At this morning's State Geologist's mid-year meeting at the GSA conference in Houston, USGS director Mark Myers talked briefly about their work in Afghanistan. They completed a comprehensive hyperspectral remote sensing survey of the entire country, the largest such survey ever done in the world. Mark described how valuable this survey of Afghanistan is, for mineral exploration, for environmental issues, for a whole range of scientific studies. He then commented how wonderful it would be if we could get similar surveys in the states.
Isn't it ironic that we as a country can afford to undertake a national hyperspectral survey of Afghanistan because it's funded through national security funding channels but similar funding sources are not available to support domestic studies?