Massachusetts is coming off one of the wettest years on record and one of the wettest winters on record, and we are now in one of the wettest Marches to date. It's no secret that our seas are rising and as of late, so are our rivers. One UMass Amherst professor is sounding a new alarm – a rising water table.
Dr. David Boutt has been in the news in recent weeks being interviewed on PFAS contamination of groundwater in Western Massachusetts:
Dr. Matthew Winnick and Brian Saccardi recently demonstrated that the chemical process known as “carbonate buffering” can account for the majority of emissions in highly alkaline waters. Furthermore, carbonate buffering distorts the most commonly used method of tracking the origins of CO2 in streams...
To help answer the question of how long the buttressing Antarctic ice shelves might last in the face of warming and rising seas, an international initiative, including Dr.'s Mark Leckie and Rob DeConto, will turn to the geological record and recover sediment from regions beneath the floating Ross Ice Shelf and near the grounding zone of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that were deposited during past times when it was warmer than today. These sediments hold environmental information that is key to our future but, until now, has been impossible to obtain.
Dr.'s David Boutt, Jon Woodruff and Robert DeConto will contribute their expertise in snowfall, sea-level rise, water cycling and coastal sediment movement to the state’s new Climate Science Advisory Panel: a group of 21 experts who will attempt to bridge the communication and knowledge gap between policymakers and scientists.
Emeritus Professor Tony Morse passed away on January 9, 2024. Morse, widely recognized for his key contributions and reputation as a phenomenal scientist, was a beloved colleague to all in the department and beyond. A service for Tony will be held at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, MA, on Saturday, April 6th, at 1pm.
Massachusetts is looking for its next State Geologist! Could it be you?
We're looking for a skilled lecturer to teach GIST courses, primarily based at U-Mass Amherst's Mt. Ida campus.
Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette's most recent trip to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, included her research assistant Xander Kirshen ‘22, doctoral candidate Kelly McKeon ‘21 and Mark Goldner, a teacher at Heath Middle School in Brookline, and is documented in this video.
Dr. Mike Rhodes has had a long and distinguished career that started with mapping and analyzing granite in Australia, moved to the USA with the NASA program to work on Lunar rocks, and culminated with influential studies of MORB and, particularly, Hawaiian volcanoes. Many of the seminal papers that have advanced our understanding of the geochemistry of these iconic volcanoes were build upon the foundations laid by J. M. Rhodes.
U-Mass EGCS has a strong showing at the annual Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. If you're attending #AGU23 in this year, either virtually or in person, don't miss out! Here is a schedule of who is presenting and when:
We're thrilled to have several Department community members presenting at the 2023 Geological Society America National Meeting. If you're attending the conference, be sure not to miss these presentations!
Dr. Matthew Winnick, along with Dr. Colin Gleason (CEE), recently secured a 3-year NSF grant to better model how much CO2 is added to the atmosphere by lakes, rivers, and streams and how that changes with stream hydrology on a global scale.
Dr. Martín Medina Elizalde's paleoclimate research was recently featured in a 4-part National Geographic Documentary "Rise and Fall of the Maya"
The efforts of Dr. Christine Hatch and Living Obsrevatory at Tidmarsh Farm in southeastern Massachusetts, to restore a former cranberry bog, have recently been highlighted as a success story in bringing back wetlands from the dead.
The increase in severe weather and precipitation seen this summer has many worried about New England's dams. Christine Hatch was interviewed by several news outlets this summer and weighs in:
Find out more about all of the undergraduate majors teh department offers, including Q+A sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and extended open hours for the Rausch Mineral Gallery
An Indigenous-led and majority Indigenous consortium of communities and researchers just launched the NSF-funded Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science. The effort involved the hard work of many folks across departments and institutions, and EGCS is proud to be a member, with Dr. Jonathon Woodruff serving as one of the principal investigators, and Dr.'s Julie Brigham-Grette and Rob DeConto serving as participating scholars
Dr. Sarah McKnight, along Dr. David Boutt, Dr. Brendan Moran, and collagues at the University of Alaska Anchorage, are the first to characterize two different types of surface water in the hyperarid salars—or salt flats—that contain much of the world’s lithium deposits. This new characterization represents a leap forward in understanding how water moves through such basins, and will be key to minimizing the environmental impact on such sensitive, critical habitats.
UMass Amherst’s Integrated Concentration in STEM (iCons) Program has announced the appointment of Christine Hatch, extension associate professor in the Department of Earth, Geographic and Climate Sciences, as the new associate director of academics. In her new role, Hatch will oversee the academic programs of iCons and provide leadership to the program’s faculty and students.
