Below you will find archived news articles about research and outreach activities in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
2024 News Articles
A new PBS article featured EAS/MCCSC geoengineering course at BHS.
Congratulations to our very own students, Jaxon Bennett and Stephen Shafer, for being elected to Phi Beta Kappa (ΦBK) this semester.
Travis O'Brien was interviewed by IU News' Research Impact.
Dr. Shelby Rader's new podcast, Earth On The Rocks, is now available on all major podcasting platforms.
Brian Yanites and Travis O'Brien in WISH TV interview about research into hurricane Helene and future landslides
A study led by PhD student Jake Gearon on how avulsing rivers can create new pathways in flood conditions and how that affects society.
The NSF has awarded IUB Assistant Professor Andrea Stevens Goddard a five-year Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program grant, providing $884,000 in funding.
Faculty Ben Kravitz and Paul Goddard lead a team of high school teachers in climate change course modules.
EAS Lecturer Dr. Elizabeth Kenderes received the David and Cheryl Morley ASURE 2024 Teacher-of-the-Year Award
Chen Zhu and colleagues publish a paper on critical minerals
Sotheby's to auction the largest stegosaurus fossil ever found
IU students presented their work for the IU Diplomacy Lab at the State Department.
Ben Kravitz, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences within the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, has been selected to be a member of the International Commission on Climate (ICCL),.
Andrea Stevens Goddard to receive a Trustees Teaching Award
Dr. Brian Yanites is studying the McCormicks Creek forests to conduct research on natural disasters’ impact on the environment.
Anthropogenic aerosol and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the primary drivers of precipitation change over the United States
The Power of the Backbone - research on the bones of early mammals.
IUB students in Michael Hamburger's Diplomacy Lab course discuss their project on Canadian hazards remediation.
2023 News Articles
Climate engineering could slow Antarctic ice loss, study shows
AGI Congratulates Isabelle Caban as Recipient of 2023 Scholarship for Diversity in Geoscience
EAS Assistant Professor Travis O'Brien's atmospheric river research featured on IU IT News and Events
Rivers in the Sky: Extreme Weather and Climate Change
EAS Professor Chen Zhu has received a grant from NSF to study CO2 water-rock interactions
Chen Zhu Awarded Prestigious Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom
EAS Associate Professor Doug Edmonds has a new paper in Nature Sustainability on how human activity altered the landscape in the Mississippi River delta.
EAS Graduate Student Elizabeth Sherrill has been awarded a Dissertation Year Fellowship for 2023-24.
Could there be a moon dust shield that would ease global warming on Earth?
Dr. Travis O’Brien was quoted in an article on the recent west coast storms.
Uprooted trees serve as physical record for extreme wind events
2022 News Articles
IU researchers solve data discrepancy while developing techniques to improve fine-scale climate models
Dr. David Applegate, newly appointed director of the U.S. Geological Survey, will present a lecture November 28 at Indiana University Bloomington.
Our department participates in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Science Fest, an annual event that invites families, students, and community members to explore science on IU Bloomington’s campus.
Harrison Martin will be giving an IRIS-hosted webinar Thursday, October 27th at 2 pm EDT.
Last week at GSA Sophie Black won the Sedimentary Geology Division's student poster award.
O’Brien is leading a massive climate data analysis effort, focusing on the occurrences of four weather phenomena.
EAS Professor Chen Zhu will give a plenary lecture at the 49th International Association of Hydrogeologists Congress in Wuhan, China.
The Summer '22 EAS Newsletter is now online.
EAS Assistant Professor Travis O'Brien was interviewed by WPTA in Fort Wayne, IN about his work in climate studies.
EAS Professor Doug Edmonds co-authored a paper on river avulsion, just published in Science.
EAS Professor Juergen Schieber is the recipient of the prestigious Sorby Medal in recognition "of his extensive research that has revolutionized our understanding of mud and shale sedimentology."
Please join us on Wednesday 4/20 IU DAY!
EAS Associate Professor Paul Staten is featured in a WPTA Fort Wayne news segment about climate change.
EAS faculty Cody Kirkpatrick and Jackson Njau will receive Trustees Teaching Awards this year
Anne Kort wins McCormick Science Grant
Dr. Juergen Schieber has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for 2022-23
Simon Brassell has been elected as a Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry.
