Annual Report 2014: Geoscience for society

A continued joint effort in the Arctic was the most important event in 2014, when the Danish Minister for Climate, Energy and Building and the Greenlandic Minister for Mineral Resources, as well as GEUS and the Ministry of Mineral Resources entered into new five-year cooperation agreements. The agreements ensure that the extensive knowl edge held at GEUS can directly and without interruption be exploited in developing the mineral resources sector in Greenland. This is crucial, both when the mineral fever is raging and when current or new stakeholders need to be attracted.

A second landmark event was when the Danish Realm delivered its fifth, and for the moment final, submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) for the area around the North Pole. The mapping and the specialist work, headed by GEUS, has now been completed, but in the many years over which the negotiations are likely to continue, the foundation will have to be maintained and the submission was a milestone in the history of GEUS.

The Arctic has also attracted a great deal of attention in other fields covered by GEUS. These include monitoring and research on ice melt from the Greenland ice sheet, where a net loss of ice is still being observed; publishing reports about rare-earth elements and uranium of major interest to politicians and the industry; and finally knowledge-building about the geology of Greenland where GEUS’ office in Nuuk among other events organised a conference and knowledge-sharing with the Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office and the Greenland Ministry of Mineral Resources.

Collaboration with geological surveys in Europe reached new heights in 2014, with large joint projects within most fields, including completion of the North Atlantic Tectonic Atlas and establishment of an extensive network on urban geology. GEUS has also been active and carried out tasks on several continents and has helped establish a firm foothold for Danish water-supply solutions in the populous Asian countries.

At home, research, monitoring and mapping groundwater resources have kept GEUS busy. Mapping will be completed in 2015, and during the year GEUS took part in important model development work with DHI and the Danish Centre for Environment and Energy. This work will form the foundation for a more differentiated land regulation of nitrate emissions from agriculture as a follow-up on recommendations from the Nature and Agriculture Commission. There has also been focus on the results of GEUS’ pesticide monitoring programme.

Within geothermal exploitation of the subsurface for heating – and for cooling – GEUS has worked on identifying suitable reservoirs, including at sites below 28 towns, and also provided advice and guidelines on developing and exploiting geothermal energy.

Finally, the sea and the seafloor have increasingly been attracting attention, and GEUS has published a new nationwide map of the seafloor around Denmark based on compilation of data from work on the seafloor over several decades. The map is available on GEUS’ website.

This annual report describes just a small extract from the broad spectrum of tasks carried out by GEUS over the year. Key figures for the year are included at the end of the report and they show a slight reduction in revenues and thus activity, primarily because of the slow-down in the oil/gas and minerals sectors. This development is likely to impact fully in 2015 and it will challenge GEUS’ ability to build up a sufficiently large portfolio of projects. However, GEUS has a strong and robust specialist foundation, ready to tackle new tasks and new types of task.