Aa new professional development program at UMass Amherst: UNVEIL: Revealing the hidden curriculum of faculty job application, interviewing and negotiation to contribute to diversifying scientific leadership, is seeking applicants, with a deadline of May 1th,2023. The main goal of this program is to increase diversity among faculty and scientific leadership in the Natural Sciences, with a specific focus on groups under-represented in their fields, and is a collaboration between EGCS, ECo, and Biology.
The title of "Provost Professor" recognizes exceptional achievement in research or creative activity, and in teaching. This campus-level faculty honorific is designated for tenure-system faculty who hold the rank of professor and are not already in a named or distinguished professorship
Several students and faculty in the department are presenting their research, both in person and remotely, at the annual Conference of the American Association of Geographers in Denver Colorado.
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.
Have a cool summer with these hot courses in Geology, Geography, and Climate Systems
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.
Dr. Michael Rawlins, associate director of the Climate Systems Research center, delivers a talk at TedX Boston on actionable adaptation to climate change.
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.
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
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:
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...
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...
New research from Dr.'s Shaina Sadai, Rob DeConto, and colleagues, recently published in the journal Earth’s Future, shows that even the most optimistic Paris Agreement temperature targets can lead to catastrophic sea-level rise, which has already begun and will affect low-lying nations for generations to come...
In a discovery that has repercussions for everything from domestic agricultural policy to global food security and the plans to mitigate climate change, researchers at the University of Massachusetts recently announced that the rate of soil erosion in the Midwestern US is 10 to 1,000 times greater than pre-agricultural erosion rates...
U-Mass DEGCS has a strong showing at annual Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. If you're attending #AGU22 in Chicago this year, either virtually or in person, don't miss out! Here is a schedule of who is presenting and when:
We are pleased to announce the donation of the MOVE software package to the Department of Geosciences by the Scotland-based Petroleum Experts Limited. This industry-standard software package is valued at $2,764,444.18 USD and provides tools for 3D analysis and geophysical and structural modeling of deformation of the Earth's crust.
We have a number of exciting events planned for Geography Awareness week, including Geography Bowl and GeoGuesser tournaments, and more!
Dr. Christine Hatch was recently appointed a member of the Commonwealth’s Water Resources Commission. Hatch will be the only member of the commission representing Western Massachusetts.
New research, led by postdoctoral associate Dr. Zhengyu Xia and co-authored with Dr. Matthew Winnick, refines our understanding of the chemical traces that act as the rain’s fingerprint. The work, which appeared recently in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, is crucial for understanding the Earth’s water cycle, especially as it undergoes rapid change due to global warming, deforestation and other environmental catastrophes.
Congratulations to graduate student Pedros Matos-Llavona for being awarded the John A. Black student research award from the Geological Society of America for his research on quantifying sediment delivery to reservoirs after hurricane Maria.
We're thrilled to have several Department community members presenting at the 2022 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting. If you're attending the conference, be sure not to miss these presentations!
Thanks to a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and NASA, the international office of the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) project, a core initiative of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), will make its home for the next five years on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Rob DeConto, professor of geosciences and director of the School of Earth and Sustainability, and Dr. Raymond Bradley, Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, will lead the project.
This is among the most prestigious distinctions in the earth, climate and space sciences, awarded to less than 0.1% of members. AGU, a nonprofit organization that supports a worldwide membership of 130,000, ranging from enthusiasts to experts, annually recognizes a select number of individuals as part of its Honors and Recognition program. DeConto joins just 54 other individuals in the 2022 Class of Fellows.
PhD student Laura Fattaruso revives their acclaimed podcast to interview alums Dr. Raquel Bryant and Dr. Benjamin Keisling, along with Dr. Rachel Bernard (Amherst College), and other participants at the conference.
Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette is leading a new $3M National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that will support a three-year collaboration with Alaska Pacific University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks to bring academics from across the US together with indigenous Yupik and Cup’ik communities in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta.
In a recent piece in Anthropology News Dr. Eric Thomas offers analysis and discussion of Chiles recent vote on a new Constitution and what that means for addressing economic inequality in the region.
Dr. Juilie Brigham-Grette has received the Distinguished Career Award from the American Quaternary Association for her important career-long contributions towards our understanding of environmental change in the Arctic.
Dr. Matthew Winnick has been designated part of the College of Natural Science's ADVANCE Faculty Fellow cohort for 2022-2023. The 44 selected faculty members, each representing different units, will partner with UMass ADVANCE to promote gender and racial equity for faculty at UMass Amherst.
In their latest piece in temblor PhD student Laura Fattaruso discusses the most recent WA-DNR report highlighting areas in Puget Sound that are at risk of tsunami inundation if a large earthquake occurred.
Dr. Jonathan Woodruff and several colleagues are part of a team led by Indigenous scholars proposing a new Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science that will emphasize scientific research conducted in partnership with Indigenous communities on issues that are central to those communities.