Earth Sciences in the News

The Department of Earth Sciences stands at the forefront of pressing global issues, such as climate change, resource management and environmental protection. Learn more about how our expert faculty and fearless students conduct research that impacts the world around us. 

  • UB PhD student receives Department of Energy fellowship
    2/6/25
    7/26/21: Courtney Shafer, who will join the UB Department of Geology this fall as a PhD student, has been awarded a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.
  • Hunting for clues about pyroclastic surges in lonely landscapes
    2/6/25
    6/22/2021: Thousands of years ago, at different points in time, clouds of ash, rock and hot gas rushed across the Mojave and Sonoran deserts as two volcanoes erupted. These destructive events are long over. But their history is written in the lonely landscapes they ravaged. Volcanic dunes and other deposits hold debris from the ancient eruptions, as do craters marking the sites of the blasts — Ubehebe in Death Valley in the Mojave Desert in the U.S., and El Elegante in the Gran Desierto de Altar in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico.
  • Ocean-bottom sediments tell a story about ancient Greenland summers
    2/6/25
    5/13/2021: A new UB study uses these deposits to learn about ancient climate in southern Greenland, focusing on summer temperature during periods of relative warmth on Earth, called interglacials, over the past 600,000 years.
  • Elizabeth Thomas receives CAREER Award to further climate research
    2/6/25
    6/17/2021: Dr. Elizabeth Thomas and five other UB researchers awarded 3.5 million in grants to further climate action research. Assistant Professor of Geology Dr. Thomas, will be analyzing the ancient climate history of Western New York by observing sediments, rain patterns and lake effect snowfall of the Great Lakes Region. She is also a co-instructor of the Carbon Reduction Challenge where students partner with local businesses to develop ways to reduce their climate impact
  • Ice sheets and glaciers are shrinking. But we can still slow that process dramatically, study finds
    2/6/25
    5/4/2021: New research from a large international community of scientists including Sophie Nowicki from UB, predicts that sea level rise from the melting of ice could be halved this century if the world meets the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That’s relative to projections based on countries’ current pledges to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.