A woman wearing a veil over her head sitting among different rock formations.

Department of Geoscience News

Geoscience is an all-encompassing term used to refer to the earth sciences. The Department of Geosciences offers programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels where students can learn about topics such as earth processes; the origin and evolution of our planet; the chemical and physical properties of minerals, rocks, and fluids; the structure of our mobile crust; the history of life; and the human adaptation to earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, and floods.

Current Geoscience News

unlv pumpkins
Campus News |

A monthly roundup of the top news stories at 51ԹϺ, featuring the presidential election, gaming partnerships, and much more.

blue recycle bins stacked together
Campus News |

The university becomes the first NSHE institution to introduce a comprehensive plan for tackling climate change.

Students pass by Lied Library as they walk campus on the first day of Fall 2024 semester classes
Campus News |

A collection of news highlights featuring students and faculty.

a park ranger speaks with visitors at Ice Age Fossils Park in Nevada
People |

Geoscience graduate Dawn Reynoso helps create Ice Age Fossils State Park.

group posing in front of sign that reads Ice Age Fossils State Park
Campus News |

GeoPaths program leads to more student-centered and interactive Earth science classes.

Josh Hawkins, 51ԹϺ
Campus News |

News highlights featuring 51ԹϺ students and staff who made (refreshing) waves in the headlines.

Geoscience In The News

Earth.com

Our planet Earth has a mesmerizing history that spans across 4.6 billion years. For a majority of this immense timeframe, single-celled life reigned supreme. But, about 500 million years ago, everything changed immensely. A dramatic occurrence took place known as the Cambrian “explosion.”

KVVU-TV: Fox 5

Neighbors in the East Las Vegas Valley say a proposal to build hundreds of homes on the edge of the desert is in direct conflict with the push to protect the area and stop any future development. For years now, there’s been an effort to bring a national monument to the area.

Mining Technology

Through the decades it is fair to say mining has earned itself a chequered reputation. The industry, driven by the world’s insatiable appetite for minerals, has routinely been linked or found responsible for corruption, human rights abuses and environmental degradation, mostly in the Global South.

Las Vegas Sun

The monsoon season and the rain it usually produces has been abnormally dry this summer in Las Vegas. The season, which runs from June through mid-September, has dropped just 0.08 inches of rain here, according to the National Weather Service.

KLAS-TV: 8 News Now

While digging for garden soil, a Las Vegas farmer was shocked to find mammoth teeth, but now the rest of his discoveries are expected to cause a controversy as it may change 12,000 years of history. During a Protectors of Tule Springs meeting Tuesday night, Dr. Steve Rowland, a 51ԹϺ geoscience professor and paleontologist, helped present newly analyzed findings from a 30-year-old archeological dig field report from the Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary.

Science

Lightly frosted with snow, the peaks of Red Butte look particularly beautiful today, remarks Dianna Sue White Dove Uqualla, an elder of the Havasupai Tribe. This land near the south rim of the Grand Canyon is sacred to her people as the place where their creation story says life began. It was once a hub of ceremony and prayer, but tribal members rarely visit now—not since the Pinyon Plain Mine started to extract uranium just 10 kilometers away.

Geoscience Experts

Lachniet is an expert in paleoclimatology, quaternary geology, climate change and stable isotope geochemistry.
An expert in geology, paleoecology, paleontology, and the history of geology.
An expert in Mars geochemistry, astrobiology, water-rock interactions, and snow dynamics.
Brian Hedlund in an expert in microbial ecology at high temperatures, biofuels and genomics. 
An expert in earthquakes, structural geology, tectonics, and neotectonics.
An expert in planetary science, igneous petrology, and Martian geology.

Recent Geoscience Accomplishments

Steve Rowland (Geoscience) published "The Cambrian of the Grand Canyon: Refinement of a Classic Stratigraphic Model" in GSA Today with Carol Dehler, professor at Utah State University; James Hagadorn of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science; Frederick Sundberg, Karl Karlstrom and Laura Crossey of the University of New Mexico; and…
Thomas Lamont (Geology) had a paper titled, "Porphyry copper formation driven by water fluxed crustal anatexis during flat-slab subduction," published on Nov. 4 in Nature Geoscience. It has long been recognized that many of the worlds largest porphyry copper deposits (copper ore formed by magmatic-hydrothermal fluids associated with granitic…
Krishnakumar Nangeelil, Peter Dimpfl, Zaijing Sun (all Health Physics and Diagnostic Sciences), Shichun Huang (currently faculty at UTK, a former member of the department of geosciences at 51ԹϺ), and Mayir Mamtimin (Halliburton) published an article titled, "Preliminary Study on Forgery Identification of Hetian Jade with Instrumental Neutron…
Simon Jowitt and Brian McNulty (Geoscience) recently published a paper in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews on critical metals – often discarded as a byproduct of mining operations – that are vital components in the global push for low-carbon energy generation, storage, and transport. Researchers explored the current global…
Amanda Ostwald and Arya Udry (both Geoscience) and their collaborators, Valerie Payré (NAU), Esteban Gazel (Cornell), and Peiyu Wu (Cornell) published a paper, “The Role of Assimilation and Factional Crystallization in the Evolution of the Mars Crust”, in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Ostwald is geoscience graduate student, and…
Shichun Huang (Geoscience), Min Li (Physics and Astronomy) and their colleagues published an article, Sulfur Isotopic Signature of Earth Established by Planetesimal Volatile Evaporation, in Naure Geoscience. Using sophisticated ab initio and thermodynamics calculations, they showed that the Earth's sulfur, an important volatile element, budget is…