The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.

The United States’ position is especially delicate, the agency said, given its reliance on foreign-born workers to fill technical jobs.

The board is the oversight agency for the National Science Foundation, the leading source of money for basic research in the physical sciences.

The report, on the Web at nsf.gov/statistics/indicators, recommends increased financing for basic research and greater “intellectual interchange” between researchers in academia and industry. The board also called for better efforts to track the globalization of high-tech manufacturing and services and their implications for the American economy.