Abstract
Geological surveys are public institutions founded at national levels, mostly during the nineteenth century to advance national scientific knowledge about the nature, structure, and history of the Earth’s subsurface and locate potentially economic mineral concentrations.
After the disasters of the two world wars and the formal launch on May 9, 1950, of the European Union’s construction, European Geological Surveys actively contribute to this construction, providing data, information, and knowledge on the diversity of the subsurface-hosted natural resources (geothermal energy, groundwater, hydrocarbon and mineral resources, space for infrastructure construction or for storage purposes, for instance, CO2 storage after capture) and of geology-related natural hazards.
This article retraces Pr. Wellmer’s remarkable contribution to European public geosciences and to the transition from national, or sometimes regional, geological surveys to the development of a collective public European geoscientific infrastructure, nowadays based on the capacities and the experience of 38 national or regional geological surveys being members of EuroGeoSurveys, the Association of the Geological Surveys of Europe. This contribution not only happened during Pr. Wellmer’s career with the German Federal Agency for Geoscience and Raw Materials (BGR, 1987–2005, being its president from 1996 to 2005) but is ongoing ever since.
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Christmann, P., Toulhoat, P. & Varet, J. Building a European vision in a global world: a tribute to Pr. F. W. Wellmer’s contribution, from a French perspective. Miner Econ 35, 355–359 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-022-00306-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-022-00306-6