Department of Geosciences at UMass Amherst

Coastal Habitats Can Weather Sea-Level Rise If There is Enough Sediment
Salt marshes: critical habitats threatened by rapid sea-level rise, may in fact thrive despite higher water levels. The key factor that determines whether salt marshes collapse or flourish involves not water, but sediment.
Upcoming Events
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Mar30
A Speleothem Record Of Hydroclimate Variability In Northwestern Madagascar During The Mid-Late Holocene
Berry WilliamsU-Mass Geosciences3:30pmMS/PhD Defense -
Mar31
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Mar31
Benthic Foraminifera as Tools of Paleoceanography: Three Case Studies from the Late Cretaceous of the North Pacific and Western Interior Seaway, and the Miocene-Pleistocene of the Ross Sea, Antarctica
Serena DameronU-Mass Geosciences1:30pmMS/PhD Defense -
Apr3
Student Spotlight: Helen Sajo
She aspires to become a professor one day to teach geography. She hopes to inspire her students to share her passion for the field!
"I chose geography as my secondary major after taking a general education class about climate change my freshman year. It inspired me to look at the world in a more geographical point of view and combined with primary major of economics this proved to be really beneficial.”

Department News
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Department at joint NE-SE GSA
Several members of the department presented their research at the joint annual meeting of the Northeastern and Southeastern Sections of the Geological Society of America in Reston, VIrginia. -
Summer Courses through UWW
Have a cool summer with these hot courses in Geology, Geography, and Climate Systems -
EGCS Career Session
We had a successful session last week for careers in Geology, Geography, and Earth System Science! For those not able to attend the session, slides from the presentation can be found here. -
Mike Rawlins delivers TedX talk on climate change in the Northeast
Dr. Michael Rawlins, associate director of the Climate Systems Research center, delivers a talk at TedX Boston on actionable adaptation to climate change. -
Grasshopper Anderson-Merritt Named 2023 3 Minute Thesis Winner
PhD student Grasshopper Anderson-Merritt has been named the winner of the 2023 Three Minute Thesis competition. Organized by the Graduate School, the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) challenges graduate students to describe their research in an engaging manner, using non-technical language, all in three minutes or less. -
How to rewild a wetland (hint: focus on the groundwater)
Using drones and thermal infrared imagery, Dr. Christine Hatch and colleagues show how best to restore wetlands—and why Massachusetts is leading the charge toward healthy ecosystems -
Massachusetts hot in 2022
2022 was one of the hottest years on record for Massachusetts. Dr. Michael Rawlins, Associate Director of the Climate Systems Research center, explains the why and how to the Boston Globe and WAMC's Mid-Day magazine: -
Speed kills: fast, potentially damaging earthquakes more common
The phenomena known as supershear earthquakes — those that travel super fast and can cause more shaking than slower quakes — may be much more common than previously estimated, according to a study of global earthquake data recently published in Nature Geoscience. PhD student Laura Fattaruso discusses the implications of these findings in their latest piece in Temblor... -
6 feet of snow in Buffalo: What causes lake-effect storms like this?
Dr. Michael Rawlins, Associate Director of the Climate Systems Research Center, writes about the causes of Lake Effect snowstorms in a recent piece in The Conversation...
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