Earth And Environmental Sciences

Read about faculty, staff and student awards, appointments and achievements. Read More

A new "geospeedometer" that can measure the amount of time between the formation of an explosive magma melt and an eruption confirms that the process took less than 500 years in several ancient super-eruptions. Read More

The history of Antarctic exploration and the role that the coldest continent on Earth plays in global earth systems will be discussed at a Williamson County Public Library talk by Vanderbilt researcher Dan Morgan Oct. 9. Read More

Jessica Oster is a member of a small group of earth scientists pioneering the use of mineral cave deposits in stalagmites, collectively known as speleothems, as proxies for the prehistoric climate. Read More

The Earth's first mass extinction event 540 million years ago was caused not by a meteorite impact or volcanic super-eruption, but by the rise of early animals that dramatically changed to prehistoric environment. Read More

VIDEO» For Vanderbilt Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Jessica Oster, getting data means getting dirty. Oster and her team are collecting mineral deposits deep inside caves to find clues to climate change. Read More

The Osher Lifelong Learning classes at Vanderbilt this fall draw from professors' research in areas that include earth science, Hebrew Bible, music history, urban planning and more. Read More

The award honors highly accomplished women working in science, technology, engineering or mathematics who have made a positive impact on the trajectories of other women thinking about or newly embarking on STEM careers. Read More

Jessica Oster and her colleagues have shown that the analysis of a stalagmite from a cave in north east India can detect the link between El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian monsoon. Read More

Twenty-eight retiring faculty members were recognized during Vanderbilt’s Commencement ceremony May 8, when the university honored their years of service and bestowed on them the title of emeritus or emerita faculty. Read More

The evolutionary history of whales, sea turtles and other land animals that have returned to the sea details the radical changes to their life style, body shape, physiology that they made to survive in an aquatic environment. Read More

Vanderbilt students will give visitors a glimpse of Tennessee’s ancient past April 4 by guiding fossil hunts, identifying fossils and giving presentations and guided tours. Read More

Researchers have reconstructed the climate in the Western United States 21,000 years ago and are using the data to improve climate models that forecast future precipitation patterns. Read More

A low-lying island in Southwest Bangladesh provides a dramatic foretaste of the impact facing 10 percent of the world's population in terms of global sea level rise due to unforeseen consequences of last century's flood control efforts, according to a new Vanderbilt interdisciplinary study. Read More

Electricity, learning, marijuana, outer space and planet Earth were the hot topics of 2014. Read More

Conditions on Earth for the first 500 million years after it formed may have been surprisingly similar to the present day, complete with oceans, continents and active crustal plates. Read More

Larisa DeSantis, assistant professor of Earth and environmental sciences, is a featured expert on Nat Geo Wild’s Future Cat, part of the network’s Big Cat week. Read More

Last spring, Vanderbilt entered into a partnership to foster collaborations between its faculty and researchers affiliated with universities in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. In the first year of this partnership, two proposals have been selected for funding. Read More

Environmental scientist Chris Vanags will discuss overcoming obstacles to scientific innovation at the Nov. 5 Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box talk at the Nashville Public Library. Read More

Vanderbilt’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences is partnering with Fort Negley for “Day of the Dead: Ancient Animals and Historic Peoples Among Us” on Saturday, Nov. 1. Read More