| Department of Geosciences

UMass Geosciences at AGU

Several faculty and students will be presenting research at the annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC from December 10th-14th. Below is a schedule of where and when to see them!
Professor Michele Cooke on Deaf Gain in the scientific community

Professor Michele L. Cooke was recently featured by UMass Magazine discussing Deaf Gain and the value that deaf and hard-of-hearing people provide to the larger community.
Rawlins and Boutt on extremely wet autumn in New England

Dr.'s Michael Rawlins and David Boutt weigh in on the how and why this was one of the wettest autumns on record for New England. Read More...
Riversmart Communities authors chapter in Handbook of Critical Physical Geography

Alum Nicole Gillet, Dr. Eve Vogel, alum Noah Slovin, and Dr.
XRF Facility receives NSF grant to upgrade equipment

This grant pays for a new X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer to replace two old and failing X-ray spectrometers at UMass-Amherst. The current instruments have operated constantly for more than 30 years. The new instrument will continue to be an important resource for the students and faculty at UMass, the Five College consortium in the region and universities worldwide. The UMass laboratory has served scientists the world over for more than 30 years. It will now be able to continue the tradition as a valuable and trusted resource for high quality XRF chemical analyses to the U.S.
Morse awarded Peacock Medal by Mineralogical Association of Canada

Stearns A. “Tony” Morse, professor emeritus of geosciences, has received the Mineralogical Association of Canada’s Peacock Medal, its highest award, for “outstanding contributions to the mineral sciences of Canada.” The award was presented at a lunch June 19 during the association’s annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. Read more...
Collaborative open-access paper offers 900-year temperature history for New England

A collaboration between the Northeast Climate Adapatation Science Center, students, and faculty in the department has resulted in the first decade-scale paleotemperature reconstruction for New England, spanning ~900 years.
U-Mass Geosciences at GSA 2018 in Indianapolis!

Several of our students and faculty will be presenting their work at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Indiannapolis. If you're at the conference, be sure to check them out!

Sunday, 4 November 2018

08:05 AM - 08:20 AM
Hatch, Cooke, Marshall with new paper on Southern San Andreas

Graduate student Jennifer Hatch, Professor Michele Cooke, and alum Dr. Scott Marshall just published a new open access paper in Geosphere on the active geometry of the southern San Andreas fault: A complicated system, with much more data needed to vastly improve current models of fault geometry and slip rates.
Earth Science Week Open House Highlights teaching labs, unveils pillow basalt in Morrill Courtyard

We had a busy and successful open house of our new teaching lab on Friday, featuring an analog modeling table for structural geology, flume table, augmented reality sandbox, and, of course, our alumni-funded stone tables, in addition to the

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Graduate Students awarded Campus Climate Improvement Grant

Graduate students Raquel Bryant, Benjamin Keisling, Mariela Garcia Arredondo (ECO), and Nigel Golden (NECSC / ECO) were recently awarded a Campus Climate Improvement Grant from the Office of
UMass Geosciences is at NEGSA this week!

We're proud to be presenting over 20 talks and posters this week at the annual meeting of the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America in Burlington, VT. Here's a list of of who's presenting and when:
Passing of Professor George McGill 1931-2018

Professor George Emmert McGill passed away peacefully on Tuesday, March 13, 2018, in Amherst, Massachusetts at the age of 86.

George was born on June 10, 1931, in Des Moines, Iowa. He moved to Minnesota for college, receiving his BA in geology and biology from Carleton College, and his MS in geology from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. It was in Minneapolis that he met Esterica Choban, who became his wife in 1955.
UMass Riversmart research published in the Journal of Flood Risk Management

A new paper by the UMass Riversmart Team, including former postdoc Dr. Benjamin Warner, Dr. John Gartner, and Dr. Christine Hatch, on their work with doing river corridor mapping was just published in the Journal of Flood Risk Management. Check it out!
Williams and Jercinovic receive grants to fund new $1.1 million electron microprobe

The geosciences department, internationally known as host to one of the top electron microprobe laboratories in the world, will add a new, state-of-the-art $1.1 million microprobe to its toolkit later this year, say professors Michael Williams and Michael Jercinovic, who direct the electron microprobe/scanning electron microscope facility in Morrill Science Center ...read more
UMass Geosciences welcomes new faculty member Dr. Justin Richardson

We're very exicted to welcome our newest faculty member, Dr. Justin Richardson, to the department this semester.
New STEM Talk Show Seeks Scientist Guests

Graduate student Laura Fattaruso is hosting a new radio show on WMUA 91.1 FM on Tuesdays 4:30pm-5:30pm. "Lab Talk with Laura" highlights work by U-Mass researchers and beyond. To sign up for an interview, fill out this form. More information can be found here.
Leckie and Keisling on Two-Month Deep-Sea Drilling Expedition to Antarctica

Dr. Mark Leckie and graduate student Benjamin Keisling are currently aboard the JOIDES Resolution on a 2-month long deep-sea drilling expedition to Antarctica. For more information, check out this article and follow IODP Expidition 374 on Twitter by following the hashtag #EXP374.
UMass celebrates opening of Osborne Fossil Collection

Last year, the department of Geosciences received a generous donation of a fossil collection from Lawrence Osborn.
Instability of Antarctic Ice Sheets and Cliffs Makes Projecting Future Sea-level Rise Difficult

Professor Rob DeConto is a co-author of a new study, published in the open-access Earth's Future journal, that combines a well-established sea-level rise projection framework plus a model of Antarctic ice-sheet instability suggest in a paper released today that scientists won’t be able to determine until the 2060s which of two different sea-level rise scenarios is most likely to oc