Geosciences Colloquia
Allen McNamara, Endowed Professor of Geological Sciences at Michigan State University, will give the talk "Multiscale compositional heterogeneity in Earth's mantle and its implications for hotspot volcanism and chemistry."
Allen McNamara, Endowed Professor of Geological Sciences at Michigan State University, will give the talk "Multiscale compositional heterogeneity in Earth's mantle and its implications for hotspot volcanism and chemistry."
Mark Clementz, professor of paleobiology at the University of Wyoming, will give a talk TBD.
Jennifer Druhan, assistant professor of geology at the University of Illinois, will give the talk "Isotopic reactive transport: Linking subsurface reactivity to physical heterogeneity."
Douglas Bird, associate professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Human Ecology, will give the talk "Livelihoods, fire regimes, and novel ecosystems in Indigenous Australia."
Millions will be watching Monday, Aug. 21, as the moon eclipses the sun, darkening a large swath of the United States. People from Oregon to South Carolina will witness a total eclipse, a rare phenomenon not seen in the U.S. since 1979. Others in the continental U.S. and beyond will be treated to a partial eclipse. But if you can't make it outside Monday, you'll still have a chance to witness something special -- a livesteam featuring videos and photos of the eclipse from high above the Earth.
In a weekend, imagine walking the earth before the time of dinosaurs, then during the period in which they roamed, and finishing your walk long after their demise. For students in a geobiology (Geosc 204) course that culminates with a field trip to the Denver Basin, that's the story that's told in the exposed rocks of Dinosaur Ridge, Green Mountain, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and backstage visits to a nearby museum.
The 2017 Institutes for Energy and the Environment (IEE) seed grants have been awarded to a pool of interdisciplinary researchers at Penn State. Thirteen grants totaling more than $312,000 have been awarded to 42 researchers that addressed four of IEE's five research themes: Climate and Ecosystem Change, Future Energy Supply, Smart Energy Systems, and Water and Biogeochemical Cycles.
While most climate scientists, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, implicitly define "pre-industrial" to be in the late 1800's, a true non-industrially influenced baseline is probably further in the past, according to an international team of researchers who are concerned because it affects the available carbon budget for meeting the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit agreed to in the Paris Conference of 2015.
Large, robust, lens-shaped microfossils from the approximately 3.4 billion-year-old Kromberg Formation of the Kaapvaal craton in eastern South Africa are not only among the oldest elaborate microorganisms known, but are also related to other intricate microfossils of the same age found in the Pilbara Craton of Australia, according to an international team of scientists.