• Department News
• Department Initiatives
• Distinguished Alumni
• Alumni News
• By The Numbers

Department News

Learn about how our faculty and staff are preparing students for success, whether they pursue careers in industry, academia, government or the nonprofit sector through instruction and research. 

Mark Abbott

• Professor 
• Director of Climate and Global Change Center  
• University of Pittsburgh Tenure Committee Representative for GES 
• Google Scholar 

2024 News

Overall, my lab group’s work seeks to place the effects of climate and environmental change that we are experiencing today into a longer-term perspective with the goal of improving our understanding and predictive capabilities. Today’s unpreceded warming and concurrent impacts on the water cycle can destabilize regions in geologically prone areas, many of which include monsoon regions with large populations living at subsistence level. Warming is also impacting arctic regions at a much faster rate than the rest of the globe.  

One of my major goals over the next several years is to build on growing collaborations in Asia through partnerships with local universities to collaborate with faculty and train students/postdocs to assess the impacts of ongoing changes in monsoon strength and the intensification of flood/drought cycles. A new project aimed at documenting the history of the Indian Monsoon from the sediments of Loktak Lake in NE India led to a major coring effort this spring by Pitt postdoc Pankaj Sharma and collaborator Yengkhom Raghumani Singh from the University of Manipur.  

My lab group also continued work in collaboration with Eitan Shelef, focusing on improving our understanding of what controls the melting of Arctic permafrost. Work by Melissa Griffore, defending her PhD this fall, explored the use of mercury as a tracer to identify periods of greater melt and the climate that drove it while Hailey Sinon focused her PhD work on the radiocarbon age structure of lake sediments as a means to document permafrost melt history. Jamie Vornlocher and Laura Lopera Congote, both co-advised by Joe Werne and myself, are combining organic geochemistry and stable isotope studies to document hydroclimate and temperature history from Fish Lake, Utah and Lake Junin, Peru, respectively. A major coring effort by many members of the lab group during February used a UWITEC corer through the lake ice at Fish Lake, UT to recover two nearly 20m-long cores spanning as much as 80,000 years. This summer Adeel Jehangir, a new PhD student from Pakistan collected cores from 5 lakes in the high Himalayas. He will start work on these cores this fall to document changes in hydroclimate and glacial activity in this understudied region that is so heavily impacted by recent warming. 

This work led to a new collaboration with Pedro Mendes Raposeiro at the Universidade dos Açores and a successful Fulbright fellowship for his student Caterina Ritter who visited Pitt during the spring semester to learn new paleoclimate-focused lab analyses using cores from the Azores and the western US.  In the late summer I continued a long standing project investigating drought in the western US by working on new high elevation glaciated lakes on the Fish Lake plateau in Utah and the Ruby Mountains of Nevada with PhD students Jamie Vornlocher and a new student Hailey Sinon. 

Awards + Recognition 

Congratulations to 2024 GSA Research Grant Recipient 

The grant is the GSA Graduate Student Research Grant which Hailey Sinon was awarded to carry out her current research on paleo- permafrost thaw in Arctic Alaska to the next step. With this grant she will apply various radiocarbon dating techniques to a lake in interior Alaska to study patterns of organic carbon erosion that occurred as the region underwent significant permafrost degradation thousands of years ago, with the hope that it can be used as a potential analogue for the future of Arctic permafrost. 

Daniel Bain

• Associate Professor 
• Member of the National Research Council Committee on Electric Arc Furnace Health Risk Considerations for the Use of Unencapsulated Steel Slag 
• Reviewer for: Applied Geochemistry, Environmental Research Communications, JGR-Earth Surface, Journal of Soils and Sediments, Science of the Total Environment, Urban Climate, DOE -- Ralph E Powe Junior Faculty Award, NSF-- EAR CAREER 
• Google Scholar 

2024 News 

It’s been a busy year around here. Memphis Hill successfully defended her dissertation and is now working as a Post-Doc at the University of Alaska -- Anchorage. Clement Campbell joined the group as a master's student.  The Water Collaboratory work continues.  We published our report on transparency, affordability, and water quality in Public Drinking Water providers in Allegheny County <https://bit.ly/WaterSystemReport2023>.  We also co-sponsored a Stormwater Symposium with IRISE over in CEE < https://bit.ly/2023IRISESymposiumReport>.  I’ve been leading a team compiling a landslide database for southwestern PA. 

