Geological Survey policy tour for Kansas legislators wins international award

LAWRENCE -- An annual tour conducted for Kansas legislators and other policy makers by the Kansas Geological Survey, based at the University of Kansas, has been honored as among the best practices in science communication in an international competition.

The KGS will present a poster describing its tour at the "Communicating the Future: Best Practices for Communication of Science and Technology to the Public"conference Sept. 23 to 25 in Washington, D.C.

About 150 organizations competed in the competition; the top 50 were invited to make a presentation. Sponsors include the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The first KGS tour was held in 1995, said Rex Buchanan, associate director of the Kansas Geological Survey. The most recent focused on northwestern Kansas and occurred in June.

"The purpose is to let policy makers see, first hand, examples of the kinds of issues they're making decisions about and to talk with people whose lives are affected by their decisions," Buchanan said.

June tour participants learned about the Ogallala Formation, the massive underground water-bearing rock that runs beneath Kansas and other Great Plains states, as well as the center pivot irrigation systems that rely on it. "This way, policymakers know more when they make water decisions," Buchanan said. "We usually have about a third legislators on the trip, a third state-agency heads and then a third that includes leaders of environmental groups, business people, teachers and so on."

The tour is coordinated by Robert Sawin, research associate, with help from Liz Brosius, research assistant; Jim McCauley, assistant scientist; and Buchanan.The posters at the conference in Washington will describe an array of science and communications programs -- for general and specialized media, for children, legislators, opinion leaders and others.

Laboratories, museums, institutes and universities entered. The field of winners included the National Academy of Sciences, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Cornell Theory Center and the NASA Spaceflight Center in the United States.

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