What Does the Demise of the National Research Program Mean for Subsurface Water Science?

In her review of Benchmark Papers in Hydrogeology, Mary Anderson ([1]) presented 35 of what she considered to be the most impactful papers written during the past 150 years from Darcy to Gorelick. Of these, more than a third were authored by staff from the National Research Program (NRP) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Water Resources Division (WRD; now the "Water Mission Area"). The termination of the USGS's National Research Program in the Water Mission Area is a serious loss to the USGS and the global water science community. [Extracted from the article]