School of Earth and Climate Sciences

Terry Hughes, recently retired Professor of Earth Sciences and long-time member of the Climate Change Institute, is the focus of an article in Newsweek published June 5. The article describes the current scientific views about the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and the consequent significant sea level rise. Back in 1973, Terry was […]

UPDATE (19 January 2015): This story is now featured on NSF’s website. Antarctic Treaty nations approve protection for Stornes Peninsula where U Maine’s Ed Grew discovered new minerals The Antarctic Treaty signatories meeting in Brasilia in May 2014 voted to designate Stornes Peninsula as an Antarctic Specially Protected Area. UMaine Research Professor Ed Grew has […]

The European Journal of Mineralogy (EJM) founded in 1989 is one of the world’s leading international journals in the mineralogical sciences. It is owned by the national mineralogical societies of Germany, Spain, France and Italy and is published under the auspices of the European Mineralogical Union. Papers appearing in the Journal range across all aspects […]

The University of Maine Geological Society (more popularly known as the Geology Club) has elected officers for next academic year. They are: President: Zach Mason Vice President: Bailey Morton Treasurer: Jill Pelto Secretary: Sarah Mullis Congratulations!

Students from the School of Earth and Climate Sciences joined groups of geology students from the New England region for the New England Intercollegiate Geological Congress (NEIGC) in the Katahdin, Maine, region from October 11-13. NEIGC was established in 1901 for the sole purpose of presenting field trips in areas of current geologic work throughout […]

The Mineralogical Society of America (MSA) announced that Ed Grew has been elected to serve a two-year term on the MSA Council. Together with the officers, the six-membered Council serves as the governing board of MSA, a scientific society founded in 1919 for the advancement of mineralogy, crystallography, geochemistry and petrology, and applications for mineralogy […]

Ph.D. student Deborah Shulman was recently named a Susan J. Hunter Teaching Fellow by the UMaine Graduate School. She will teach ERS330, Mineralogy, in Spring 2014. Deb will be the instructor of record for the upper level course, with mentorship from faculty within the School. The Fellowship program requires that the faculty member who would […]

As reported on the UMaine website, Ed Grew collaborated in the process of describing, classifying, and reporting a new boron nitride mineral. More details are also available in a story from the University of California, Riverside, the home of the lead investigators in the study. ==== Ed Grew, who has a history of discovering minerals […]

School of Earth an Climate Sciences members Ed Grew and Marty Yates are part of a collaborative team that recently was awarded funding from the Carnegie Institute of Washington for a project entitled Isua Tourmaline: A window to Boron Concentrations in the Eoarchean? Grew is leading the project, which follows up on recent work in […]

Each year, the School of Earth and Climate Sciences awards a cash prize to the master’s and Ph.D. students who give the best presentations in the School’s spring Brown Bag seminar. This year, the award for the best presentation by a Ph.D. student goes to Sam Roy, and the award for the best presentation by […]

Along with his co-authors Philip Conkling, Richard Alley, and Wallace Broecker, George Denton has received this year’s Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science for The Fate of Greenland: Lessons from Abrupt Climate Change (The MIT Press, 2011). The book focuses on the role of Greenland in recording climate history and how changes to its […]

A new article highlights innovative teaching by Professor Karl Kreutz. The December newsletter for iseesystems, publisher of the popular STELLA systems modeling software, describes how Karl uses STELLA for teaching about the global carbon cycle. In the article, Karl says “I knew that if students could really get their hands on the carbon cycle, they […]

Geologists at the University of Silesia in Poland have discovered two minerals new to science and have named them edgrewite and hydroxyledgrewite in honor of University of Maine geologist Edward Grew. The new minerals were discovered by Evgeny Galuskin and Irina Galuskina in the Chegem caldera in the Northern Caucasus, near Mount Elbrus in the […]

In the most recent rankings of the US New and World Report (2010), the Department of Earth Sciences (now the School of Earth and Climate Sciences) was ranked higher against our national peers than any other ranked graduate program at the University of Maine. We ranked 69 in the nation among Earth Sciences programs. The […]

Over the weekend of October 12-14th, 2012, Chris Gerbi participated in the Chinese-American National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium, held in Irvine, California. He was also invited to be on the organizing committee for the next symposium, in 2014, to be held in China. Brenda Hall attended a similar Symposium in 2006. […]

Bess Koffman, a Ph.D. student in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences, has won an NSF postdoctoral fellowship award. Next June, pending completion of her degree, she will begin work at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and at Cornell University, investigating the role of New Zealand dust in global climate during the Last […]

Science Daily, the popular news website for breaking news in science, highlights a new paper in the July 2012 issue of American Mineralogist by Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution with co-authors including Ed Grew of the University of Maine. Science Daily reports that the paper “demonstrates that the creation of most minerals containing mercury […]

The new book “The Story of Earth” by Robert M. Hazen (Viking Press, April 26, 2012) highlights Ed Grew’s research on boron and beryllium minerals and the emerging field of mineral evolution. Hazen, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, D.C., credits Ed with producing a “landmark graph” showing the increasing […]

The Geological Society of Maine announced that Patrick Ryan and Peter Strand won the Walter Anderson Award for the best undergraduate poster at the spring Geological Society of Maine meeting, held April 13 at UMaine – Presque Isle.  Pat and Peter had traveled with Professor Brenda Hall in January and February, 2012, to perform research […]

Today the University formally announced that Dr. Brenda Hall will be promoted to Professor and that Dr. Christopher Gerbi will be granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor.  You can read more at the UMaine news site. Hall, whose main research focus is in glacial geology, joined the faculty as a Research Professor in 2001 […]