Annual Report 2006 - Research for a society in change

• GEUS' new place in the research landscape
• Foreword
• Databanks and information
  • Storage, quality assurance, and presentation of geological knowledge and data
    • Towards a national database with increased access
    • Storage of important continental shelf data
    • New book about Greenland's minerals
    • Focus on increasing the intake of geology students
    • Expansion of a nationwide geophysics database
• Water resources
  • Procuring knowledge to permit optimal management of our water resources
    • The effect of climate change on the water cycle
    • Sustainable water abstraction of deep groundwater in the limestone
    • Oestrogen run-offs from liquid manure into the aquatic environment
    • New tools for managing water resources
    • A map of pesticide-sensitive sandy soil
• Energy resources
  • Procuring of knowledge for continued exploration and exploitation of energy resources in Denmark and Greenland
    • Go-ahead for delimitation of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean
    • New European initiatives in CO₂ storage.
    • Successful licensing round in Greenland
    • Hydrocarbon resources in North Sea chalk
    • Possible gas/condensate from deep sources in the North Sea
• Mineral resources
  • Creating the scientific basis for targeted and environment-friendly exploitation of mineral deposits in Greenland and Denmark
    • Mapping and evaluation of resources
    • Mineral deposits in 3-D
    • Sustainable exploitation of raw materials in Denmark
    • Increased diamond potential in Greenland
    • Increasing interest in Greenland's minerals
• Nature and environment
  • Identifying processes leading to the current climate and environment situation in Denmark and the North Atlantic in particular
    • Geological maps for planning and management
    • Monitoring of the Greenland ice sheet
    • International evaluation of GEUS' research
    • A total of 38 GeoSites designated
    • Research and information dissemination onboard Galathea 3
• Glimpses of the year
  • News 2006
    • Two new professorships
    • A geological year
    • Environment and climate advisor for the European Commision
    • Research collaboration agreement in Greenland
    • New doctorate at GEUS
    • Large new appropriations from the National Advanced Technology Foundation
• GEUS around the world
  • Knowledge building in developing countries through research and consultancy
    • More environment-friendly small-scale mining in Tanzania
    • Ten years of oil training in Vietnam
    • Progress in research to combat arsenic pollution
    • Tsunami contingency plan in Kenya
• Key figures
• Organisation

The most important event for GEUS in 2006 was the government's decision on GEUS' future role and position in connection with the reorganisation of the national research landscape in Denmark. The government granted GEUS' request to remain an independent research institution under the Ministry of the Environment. However, GEUS will also be obliged to contribute its specialist expertise to the PhD, Master and Bachelor programmes at the universities. Collaboration with the universities must be intensified in the framework of a new Geocenter Denmark. This new centre will bring together GEUS and the two universities in Copenhagen and Aarhus, which have educational programmes for geologists, under one common umbrella.

Another significant innovative feature related to implementation of the municipal structural reform. GEUS received a number of new employees that were transferred from the counties to a new GEUS department in Aarhus. The new department's main assignment is to manage coordination of the fee-financed survey of Danish groundwater resources.

In connection with the municipal structural reform, GEUS has contributed to the establishment of Denmark's Environmental Portal. GEUS' databases have been developed as common public, online databases for the registration of data on borehole drillings, groundwater and drinking water, as well as geophysical data which are crucial for water and mineral resources management.

In the area of climate, GEUS has contributed with research in three important fields. By means of a model developed by GEUS, calculations have been made on the effect of climate change on the freshwater cycle in Denmark. These calculations show large regional variations of significance to the future management of water resources and the aquatic environment.

The melting of the Greenland ice sheet constitutes a factor of uncertainty in international model calculations of the future global increase in sea level. On the basis of a pilot study completed in 2006, GEUS launched a new monitoring programme, which, over a number of years, is to assess the mass loss from the border zone of the inland ice sheet and from calving icebergs. This will be achieved by setting up fully automated measuring stations that will register the melting process, climate parameters and the rate by which the ice moves.

With a view to limiting global emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, together with a number of European countries GEUS has carried out research projects to clarify the possibilities of storing CO₂ underground. Storage of CO₂ will commence near Berlin in 2007.

In the area of energy, research by GEUS has contributed to increased interest in Greenland from the international oil industry, which has resulted in a number of licence applications in connection with a licensing round that covered areas offshore West Greenland. In Danish territories, GEUS has demonstrated the existence of possible new deposits of gas/condensate formed from deep-lying carboniferous coal beds in the Danish Central Graben and in surrounding areas.

In 2006, surveys of the continental shelf north of Greenland commenced for real. The objective is to make potential territorial claims beyond 200 nautical miles where oil and gas deposits might exist. Despite extreme and unfavourable weather and ice conditions, Danish and Canadian researchers together succeeded in collecting enough data to establish a seismic model of the subsurface.

GEUS' geological surveys in Greenland are an essential condition for the great, international interest which in recent years has entailed the most extensive commercial mineral exploration ever. Efforts by GEUS were aimed especially at the Nuuk and Maniitsoq areas, with special focus on gold and diamond potentials.