GEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIETY
Geological knowledge is an important basis for providing Switzerland with a sustainable supply of high-quality drinking water. Total annual use of water in the country amounts to nearly one billion cubic meters. The supply is largely decentralized; 80 percent derives from underground water resources that renew themselves continuously through precipitation seepage. For hygienic reasons, groundwater pumped by thousands of wells and tapped natural springs must be protected from contamination by pollutants. To provide this protection, authorities establish clearly defined requirements and restrictions for land use in graduated zones centered around the source areas. Hydrogeological maps, data, and hydrodynamic modeling provide specialized professionals with important information on the spatial extent of groundwater resources and their quality. Thus they help to define and ensure the sustainable use of groundwater reservoirs and protected areas. As a mountainous country, Switzerland is exposed to a variety of natural hazards. The basic data and products of the Swiss Geological Survey help to assess these risks and to ensure sustain-able regional development. The landscape of Switzerland has been created mainly by the collision of the African continental plate with the European plate. The pressure www.globalscientia.com
that began around 60 million years ago at the edges of the two plates has continued over the subsequent millions of years to form the highly folded, thick thrust sheets comprising the Alpine region. Due to the ongoing plate movements between Africa and Europe, coupled with the fault system of the Rhine Graben in the Basle region, major earthquakes can still occur in Switzerland. A detailed knowledge of the local geological situation is a crucial contribution to
generation of geothermal energy and deep geological repositories, the Swiss Geological Survey at swisstopo develops three-dimensional geological models. The energy supply in Switzerland is today mainly based on import of nonrenewable fossil fuels and propellants. In the future, however, Switzerland will need to locate and tap renewable sources such as geothermal energy. In the Swiss subsurface one reaches the Comet Photoshopping GMbH, Z端rich, D. Enz.
industrial minerals such as gypsum, table salt, and high-quality clays with its domestic quarries and mines. This also applies to the major industrial use of rocks and unconsolidated deposits such as gravel, sand, marl or natural building stone. Cement works, brick and plaster factories, sand and gravel plants, and other enterprises in the construction industry process mineral resources to achieve sales reaching billions of dollars. In their search for productive occurrences of such resources, professionals can use geological maps, drill core archives, and rock analyses to narrow the search radius for possible quarry sites. Knowledge of the historical use of natural resources, which have been enriched by geological processes over millions of years, was the impetus for the preparation of the first geological maps. To this end the Swiss Geological Survey archives some 40,000 geological records and documents.
Fig. 2 On-site monitoring of stress measurements performed by overcoring a borehole in which a probe was previously installed.
protecting our living space against this natural hazard. As a result of large differences in elevation over short distances, mountainous areas are especially prone to threats of landslides, like rock falls, rock debris and earth slides as well as ice breakoff from glacier snouts. In combination with relatively high precipitation in the region of the watershed separating the Northern from the Southern Alps, these natural conditions increase the flood risk in low-lying areas. Using geological maps and other geological data, experts can recognize these risks and take timely action to mitigate the hazards. In this way, geological information helps to identify, localize and, through land-use planning as well as organizational and structural building measures, minimize potential threats to human life and property.
temperatures required for practical exploitation of geothermal energy (ca. 100 degrees Celsius) at a depth of approximately 3,000 meters.
Safer use of the deep subsurface
The Swiss Geological Survey provides the geological information to help our economy to tap this enormous geothermal energy potential for reliable heat and power production. Threedimensional models and their possibilities for the visualization of complex geological situations in the underground play an increasingly important role. Their big advantage is that they depict geological formations, not only at the surface but also underground. Geological maps, natural outcrops, drill cores, and seismic data form the basis for 3D modeling.3D models are well suited to estimate the potential for containerless storage of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, in deep underground rock formations.
Management of the deep subsurface is becoming increasingly important. For complex applications, such as
In Switzerland, the most likely candidates for such a repository are the porous sand- and limestones in the Issue 3 | GLOBALSCIENTIA | 79