A hearty congratulations to David Polly for his recent election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
2021 News Stories
EAS Boyce Professor Doug Edmonds and colleagues recently published a paper on what North America looked like before the ice sheets took over.
Dr. David Polly was awarded the prestigious Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Screwball Trophy.
New paper co-authored by EAS Professor Travis O'Brien looks at flooding in eastern Australia.
The Marilyn and Sturges W. Bailey Award is the highest honor of The Clay Minerals Society (CMS), and is awarded solely for scientific eminence in clay mineralogy.
Dr. Shelby Rader has accepted our offer of an assistant professorship in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
Professor Simon Brassell has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
Dr. Roger Bilham will give the Daniel S. Tudor Commemorative Lecture
EAS Professor Travis O'Brien is working on a DOE-funded project studying how global climate change affects water resources.
EAS Professor Michael Hamburger will moderate a Themester webinar on Haiti's resilience.
There was a major (M7.2) earthquake in Haiti this morning, striking a populated area in the southwest of the country.
The Indiana University seismograph station BLO recorded a major (Magnitude 8.2) earthquake in Alaska during the early morning hours of July 29.
Quoting Ben Kravitz's opinion in The Hill: Climate engineering research is essential to a just transition and sustainable future
IU Diplomacy Lab students and faculty from IU Bloomington briefed embassy officials via videoconference at the end of the spring semester.
Intense rainfall and flooding occurred in Bloomington, IN overnight on June 18 -19, 2021. The event was caused by a massive complex of thunderstorms that parked over the Bloomington, IN area for over 8 hours.
We just had a minor earthquake in west-central Indiana, near the town of Montezuma. The event was nicely recorded on our IU seismograph station.
Harrison Martin has received a two-year graduate fellowship from the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Program.
EAS Professor Michael Hamburger was recently interviewed by Kelley CIBER about Diplomacy Lab.
EAS Assistant Professor Ben Kravitz is on the Reuters Hot List of top climate scientists.
Please join me in congratulating our students Sydni Rockwell and Dylan Seal on their election to Phi Beta Kappa.
Claudia C. Johnson has been selected as IU's next Herman B. Wells Professor
Jeff Valenza has been awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Harrison Martin has been awarded a College of Arts & Sciences Dissertation Fellowship next year
EAS E116 Our Planet and Its Future will be taught in Salerno, Italy in Summer 2022. The application deadline is April 1, 2021.
Dr. Lucy Jones will be our Tudor Memorial Lecture speaker on Monday, February 22nd.
There's an exciting new EOS research spotlight article covering Elizabeth Sherrill's research on predicting the risk of earthquake activity.
Clarke DeLisle, PhD student working in Brian Yanites' geomorphology group, got an Outstanding Student Presentation Award from AGU.
EAS grad student Sarah Burgess and Lee Florea of the IGWS are featured in two podcasts in which they discuss transport of carbon and sulfur in cave systems in Washington, Indiana, and Kentucky.
EAS postdoc Silvia Pineda-Munoz has a first-authored paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the interaction between mammals, climate, and anthropogenic environmental change.
2020 News Stories
Listen as a panel of faculty and staff talk to undergraduate students about research opportunities
Two undergraduates from Earth and Atmospheric Sciences were elected to Phi Beta Kappa this year.
EAS post-doc Silvia Pineda Munoz won a prestigiou Smithsonian Research Award for her collaborative paper in Science
New EONS podcast, "The Rise and Fall of the Tallest Mammal to Walk the Earth."
EAS Faculty Jess Miller-Camp has a review in the November 6 2020 Issue of Science
A giant round of applause for all of the EAS volunteers who helped make this year’s IU Science Fest a huge success!
Doug Edmonds' group had a paper in Nature Communications this week providing the most accurate numbers to date of the number of people who are at risk from coastal flooding.
Christina Friberg, a postdoc in our department working with Ed Herrmann, has published a book based on her dissertation titled "The Making of Mississippian Tradition."
The Environmental Resilience Institute’s “Educating for Environmental Change” program won the IDEM Governor’s Award for Environmental Education/Outreach.
Six EAS Faculty members received grants this summer to work on some substantial research projects.
Faye Liu is featured as one of the College's "20 under 40" young alumni.
Dr. Paul Staten, Assistant Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at IU, described the Saharan dust storm for the Bloomington Herald-Times: "Some people are calling it godzilla."