Other grad students in the group are doing well.  Abiodun Ayo-Bali submitted his master's research for publication and will be participating in CUAHSI’s WaterSoftHack (machine learning in hydrology) this summer.  Mari Avkopashvili sampled soils around Clairton and we are anxiously awaiting those results.  Justin Mackey published an estimate of lithium content in hydrofracking waters, and it has (deservedly) received a great deal of attention. 

Beyond grad students, there have been a whole host of undergrads helping push our research along.  Big thanks to Lillian Taylor, Emily Schlemmer, Catherine Barone, Gabrielle Martelli, Sophia Boquist, Sophie Meyer, Olivia Tang, and Emma Stearsman. 

Awards + Recognition 

• Geology &  psychology professors receive 23rd annual Manners Awards 
• Daniel J. Bain, associate professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Science, is one of two recipients of the 23rd annual Steven D. Manners Research Development award from the University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR). Bain’s project will focus on “Toxic Metal Soil Pollution Near Coking Facilities: Information Gaps in Public Health Policymaking.” 
• Article: Flooded basements are more dangerous than they seem 
• Basement flooding can cause many issues outside of water damage. Learn more from Linnea Warren May, Daniel J. Bain, and Alyssa Lyon on how flooded basements are more dangerous than they seem. 
• GES Research Team Published in Scientific Reports 
• Making batteries takes lithium. Some of it could come from wastewater.  
• Water from Marcellus shale gas wells could supply up to 40% of U.S. demand. 
• Article: Mount Washington landslide mitigation begins as climate challenges increase 
• Pittsburgh is the land of landslides, yet research monitoring them is sparse. But projects out of Pittsburgh’s universities could fill in the gaps to study the region’s hillsides. Dr. Daniel Bain was quoted in this WESA article. 

Anusha Balangoda

• Teaching Assistant Professor 
• Environmental Science Program Advisor 
• Google Scholar

2024 News 

Dr. Balangoda received her PhD in Environmental Sciences at North Dakota State University with an emphasis in Nutrient Biogeochemistry and Aquatic Ecology. She was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh before joining the Department as an Assistant Teaching Professor in 2023. 

Dr. Balangoda’s research focuses on the role of nitrogen and phosphorus enrichment in the proliferation of harmful algal blooms and eutrophication in lakes, urban streams, and rivers. She employs various approaches, including empirical observations, field sampling, nutrient enrichment bioassay experiments, laboratory analyses, and statistical modeling, to investigate patterns and controls in freshwater ecosystems. Her research background encompasses several disciplines, including freshwater ecology, phytoplankton ecology, aquatic toxicology, biogeochemistry, and hydrology, with a particular interest in phosphorus biogeochemistry and cyanobacterial bloom proliferation in lakes and reservoirs. 

She collaborated with Emily Elliott and her graduate students on several ongoing research projects on Ohio River. They completed several long-term nutrient trends, and a participated in a project with Carnegie Museum on invasive knotweed plants and ecology. This helped us understand invasive plant traits and ecosystem ecological impacts on knotweed on soil, water, and ecosystems.  

In addition, she has been working with Emily on submitting my manuscript to ES&T Water. 

Awards + Recognition 

• Received db-SERC Course Transformation award in 2024. 

