While most of our course offerings are remote this semester, we are offering several courses through U-Mass University Without Walls. These are asynchronous courses that are taught independently from your regular semester courseload, and can taken by anyone, whether enrolled at UMass or not. They are all listed in SPIRE.
Dr. David Boutt, along with colleagues at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, has been commissioned as part of a cooperative study to investigate how lithium extraction impacts the hydrologic environment in Latin America, especially with regards to lithium brine-fresh water aquifer systems. The goal of the study is to provide companies with better guidance on sustainable lithium extraction.
The Geosciences Department is pleased to announce the November 29, 2020 publication of The Chinese City (Routledge, 2021), by Professor Piper Gaubatz (Geography Program) and Professor Weiping Wu (Director, Columbia University Graduate Program in Urban Planning). This is a completely revised second edition of their 2012 book. The book engages with major recent changes in Chinese cities and urban life.
PhD student Shaina Sedai is lead author on a recent paper published in Science Advances discussing simulations of dramatic climate impacts from higher Antarctic melt. With her co-authors, including alum Dr. Alan Condron (WHOI), and Dr.
U-Mass Geosciences has a strong showing at the (virtual) annual Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union this year, with 43 department members as authors on 39 talks and posters from December 7th - 16th, 2020. If you're attending #AGU2020 this year don't miss out! Here is a schedule of who is presenting and when:
Click here to browse the presentations by author.
Congratulations to students from the UMass Geography Club for winning the 2020 World Geography Bowl at the American Association of Geographers New England-St Lawrence Valley Division Meeting, November 13, 2020.
This was the fifth recent win for the UMass team, which also won with the top score in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, and placed 3rd in 2018 and 2019. Several team members will represent the New England region in the national competition in Spring 2021.
Dr's Julie Brigham-Grette and Steve Petsch published a piece in The Conversation about the warming Arctic, their paleoclimate research on past warm climates, and the implications for our future. Read more...
The International Association for Geoscience Diversity recently named Dr Michele Cooke, geosciences, as the recipient of its 2020 International Association for Geoscience Diversity Inclusive Geoscience Education and Research Award for her work as a “foundational leader in accessible and inclusive geoscience teaching in both the classroom and field for over 20 years, all while maintaining a successful research career in geomechanics and structural geology.
A little over a year ago our beloved faculty member, Dr Sheila Seaman, lost her long and valiant battle with cancer— To honor her dedication to education, research, and the betterment of students, we are launching the Sheila Seaman Student Research Fund. This endowed fund, administered by the UMass Foundation, will, in future years, provide monetary support for Geosciences student research. Although preference will go to students in the fields of mineralogy and petrology, other students will be able to benefit from
Dr Rob DeConto is part of a U-Mass team that has received grants from the NSF EELEVATE program to explore and develop pathways so that the transition to sustainable energy also promotes the socioeconomic equity of communities.
In a new paper this week in the Journal of Geography in Higher Education, geographer Dr Forrest Bowlick and colleagues at Texas A&M offer first-hand accounts of what is required for GIS instructors and IT administrators to set up virtual computing specifically for providing state-of-the-art geographic information systems (GIS) instruction. Read more
Dr Christine Hatch reflects on COVID-19, and the resulting quarantine's, effects on the natural environment for the Daily Hampshire Gazette's Earth Matters column: Read it here...
The Geological Society of America’s (GSA) Continental Scientific Drilling Division (CSD) has named Dr Julie Brigham-Grette as one of its two Distinguished Lecturers for 2020, which means she will be available to give online seminars on her Arctic drilling research to geologists anywhere in the world by request this fall and into spring 2021.
A team of climate scientists and geologists including Dr Robert DeConto recently received a five-year, $7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to drill through the Greenland Ice Sheet and into the bedrock below, where they will be able to evaluate how long it has been since the last ice sheet retreated from the continent. Read more...
USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has awarded a two-year, $300,000 grant to Dr. Brian Yellen to develop tools to estimate the mass of carbon stored in salt marshes.
Dr Christine Hatch recently contributed to the regular Earth Matters column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette with a piece on finding the perfect conditions to measure groundwater outflow in a frozen wetland, as part of a project to restore a natural wetland at the site of a retired cranberry bog.
A new paper in Earth-Science Reviews by Dr. Michele Cooke and co-authors discusses which rock analog (i.e., physical) materials work best for particular scaled-deformation experiments in structural geology, including benefits and drawbacks of different materials. Read the paper here...
PhD student Laura Fattaruso recently published a piece in temblor on alum Dr. Heather Savage's and Dr. Pratigya Polissar's recent study in Nature Communications on using organic molecules to detect heat produced during large earthquakes. Read the story here...
Dr. Justin Richardson and colleagues recently published a new paper in Environmental Pollution on whether or not one can predict heavy concentration in an earthwork based on the soil concentration of said metals. Read the paper here...
A new episode of PhD student Laura Fattaruso's podcast, Labtalk with Laura, talks with alumni of the STEMSEAS program (Student Experiences Aboard Ships) started by Sharon Cooper and Jon Lewis. She's joined in the studio by Emma Robertson, a UMass undergrad who sailed last summer from Woods Hole, MA to Reykjavik, Iceland.
“Dinosaurs sit at an evolutionary point between birds, which are warm-blooded, and reptiles, which are cold-blooded. Our results suggest that all major groups of dinosaurs had warmer body temperatures than their environment” - post-doctoral fellow Dr. Robin Dawson on her research she performed while a doctoral student at Yale University. Read More...
Professor Julie Brigham-Grette, geosciences, has been honored by Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation with one of its coveted Humboldt Research Awards, which will support her research collaborations there over the coming six months.
In a new study in The Cryosphere, Dr Michael Rawlins, associate director of the Climate Systems Research Center, and fellow researchers explore the changing character of runoff, river discharge, and other hydrological cycle elements across the North Slope of Alaska, revealing significant increases in the proportion of subsurface runoff and cold season discharge.
Dr. Isaac Larsen is spending the spring semester at the University of Salzburg, Austria as a recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award. He will teach graduate courses and conduct research on Earth surface changes using cosmogenic nuclide geochemistry techniques to study erosion rates using sand samples from rivers and river terraces in non-glaciated Alpine landscapes, as well as investigating how they respond to climate change.
Alum Dr. Alan Condron and Professor Ray Bradley recently published a paper in Geology which uses accounts of 19th century European explorers to ground-truth arctic sea ice models. Read more here...
Department of Geosciences
627 North Pleasant Street
233 Morrill Science Center
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-9297
Phone: (413) 545-2286
Fax: (413) 545-1200