EAS Professor Emeritus Lisa Pratt, the NASA Planetary Protection Officer, is preparing for the Mars Sample Return mission on July 22nd.
Food for Thought: A presentation and Q&A with Michael Hamburger
EAS Professor Michael Hamburger just completed a project with the US Embassy in Mexico City—a student-based research and engagement project as part of his E490 “Environmental and Energy Diplomacy” course.
Two faculty in our department received Trustees Teaching Awards this year: Erika Elswick and Michael Hamburger.
Your are invited to the first ever EAS virtual awards and graduation ceremony.
Prof. Chen Zhu has been chosen as the Darcy Lecturer for 2021 by the Groundwater Foundation.
Danielle Peltier was awarded a prestigious McCormick Science Grant from the College of Arts and Sciences for her proposal.
Notes from the Provost, EAS Chair, and students offer encouragement and thanks to the EAS community.
Quoting the Indy Star: Op-ed: Coronavirus offers a lesson on Earth Day: 'We share this fragile planet'
Quoting Science Node: Much of what you think you know about droughts is probably wrong.
A new study co-authored by Environmental Resilience Institute Fellows Tara Smiley and Pascal Title highlights some of the regional climatic and land use challenges facing animals and ecosystems in North America.
Instead of dwelling on the fact that their research is temporarily paused, some IU faculty and students have turned the opportunity into a way to help others by donating essential supplies to a local hospital system. The university recently donated 100,000 N95 personal protective masks to IU Health. Other departments and labs are stepping up as well.
Alum Chris Maples will be the next president of the Geological Society of America Foundation.
To promote collaborative research and inform water stakeholders throughout the state, an Indiana University research team has created the FutureWater science gateway, a public interactive data portal that shows users a highly detailed model of the Wabash River Basin under a number of different climate scenarios.
Paul Staten received the US CLIVAR (Climate Variability and Predictability Program) Early Career Scientist Leadership Award at the AGU meeting in December.
The new Rudman-Pavlis Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Geophysics is accepting applications.
Global-scale human impact on delta morphology has led to net land area gain
EAS undergrads! Please join us for a special “Pizza and Provence” callout session, Monday January 27th at 5:30 in IGWS 2022.
Conference Date: March 27, 2020
Abstract Submission Deadline: March 13, 2020
Join us in Houston for the annual alumni reception. We can't wait to see you there!
2019 News Stories
The Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences will be moving offices to the IGWS in December.
Science Fest 2019 was a success, albeit a rainy one.
The Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences will participate in the 2019 Science Fest.
IU President McRobbie announced the establishment of a new Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (IUMAA) with Dr. Ed Herrmann as its director.
Grad students Harrison Martin and Eduardo Gonzalez represented EAS showing off our lidar drone at First Thursday event.
EAS Students received a multitude of GSA Awards in the July 2019 issue of GSA Today
Claudia Johnson has been named a GSA Fellow
Jim Handschy, Professor of Practice and Executive Director of the IU Geologic Field Station, was named a GSA Fellow.
Quoting Ben Kravitz in Science Node: "Climate change is happening. It’s real. It’s our fault because we’re putting a lot of carbon in the atmosphere. And we are not doing a lot to stop doing that."
The 36th Annual Meeting of the Society for Organic Petrology will take place from September 7 to 11th at the Indiana Memorial Union in Bloomington, IN, USA.
The IU Geologic Field Station in Bozeman Montana is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year!
EAS Professor Paul Staten is a guest editor on a Special Issue of Atmosphere.
Sigma Gamma Epsilon and Indiana University are hosting the 2019 Crossroads Conference and Career Fair on March 22nd and 23rd.
2018 News Stories
Five scientists representing various career paths that EAS students might be considering took part in the Career Roundtable.
Arndt Schimmelmann, a Research Scientist in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has received a Fulbright grant from the Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences held its spring registration Earth Week Meet and Greet on October 16th in front of the 10th Street entrance. It was a great success meeting new students, handing out course information, swag and candy, participating in demos, and Kaj Johnson’s bean-bag challenge as well as the "Name the Triceratops." Look for more information about the fall registration Meet and Greet on IU Day in April 2019.
Chevron Oil Corportaion will be recruiting on October 9th and 10th in the Department.
The Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant or Associate level in regional climate modeling to begin in Fall 2019.
It’s that time again! The 2018 Science Fest is in the works.
As our course titles are in transition from the Geology department to the Earth Science department, our courses for Summer 2018 and Fall 2018 are listed under either GEOL or EAS on the Course Brower, depending upon which courses have gone through the course change approvals.
From the Bloomington Herald Times: In 1976, Larry Onesti joined the Indiana University Bloomington faculty, where he forged a distinguished career as a teacher and researcher, first as an Associate Professor of Geography and then as Professor of Geological Sciences in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (formerly Geology).
It’s that time again! The 2018 Science Fest is in the works.
Indiana teachers get a hands-on look at environmental change at IU Summer Science Institute.
From AAAS: The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, China, killed tens of thousands of people and left millions homeless. About 20,000 deaths nearly 30 percent of the total, resulted not from the ground shaking itself but from the landslides that it triggered.
One of the students, Ellen Bergen, from the summer 2018 course made a video of her experience and set it to music.
From the IU Newsroom: Students advise U.S. Embassy in Malaysia on renewable energy. Students in an IU Bloomington class on finding ways to help Malaysia expand its use of renewable energy thought they might get a chance to present their findings to the U.S. ambassador to Malaysia. It turned out they got more than that.
Students in the EAS Atmospheric Sciences programs pursued a variety of internships over summer 2018.
View the links related to Curiosity Rover.
Eight Earth and Atmospheric Sciences students, who are taking part in the "Environmental & Energy Diplomacy" class that Michael Hamburger is teaching this spring, attended a Diplomacy Lab Symposium on April 18th on the Bloomington campus. Among the guests was the former Science Advisory to the Secretary of State, Dr. Vaughan Turekian.
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences was a hosting station for the IU Day Scavenger Hunt right here in our lobby. We served 50-60 students who stopped by to play the game, get swag and/or stamps, and learn about the diverse research in our department.
From the publication EOS: Some Caves Remove Methane from the Atmosphere, New Tests Reveal.
The Crossroads Planning Committee is excited to announce important information regarding this year’s conference!
A reception for new AAAS fellows was hosted by IU President Michael A. McRobbie on January 25th, 2018 in IU’s elegant Frangipani room. Amongst the catered delectables, friends and colleagues assembled to show their respect and admiration of L. Jean Camp, Matthew Hahn, Andrew Wiley, Chen Zhu, and Adam Zlotnick who were all newly awarded AAAS fellows.
Lisa most recently served as the Provost Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Associate Executive Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington.
2017 News Stories
In December 2017, the White House announced that it would reduce the boundaries of both monuments, thus removing literally hundreds of scientifically important paleo localities from the protection and the funding associated with monument status. The Society, along with partner organizations, has filed lawsuits to reverse this decision because of its impact on science.
Quoting Live Science Magazine, "President Donald Trump is expected to make a big announcement in Utah this Monday (Dec. 4), where he will detail the government’s plan to shrink two of the state's national monuments: Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, according to news sources."
The White House announced that it would reduce the boundaries of both monuments, thus removing literally hundreds of scientifically important paleo localities from the protection and the funding associated with monument status.
From the IU Newsroom: Five faculty members from Indiana University have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a distinction that recognizes outstanding contributions to the progress of science and research.
Each year, as part of the G590 course, Art of Geological Sciences we bring a group of students to visit the Lilly Library’s amazing collection of rare books from their history of science collection.
The Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences participated in Science Fest 2017 on Saturday, October 21st at the Kirkwood Hall Pavillion and in the Student Building.
Indiana University students and employees on all IU-administered campuses will be practicing the appropriate response during an earthquake as part of the Great Central U .S. Shakeout. IU will participate at 10:26 a.m. EDT on 10/26/2017.
Videographers from the College of Arts + Sciences produced a short video about the IU Judson Mead Geologic Field Station for the premiere edition of The College Magazine.
The Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences partnered with the Indiana Geological and Water Survey to bring you a Spring Registration Meet and Greet on Friday, October 13th, on the front lawn of the Geology building
Rick Brewer, Community Development Coordinator with the Graduate and Professional Student Government organization, recently conducted an interview with grad student John Kearney. You can listen to his interview in the GPSG Radio site, episode #6.
