Earth And Environmental Sciences

Meet some of Vanderbilt's newest faculty as they explain why Vanderbilt is the right academic home for them. Read More

By Jenna Somers and Krystal Schmidt   This summer, around 30 middle-school students from the Tennessee Nature Academy explored upstream and downstream Mill Creek, which flows 28 miles from Nolensville to the Cumberland River in Tennessee. Some students moved as quickly as algae-covered rocks would allow, while others took… Read More

By Jenna Somers Climate Champions Fellows touring Vanderbilt’s campus South Asian university students who won Climate Champions Fellowships through the Student Society for Climate Change Awareness’s Climate Tank Accelerator visited Vanderbilt University in February, supported by a U.S. State Department grant. The fellows were from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan,… Read More

Vanderbilt University, led by Professor Ralf Bennartz, will lead a NASA satellite mission investigating Earth's high-altitude ice clouds, backed by a robust grant of $37 million. This endeavor, leveraging the university's climate research expertise, will provide opportunities for student involvement and bolsters Vanderbilt's position in global climate research. Read More

In a new innovative study conducted by the Vanderbilt Climate, Health, and Energy Equity Lab, four undergraduate students and three faculty researchers identified a new approach to reduce the health inequalities of energy cost burdens and greenhouse gas emissions. Read More

Thirteen innovative projects across seven colleges and schools have been selected for the spring 2024 round of Seeding Success internal grants. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation announced the recipient list on May 31. Read More

Jonathan Gilligan was awarded admittance to the American Geophysical Union’s 2024-2025 Voices for Science program to hone their communication and advocacy skills to increase understanding and support of science. The program trains scientists to communicate the value of Earth and space science to key decision makers, journalists, and the public, with the hope of solving some of the most critical climate-related challenges facing society. Read More

Tucked behind the 6 Magnolia Building on Vanderbilt’s Peabody Campus is what might look to some like a lush garden of weeds. In reality, it’s a strategic Native Meadow full of pollinator-friendly plants. Since its inception, the meadow has flourished, and many faculty, staff and students have found ways to collaborate and interact with the space, thought of as a ‘living lab.’ Read More

The Women's Center presents awards in three categories each year: the Margaret Cuninggim Women's Center Leadership Award, the Mentoring Award and the Mary Jane Werthan Award. This spring, the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center named five people from the Vanderbilt community as recipients of its annual awards. Read More

By Jenna Somers Heidi Carlone A three-year, nearly $1.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation supports a trans-institutional research team at Vanderbilt University investigating an innovative approach to STEM education that could help young people develop STEM identities and agency amid climate anxiety. Children around the world… Read More

Isotope analysis of ancient Peruvian teeth gives anthropologists a clearer image of how cooperating societies function. Read More

With a population of roughly 150 million people, the delta country of Bangladesh holds about half the population of the entire United States in an area the size of Louisiana, and exists under a near-constant risk of sea level rise and other dynamic climate changes. Read More

The quokka, a small marsupial native to Australia, is an example of a species vulnerable to extinction in the country’s harsh surroundings. In a new study, researchers at Vanderbilt University demonstrate evidence for the dramatic decline of quokkas over the past century. Read More

Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Vanderbilt University have identified a new species of thalattosaur, a marine reptile that lived more than 200 million years ago.  Read More

“They are behaving like animals, and that’s a link between them and what we recognize as animals," says paleontologist Simon A.F. Darroch. Read More

Guilherme Gualda, associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences, has spent much of his career working to find out what causes volcanic super-eruptions. Read More

In the remote mountains far beyond Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, Vanderbilt geologist Dan Morgan and undergraduate Andrew Grant lived in tents for more than a month while they hunted in the glow of an ever-present sun for the oldest ice ever found. Read More

A study of stalagmite records from the White Moon Cave in the Santa Cruz Mountains finds the California coast was lashed by exceptionally wet and stormy weather for 150 years...8,200 years ago. Read More

Analysis suggests that climate change had a significant impact on megafauna diets and was a primary factor in their extinction. Read More

An island off the nation's coast demonstrates land use mismanagement can be far more damaging than rising sea levels. Read More