by approaching it from that standpoint alone. We, in the next five to ten years, the ability to care for these patients that are severely mentally ill needs to be met and that will require some building of facilities. And if you look at whatever cost that is estimated to be, if it's $200 million, if you look at the dollars that are currently being spent in our emergency departments, our ICUs that will be a small amount of investment compared to what we're currently spending in the most expensive care places to treat these patients. And they're not getting, we at Ascension are doing everything that we can to treat them appropriately in our emergency departments, but you can't treat severely mentally ill patient in an emergency department the same way you can in a facility that's designed to have the full range of mental health services available to them. And the security is also a huge issue. We want to keep obviously the patient themselves safe. We want to keep the other patients in our emergency departments safe. We want to keep our staff safe as well and we're doing whatever we can to make sure that we have designed our facilities, have appropriate security in our buildings to make sure that happens as do a lot of other facilities across the state. I would say the average person like myself, driving down the road, had no idea this problem is as severe as you're explaining it is. I think you're doing a great public service by bringing this forward so we can all understand that we have an issue that we need to deal with. I think that's a wonderful job you're doing. A family that has a member who is having real health issues, is it still the best choice to start with the hospital? I think the best place is to start with their primary care physician. The fact that Adam, and taking away some of the stigma is a key issue. It's interesting if your doctor tells you that you have a thyroid condition and that your thyroid gland is not producing enough thyroid hormone, and they give you a substance that's going to make your thyroid function better. Nobody has any stigma associated with it. I have hypothyroidism and they say, well, that's fine, that's a medical treatment. If we look at many of the mental health issues, anxiety, depression, there is a true biochemical basis behind a lot of that, along with the psychosocial pieces that go into that. But when somebody talks about, I'm going to give you an antidepressant that will help arrange the chemicals within your brain to work better. There's a different stigma associated with that, as opposed to treating diabetes with insulin and the medications we use, thyroid disorders with thyroid supplementation that we use. And we've got to remove that away. And I think the best place to start is in the primary care physician's office. And Adam alluded to earlier about bringing mental health together with primary care, so that you have social services, psychologists, psychiatrists within the primary care clinics. That's really a key thing as well to help coordinate that care, because so often what I see, if I'm a family physician in my office, as I stated before, about 30% of that is related to an underlying mental health condition. Wow. We're out of time. Thank you for bringing this information to us. It's very, very valuable. And hopefully we can see some new things developing. We appreciate you bringing us here and asking us to talk about this. Thank you very much, Adam. Dr. Pete. Thank you, Ray. Thank you. You've been watching Lakeland Currents, where we're talking about what you're talking about. I'm Ray Gildow. So long. Until next time.


Yes, yeah, he had that win in 2017. He's definitely the most consistent rider here at the Narodovian. He was fantastic yesterday in qualifying. He rode the track so smoothly, really was calm, cool, collected. I think it was lap 13 when he actually put the fastest time in, which was very late in qualifying. So here we go then, opening race of the night. Can't wait for this. Big, big moment for the wildcard. It's been promoted in the youngster battle of Escovalska. I do hope that he can keep his composure together. We'll never have been on such a big stage in his short career, so we wish him all the best. As we do to the injured Dominic Kubera, that was a nasty incident tomorrow. We wish him all the best and a speedy recovery. We hope to see him back out racing very soon. Lambert there, up at Types. Fantastic performance two weeks ago. Just a change of machinery there for Martin Vashlik on his way round to the start. Two Grand Prix wins last year. And if he gets off to a fast start, look out. Mikkelsen on the inside in the red. Robert Lambert in gate two in blue. From Ed Shukolarski coming out of gate number three in white. And Martin Vashlik off the outside in yellow. Martin Vashlik, the sort of rider, if he gets off to a flying start, could be very dangerous indeed. Yeah, tough rider, always tough in the first turns as well. He won't stand for anything. Here we go then, opening race of the night. The green light is on. Whoa, long pause. This was steamed off a referee. They get to the first turn and it's all about Vashlik. Hustling that bike from the outside. Lambert slipping into second place and Kamalski back in third because of missing out off the inside. Slick in the first race here, but Vashlik out in front. That was a great effort from the outside. Brilliant effort, I'm sure Robert Lambert, after making the start he made thought he'd got the first turn sewn up. But Martin Vashlik, great effort from the outside. Just pinning it right down on the curb. Wouldn't expect to see too much passing in the early heats, but I'll tell you what, Mikkelsen is using the outside, not a great effect. Here we go. Fantastic move from Mikkelsen, committed to the outside run, just about in the second place. Vashlik now is definitely vulnerable. Mikkelsen, one last blast on the opening lap here. They're hugging the inside, Mikkelsen's got speed. He's going to do it. What a ride for Mikkelsen, he was stoned last. This is sensational opening race of the Narodomis. It's just exploded in heat, number one people. Do not take your eyes off this. This is going to be something extra special. Mikkelsen with a stunning opening ride. That was unbelievable, look what it means to him. That was something special, when heat won to get around the outside of three riders like that, unbelievable stuff. Fantastic start to the event. I've got to calm down, I want to have a voice left by the time I get to the semi-finals.  That's right, Mikkelsen was superb, three points for him. Martin Vashlik back in second place, two points. Robert Lambert in third one, and Bartolomew Kowalski fails to score. But he committed to the outside run, didn't he?  Yeah, it wasn't a good start from the inside, he would have expected more. Robert Lambert actually got shocked there when he got to the corner, and Martin Vashlik had come across him, almost turned the bike inside out at turn one. I thought here that Vashlik just moving off the line in turns three and four, may have thrown all that work away, but he just stays ahead of Robert Lambert. In the meantime, Mikkel Mikkelsen is just working the track out, he's working the outside line, they have ripped a little bit of the dirt up there, so already it does have a working outside dirt line. And he just stuck to it, lap after lap after lap. He kept the bike smooth, he didn't phase him that Robert Lambert was trying to come back underneath him, just stuck to it, and an absolutely tremendous opening ride from Mikkel Mikkelsen. Well, what a way to start the night, Mikkel Mikkelsen will be jumping for joy after that, Nicky Pederson there, the team manager in there alongside him, did say to me prior to the event starting that Mikkelsen is in for a big night, starts in fine style.