A small earthquake (M3.8) struck the Illinois-Indiana border region this morning—close to the epicenter of the 2008 Mt. Carmel, Illinois earthquake. It was felt in Bloomington! Here is a copy of the seismogram recorded at our local seismic station BLO. Apparently it was felt in Bloomington.
ExxonMobil Geoscience recruiter Robert Wenger Jr. are conducting interviews on September 25-27th in the Department.
From the IU Newsroom: Indiana University Bloomington geoscience researcher Brian Yanites has been awarded a three-year, $317,663 grant from the National Science Foundation to study how tectonic and climate processes interact to shape the landscape of southern Taiwan.
August 7-11 we will be hosting about 30 seismology PhD students from all over the US and a couple of foreign countries. The event is sponsored by IRIS and is called the USArray Data Processing Short Course.
The Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences hosted 20 middle- and high-school earth science teachers for "Midcontinent EarthScope Workshop" connected with its NSF-funded research project on Structure and Dynamics of the North American Craton.
The Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences will play a central role in the multi-milliondollar IU Grand Challenges initiative called Prepared for Environmental Change directed by Ellen Ketterson of the Biology Department.
Wonderlab Bloomington hosted a Summer Science Institute for grades 8-12 science teachers. The institute ran from Tuesday, June 13 - Thursday, June 15. This Institute was presented in partnership with Indiana University and area STEM professionals.
Environmental and Energy Diplomacy seminar’s final exam was a video conference briefing with the US Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius. Five EAS students took part: Alex McLean, Amelia Nelson and Grace Carlson (undergrad majors) and Erin Benson and Chris Helou (grad students).
From the IU Newsroom: "The Mississippi Delta is undergoing collapse as land disappears from the coast and marshes," said study co-author Douglas Edmonds, assistant professor and the Malcolm and Sylvia Boyce Chair in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at IU Bloomington. "Yet we know surprisingly little about what processes are driving land loss." Alejandra Ortiz, a former Post-Doctoral Fellow in Edmonds’ lab was lead author on the study. Dr. Ortiz is now on faculty at North Carolina State University.
During the spring of 2018, Dave will spend six months in Napoli, Italy, studying cultural artifacts from Pompeii. Scientists working there recently discovered a ceramic workshop in ancient Pompeii where all stages of ceramic production are represented, from unfired raw materials, to fired ceramics, to overfired materials.
The Diplomacy Lab is a program that Michael helped initiate last year; several students from the Environmental and Energy Diplomacy class presented their work.
We will have a name change celebration on IU Day, April 19th at 2:00 in front of the Geology building (1001 E. 10th Street). Please stop by for refreshments and some IU Day and Earth-themed swag. You can also learn about our NEW curriculum pathways for undergraduate students and meet some of the faculty and staff!
On Wednesday, March 29 at 12:00 noon, Dr. Brian Tucker, President, Geohazards International, Menlo Park, CA will give a talk entitled, A Quarter Century Reducing Earthquake and Tsunami Risk in the World’s Most Vulnerable Communities: What Have We Learned?
On March 8, the Department of Geological Sciences offically became the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The website url is earth.indiana.edu.
The Rho chapter of Sigma Gamma Epsilon and the Indiana University Department of Geological Sciences invite you to join us for the 17th annual Crossroads Geology Conference which will be held in the Geology building on the IUB campus March 31st and April 1st.
Quoting the IU Newsroom: Scientists and policymakers should draw on experience from the distant past to develop a new paradigm for protecting ecosystems at a time of accelerating global change, an Indiana University paleontologist and co-authors write in a paper published today.
With funding from a supplement to the GAGE Facility (EAR-1261833) and the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education collaborative project to UNAVCO, Indiana University, and Idaho State University (EHR-1612248), this short course focused on terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry. The publication in EOS explains both the goals of the course and presents some compelling 3-D imagery in an animation.
John Michael Hayes passed away at his home in Berkeley, California, on February 3, 2017, of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
The Department of Geological Sciences at Indiana University is in the process of changing its name to the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. If approved, the name change will coincide with a curriculum change in time for the fall 2017 semester. The changes are an attempt to better reflect the breadth of courses offered in the department, as well as the career opportunities available after graduation.
Quoting the Indiana Daily Student: "In an effort to increase enrollment, the Department of Geological Sciences will alter its curriculum and change its name to the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences."
The College of Arts