We are STEM environmental scientists who study how the Earth works as a planet, what its history has been, and how this knowledge can be put to good use.
Learn More About UsUnderstanding Earth as a Coherent System
As curiosity-driven STEM scientists, we combine outdoor field work, laboratory analysis, and simulation modeling to come up with better answers for planetary interaction than possible from geology, biology, anthropology, climatology, and marine science alone.
As ethically-motivated environmental scientists, we help meet the human challenges of obtaining natural resources, mitigating natural hazards, and managing habitats, including those of humans. We overlap with the applied disciplines of engineering, agriculture, natural resources, law, public health, and business.
We examine planet Earth holistically by focusing on the interactions between its solids, liquids, gasses, organisms, and human activities in terrestrial, marine, and atmospheric settings.
We care about beautiful things like minerals, waters, landscapes, climates, ecosystems, rocks, fossils, glaciers, rivers, mountains, coasts, oceans, soils, sediments, volcanoes, and human creations. They help us answer fundamental questions about the origin, habitability, and future of our planet and its neighbors.
The Department of Earth Sciences offers B.A. and B.S. degrees with Earth, Environment, and Atmosphere tracks as well as a Minor, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Please explore the website to learn more about our department!
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Upcoming Events
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Apr
25
Geography Colloquium - Dr. Barry Zellen 3:30pm
Geography Colloquium - Dr. Barry Zellen
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Austin Building
Dr. Barry Zellen
PhD, University of Lapland (2015)
Arctic Exceptionalism in a Contested World: Navigating New Challenges to Circumpolar Unity
Dr Zellen’s talk is a preview of his newest book, Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation in a Contested World, which is due to be released this summer. The book is a structural analysis of the roots and endurance of Arctic cooperation, and the rise of what until 2022 was quite commonly called “Arctic Exceptionalism,” a term that has since come under much fire as the profound consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine rippled beyond Europe, fostering a complex re-organization of the international system aimed to isolating Russia from the globalized world but which has induced instead a re-bifurcation of world politics into western and eastern blocs, largely corresponding to the late-19th to mid-20th century geopolitical constructs of Rimland and Heartland. This re-emergence of competing blocs has quickly reached the Arctic, leading many to believe Arctic Exceptionalism was over, or perhaps had never existed at all.
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