Rosemary Capo

• Professor 
• Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies,  Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• Academic Integrity Officer, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• Faculty Diversity Committee member, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• Co-chair: Recruiting Subcommittee Sloan Center for Systemic Change,  
• University of Pittsburgh 
• 3MT Judge Grad Expo and Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences  
• At-large member: Award Committee Geological Society of America  
• Doris M. Curtis Outstanding Woman in Science  
•  Co-convener: International Goldschmidt Conference,  
• “Energy Resources: Critical metals” (2023) 
•  Co-convener: Geological Society of America Annual National Meeting  
• “Characterization of Critical Metals in Unconventional Ores to Inform Recovery Potential”;  
• “Pittsburgh Coal: History, Attributes, Resources and Concerns” 

2024 News 

Former Ph.D. student Ben Hedin (co-owner of Hedin Environmental) had his third first author paper published in Chemosphere; he continues to collaborate with our group as a co-investigator on our Dept of Interior and new NSF-funded projects centered on acid mine drainage and critical metal recovery. We also ran a field trip for the Geological Society of America meeting held in Pittsburgh. We met up with former Ph.D. student Becca Matecha at the meeting – she’s starting a tenure track position as Asst. Professor of Geology at Mercyhurst University this fall. Ph.D. student Camille Schaffer published a first author paper in Science of the Total Environment – she also presented research results on the geochemical evolution of coal mine drainage at GSA and the International Mine Water Assoc. conference this year. ; Sshe also traveled to the Stanford SLAC facility to do synchrotron characterization of metal oxides.  

Tash Boothe was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow this year; she presented results of her research on critical metal uptake on biotically mediated AMD Mn oxides at the Goldschmidt Conference in Lyon, France and at AGU and GSA. Ph.D. student Kristi Dobra published a first author paper in Environmental Science & Technology and presented at the Goldschmidt meeting in Chicago. Undergrads Tyler Weinberger and Amelia Aceves presented posters at GSA on projects with Kristi related to trace metal uptake by freshwater native and invasive bivalves in the Ohio River watershed. Undergrad Jack McGuane worked on neodymium isotopes to understand REE behavior and graduated in the spring. 

Awards + Recognition  

Rosemary Capo Named Assistant Dean for Recruiting and Belonging, Graduate Studies 

• Develop and oversee mentor training, in collaboration with programs and related academic support units. 
• Leads annual assessment process 
• Promote and oversee equitable and inclusive admissions practices, such as reviewing holistic admissions rubrics, recruitment material 
• Organize DEI and targeted recruiting efforts, including Hot Metal Bridge (HMB) 
• Work with master’s degree programs to increase enrollment, providing advice and acting as liaison to Office of Provost, and other school- and University-wide units 
• Partner with departments and other schools to develop interdisciplinary master’s degree programs 
• Review and consult on department climate, curriculum, training 
• Advise departments about structure of course offerings, new curriculum models, etc. 
• Review new programs 

Rosemary Capo Selected as an AGU Academy Fellow! 

Please join us in congratulating Rosemary Capo, who was selected as an AGU LANDinG Academy Fellow for 2023! AGU LANDinG (Leadership Academy and Network for Diversity and Inclusion in the Geosciences) is leading change in the Earth and space sciences by creating a network of leaders empowered with skills and resources to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their own institutions and across STEM. Rose’s participation in this program will further her longstanding commitment to DEI in Geosciences and beyond. 

Student: Pittsburgh District researcher flexes her ‘mussels’ toward doctorate degree 

Kristi Dobra, an environmental resource specialist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District, is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh while researching metals in the Ohio River watershed and their impact on freshwater mussels. She is supported by the Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholarship, which is funded by the Department of Defense. 

Abigail Carroll

• Teaching Assistant Professor  
• Environmental Science Program Advisor 

2024 News 

After 1+ years of course planning with Dr. Reem Hannun, we were finally able to launch two new climate change classes: Exploring Issues in Climate Change (GEOL 0881; a small honors course directed towards non-GES majors) & Introduction to Climate Change (GEOL 0880; a larger-format course also directed towards non-GES majors, especially first and second year undergraduates). I am happy to report that all of that hard work we put into planning and preparing these courses really seemed to pay off: attendance was strong in every class meeting, students were highly engaged, and performed generally very well on exams and assignments, and course evaluations were overwhelmingly positive. Looking forward to teaching these courses in the future.  

