Environmental Science Concentration:

Environmental Geoscience

Supporting Center: Center for Integrative Geosciences
(College of Liberal Arts & Sciences)

Concentration objectives:
Environmental geoscientists investigate the solid Earth and its complex interconnections with Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. The field incorporates studies of both the near surface and deep interior of Earth at global as well as local scales. A primary goal of the field is to use a fundamental understanding of the processes that have shaped the Earth in it’s past to predict and mitigate future changes.
  

Environmental geoscientists face a number of challenges to meet the needs of today's rapidly changing society. They work to provide society with sufficient water, energy and mineral resources and to minimize the impact of this activity on the surrounding environment. They study earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tsunamis and landslides and propose ways in which communities can cope with these geological hazards. They investigate past climates using ice core, tree ring and historical records and provide fundamental data for studies of global change. The environmental geoscience field is growing rapidly and the emergence of new technologies and global databases promises significant advances in the near future.

Required course work: