PhD student Shaina Sadai and Professor Mark Leckie are recipients of the University's 2021 Distinguished Teaching Awards. Since 1961, the University of Massachusetts has presented the Distinguished Teaching Award (DTA) to instructors who demonstrate exemplary teaching at the highest institutional level.
Recent research on soil loss in the Corn Belt by graduate student Evan Thaler and professors Isaac Larsen and Qian Yu has been highlighted by Smithsonian Magazine. Read the Smithsonian article here...
Several students and faculty will be participating in the 2021 (virtual) annual meeting of the American Assocation of Geographers. See below for a schedule of who is presenting when:
Lightning Talk: Using climate modeling and interdisciplinary theory to analyze climate justice impacts of the Paris Agreement
Shaina Sadai
1:40PM
In a new paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters PhD student Anna Ruth Halberstadt, Dr Rob DeConto, former postdocs Ed Glasson, Doug Kowalewski and colleagues, model ice-sheet dynamics during a past warm period (the mid-Miocene) that is often used as a future analog due to elevated CO2 and warm temperatures.
PhD student Laura Fattaruso recently published a piece on temblor about recent research that looks into why the southern San Andreas Fault has had a relative lack of recent earthquakes: a story that involves the famous Salton Sea, prehistoric Lake Cahuilla, and how those lakes can affect stress in the earth's crust along the Fault.
The hydrogeology research group has published a number of articles in the past few weeks on their research in the Salar De Atacama, Island of Tobago, and Massachusetts. This stellar cast of authors includes Professor David Boutt and graduate students Marsha Allen, Sarah McKnight,
![Linemen work to restore power in Texas during winter storm, February 2021. Photo by Jonathan Cutrer, via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]](http://www.geo.umass.edu/sites/default/files/styles/thumb-square/public/field/image/news/texas-1-1068x580.jpg?itok=Mc3N8Okc)
Associate Professor Eve Vogel provides an analysis in ProMarket about the recent failure of the Texas Power Grid in the contexts of broader electricity markets, biophysical limitations, and different governance options. The piece features a map by MS Geography-GIST students
Recent alum Ian Hillenbrand, professors Mike Williams and Haiying Gao, along with PhD student Cong Li, have just published a paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters proposing that a
U-Mass Geosciences has a strong showing at the (virtual) annual meeting of the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America, March 14th and 15th 2021. If you're attending #NEGSA2021 this year don't miss out! Here is a schedule of who is presenting and when.
Graduate student Evan Thaler, with professors Isaac Larsen and Qian Yu, recently published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that documents complete carbon-rich topsoil loss in one-third of the Corn Belt in the Midwest – nearly 30 million acres. Read more...
The American Geosciences Institute just published their report of Geoscience graduate employment trends as of December 2020: "91% of geoscience graduates who earned their degree between 2014-2018 were employed, while 75% of graduates from 2019 and 80% of graduates from 2020 reported the same.
Dr's Brian Yellen, John Woodruff, and collaborators at WHOI recently published a paper in Estuaries and Coasts documenting their findings of much-lower-than-expected sediment levels behind dams in the Lower Hudson watershed in addition to creating a tool to quickly estimate the amount of sediment trapped behind dams. Read more here...
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.
U-Mass Geosciences is one of 14 departments selected, among 52 applicants, to participate in the newly inaugurated American Geophysical Union Bridge Program, part of the Inclusive Graduate Education Network, to increase success of URM graduate students in geosciences.
PhD students Hannah Baranes and Dr. Benjamin Keisling presenting on ice sheet stability models and estimating flood hazards at the COP25 Cryosphere Pavilion at the U.N. IPCC COP-25 meeting in Madrid! See more, including video of their Early Career talks, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6IS3Rnw4I.
PhD student Raquel Bryant and her colleague Rehemat Bhatia are featured in The Atlantic this week: speaking about their scientific collaboration, resulting friendship, and buiding networks of mutual support as two of the few women of color in the geosciences. Read More...
Our 2019 department newsletter is now available. Click here to find out about major changes, new faculty, etc... in the deparment and read old newsletters
The UMass Geography Club attended the NESTVAL Geography Bowl on October 18th, 2019, hosted by Framingham State University. UMass competed against five other teams and placed 3rd. Salem State University took the top spot, followed by the University of New Hampshire in second place.
U-Mass Geosciences will be attending the The New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society annual meeting at Framingham State University this week. Dr. Eve Vogel and students will be presenting several papers there on Quebec hydropower and the Northern Pass project, and the U-Mass Geography Club will be competing in the Geography Bowl, defending their previous titles.
The School of Earth and Sustainability (SES) has announced that Curt Griffin, environmental conservation, and Rob DeConto, geosciences, will serve as co-directors of U-Mass Amherst's School of Earth and Sustainability.
PhD student Karin Lehnigk (advisor: Isaac Larsen) has been selected for an NSF GROW-Norway award. GROW (Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide) is a program open to active NSF graduate fellows. Karin will spend Jan-August 2020 in Bergen Norway to study the erosion of Hellemobotn canyon and collect samples for cosmogenic isotope surface dating.
Professor Rob DeConto was in Monaco this week with other members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working on a draft summary for policymakers of their Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.
Graduate students Marsha Allen and Sarah McKnight are representing U-Mass Geosciences this week at the annual meeting of the International Association of Hydrogeologists in Malaga, Spain. Marsha will be presenting her research on groundwater storage assessment and flow path identification in large-scale fractured bedrock aquifer systems, with Sarah presenting her research on hydrologic and stratigraphic impacts to density-driven flo
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