RESEARCH

Programs

The Center for Geohazards [.doc] is the Department of Geology's Signature Program under which the following programs are classified. Each of these major groups houses a variety of different geologic disciplines, giving our students unique opportunities for multidisciplinary research:

Environmental Geosciences: Recent research includes: Studies which seek to understand ground-water flow and contaminant transport at multiple scales; analysis of hydrologic properties in alpine meadow complexes; environmental site characterization; archaeogeophysics in Jordan; glaciogeophysics in Alaska; amplitude variation with offset analysis on GPR data; coincident seismic and GPR imaging; studies in environmental geochemistry; and the study of phyllosilicates. Learn more.

Volcanology: Recent research includes: Landform change related to wildfires; coupling between faulting and volcanism; understanding dangerous volcanic phenomena, such as deadly clouds of ash and gas; avalanches and mud flows for hazard mitigation; understanding volcanic hazards using remotely sensed data and presenting the results in a mode that will be most useful for several types of end users; investigations of volcanic eruptions on the ocean floor; study of basaltic lava flows; and, the study of volcanoes on Mars, Venus and Io. Learn more.

Climate Change: Recent research includes: The study of global warming and disappearing Arctic ice, ice sheet history and dynamics, and Holocene paleoenvironments in the Canadian Arctic; glacier chronologies and paleoenvironments in Alaska. Learn more.

Integrated Tectonics and Stratigraphy (iTAS): Recent research includes: Fault recognition and tectonic history based on a wide array of data sets; fault effects on sedimentology, stratigraphy, seismic hazards, and fluid migration (such as water, contaminants, and hydrocarbons); testing and refining the Ordovician sequence stratigraphic boundaries along the eastern Laurentian margin; interpreting the structure, sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy and biological evolution within the Taconic Foredeep Basin; evolution and biostratigraphy of various graptolite, trilobite and brachiopod groups. Learn more.

Evolution and Ecology: The subject matter of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior is broad-ranging and encompasses those aspects of the life and environmental sciences that characterize how organisms interact with each other and their environment and how those interactions change over time. They are essential to the study of applied and basic topics such as studies of human origins (paleoanthropology), biodiversity over space (community ecology) and time (paleobiology), the function and evolution of body plans and life histories (evolutionary ecology), the origins of social systems (socioecology), the effects of climate change and biotic invasions on ecosystems, conservation, bioremediation, and epidemiology. Learn more.

Facilities

Research facilities include laboratories for advanced studies with modern equipment, such as: Volcanic simulation laboratory to model volcanic flows, gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), organic vapor analysis (OVA), geometrics strataview R-60 portable engineering seismograph, subsurface profiling system, flow-through down-hole fluorometer, a cosmogenic radionuclide lab and a lacustrine paleoenvironment lab. In addition, our students have full access to the graduate computer laboratory, a geographic information systems (GIS) lab, an environmental geophysics research lab and a hydrogeology lab, each with state-of-the-art equipment and software to use for course work and research projects, and the Duttweiler Field Station.