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 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.

In a recent paper in the American Journal of Science, Dr. Matthew Winnick and colleagues re-examine the relationships between Lithium isotopes and global weathering regimes to revise how such isotopes should be used in models that link weathering rates to changes in climate.

Dr. Forrest Bowlick and colleagues recently published a paper in The Geography Teacher providing an autoethnographic perspective on how the COVID-19 pandemic challenged traditional GIS pedagogy, course format and structure, and higher education technological infrastructures.

Graduate student Laura Fattaruso is the Geological Society of America’s 2022–2023 Science Communication Fellow. In this role, Fattaruso will help translate technical research from GSA journals and meeting presentations into relatable stories for non-technical audiences.

A groundbreaking new study recently published in the journal Earth’s Future by alum Brendan Moran, professor Dave Boutt, graduate student Sarah McKnight, and colleagues at University of Alaska, is the first to comprehensively account for the hydrological impact of lithium mining. Since lithium is the key component of the lithium-ion batteries that are crucial for the transition away from fossil fuels and towards green energy, it is critical to fully understand how to responsibly obtain the precious element.

Fifteen centuries ago, extreme dry conditions contributed to the decline of the ancient South Arabian kingdom of Himyar. Combined with political unrest and war, the droughts left behind a region in disarray, thereby helping to create the conditions on the Arabian peninsula that made possible the spread of the newly emerging religion of Islam. Dr.'s Stephen Burns, Ray Bradley, and collaborators including former post-doc Dominick Fleitmann explain in their new article in Science.

Dropping the GRE is just a first step toward holistic admissions. To further reduce bias in applicant evaluations, the UMass-Amherst geosciences program has changed the way it assesses students.  A group of Geosciences faculty & students, including Dr. Michele Cooke, Hannah Baranes, Dr.'s Isla Castañeda, Jonathon Woodruff, and David Boutt, have written an article in EOS about the process that might help other programs considering how to move forward from #Grexit.

PhD Student Sarah McKnight is one of 80 graduate students selected for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program’s 2021 Solicitation 2 cycle. Through world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources at DOE national laboratories, SCGSR prepares graduate students to enter jobs of critical importance to the DOE mission and secures the U.S. position at the forefront of discovery and innovation. McKnight will be working with Xingyuan Chen at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

22-WWLP News (Springfield, Massachusetts) highlighted Dr. Michael Rawlins, associate director of the Climate Systems Research Center, as part of a special weather program on how climate change is affecting Western Massachusetts 

In a recent piece in Nature Reviews, PhD student Laura Fattaruso says "It is time to move from quiet tolerance to active advocacy for transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary scientists, because lives are on the line."

If the students in Dr. Britt Crow-Miller’s environmental education course, NRC 597 EE, have any say, the sound of lawn care at UMass Amherst may soon be “baaaaaaa!”

Dr. Christine Hatch describes the detective work her and her students undertook to trace a hidden stream in Amherst that causes to mysterious flooding

A new report by the Greater Boston Research Advisory group details the effects of climate change on the greater Boston area, from sea level rise, to storms, to declining drinking water. The group includes several department faculty and students including Dr. Ambarish Karmalkar, Dr. Robert DeConto, Hannah Baranes, Dr. Jon Woodruff, and Anna Ruth Halberstadt.

Dr. Isaac Larsen was interviewed by CNBC about recent alum Evan Thaler's and his research about eroding topsoil in the U.S. Midwest.

Dr. Britt Crow-Miller organized a cross-campus collaboration that brought 12 UMass sheep to the lawn between the FAC and Isenberg. “The idea is kind of to start a conversation about land management, and land management practices on campus and in our communities...”

Dr. Isla Castañeda has been named a lecturer in the U.S. Science Support Program's `22-23 Ocean Discovery Lecture Series. The program facilitates involvement of the U.S. scientific community in the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). For over 20 years, the Ocean Discovery Lecture Series (formerly the Distinguished Lecturer Series) has brought the remarkable scientific results and discoveries of the Program to academic research institutions, museums, and aquaria.

From Lakes in a Changing Climate to Diversity, Globalization, and Sustainability to Spatial Decision Making and Support, we have a host of great courses this summer to help you make change in the world.