New Accord Allows Soviet, U.S. Geologists to Work Together

Soviet and U.S. scientists reached final agreement Monday on an accord that will allow geologists from both countries to work together on a wide range of projects.

“Our geologists are eager to get started,” Dallas Peck, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a brief ceremony during the International Geological Congress, which is meeting here through July 19.

Y. A. Kozlovsky, who negotiated the agreement for the Soviets while he was serving as minister of geology, accepted the memorandum of understanding on behalf of the Soviet Union. The documents actually were signed May 6 but Monday was the first opportunity for the scientists to exchange documents and sit down together and talk about future projects.

Under the agreement, U.S. scientists will get core samples from the Earth’s deepest well, which is now more than seven miles deep, on the Soviet Union’s Kola Peninsula. The Soviets are drilling 11 deep wells, and scientists in this country are anxious to study samples from several miles below the surface.

By contrast, the deepest research well in the United States is scarcely two miles deep. It is in the Cajon Pass east of Los Angeles.

Peck said that the Soviets have learned a lot from their deep wells, including the fact that much of their understanding about the geophysics of the area was wrong. Soviet scientists had expected to find the Earth highly stratified at such depths, he said, but the well proved that expectation wrong.

Three Projects Approved

Paul Hearn of the Geological Survey’s international division said that three U.S.-Soviet projects already have been approved. They include geological studies of the area between Siberia and Alaska and the exchanging of ophiolites, rocks formed at spreading centers where two tectonic plates are being pushed apart.

U.S. scientists also plan to study a spreading center in Siberia, and Soviet scientists want to look at a similar area in the Southwest’s Rio Grande Valley.