 On a similar note, I am currently in the process of re-launching the famous Yellowstone Field Course! I will be co-teaching this course with my husband, Dr. Rory Carroll (a wildlife ecologist in the Biological Sciences Department), starting June 2025. I am thrilled to be teaching this course as my most memorable summers in grad school were spent in the nearby Bighorn Basin studying paleoclimate and paleoecology (the basin is a paleontological wonderland!). In our Yellowstone course, our learning will focus around the geology, ecology, and policy of the entire Yellowstone region— from inside the national park, to the surrounding Absaroka and Beartooth Mountains, and into the Bighorn Basin. We’ll be hiking nearly every day, and introducing students to critical field skills like orienteering, mapping, and other basic geology and ecology field methods. We’ll be staying with Pitt’s longtime friends at the K-Z Guest Ranch, where students will be fed home-cooked meals and have an opportunity to rest and explore on their own. We are so looking forward to offering such an incredible and unforgettable experience to our Pitt students once again! If you would like to know more, please visit the Pitt GEO website here: https://www.globalexperiences.pitt.edu/wyomingyellowstone. 

 Finally, my first year officially advising students here at Pitt has been a lot of hard [time-consuming] work, but more importantly, a wonderful experience! I was able to get into the rhythm of advising students on their capstones and beyond immediately. This was much less overwhelming than it otherwise could have been thanks to the guidance and mentorship of much more seasoned GES advisors like Mark Collins and Charlie Jones, as well as the aid and comradery of our new GES academic advisors, Virginia Robson and Corbin Curtis. Through this aspect of my job, I have gotten to know so many of our undergraduates on a more personal level, which really helps me to customize my advising appointments to efficiently guide them towards their academic and career goals. I worked particularly close with our recent alums, Anna Johnston and Wray Jones, as they went through graduate school application process. I am delighted to report that Anna Johnston was accepted to the University of Maine as an MS student studying climate science under Dr. Jiaze Wang, and Wray Jones was accepted to Baylor University as a Ph.D. student studying paleoecology and paleoclimate under Dr. Daniel Peppe.  

Manuscript review: Completed a manuscript review for PLOS ONE regarding diet and geographic behavior of the Miocene Gomphotherium using stable isotopes (February 2024) 

Mark Collins

• Teaching Assistant Professor  
• Environmental Studies Program Advisor   

2024 News 

I am currently advising around 95 Environmental Studies undergraduates. I also advise interested students not officially registered (perhaps two dozen a year), including several incoming students and their families I helped to organize and present first-ever group advising sessions (total of two) for all majors in September 2023. 

Service 

Presenter: Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences national meeting, University of Portland (OR) July 2023 

Assistant Coordinator: 2024 Student Sustainability Symposium 

Phi Beta Kappa executive committee: developed list of PBK candidates for 2024.  

Emily Elliott

• Professor, Mellon Chair  
• Chair, Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory 
• ESA Fellow 
• Google Scholar 

2024 News 

The Elliott research team and the Pitt Isotope Tracers Lab has had a busy and productive year.  We welcomed many lab visitors including Elementar engineer Calum McCusker who fixed our Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer, GES Alums, David Felix (Texas A&M-Corpus Cristi) and Justin Coughlin (USFS), and collaborator Stefanie Whitmire (Clemon University).  Emily and PhD student Abby Yancy attended the BIOGEOMON meeting in San Juan Puerto Rico where they got to connect with GES alum Lucy Rose (University of Minnesota).  The lab group including Elijah Hall, Camille Butkus, and Abby Yancy presented at the Ecological Society of American meeting in Portland Oregon in August 2023.  Excited to see what kind of new adventures this next year will bring in field, labwork, research and learning!  

In fall 2023, I had an awesome sabbatical away from campus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History hosted by Mason Heberling (curator of Botany).  I spent the semester leading a study group learning, reading about the invasive species knotweed.  As a result, we are planning a proposal, and graduate students have undertaken some pilot studies to acquire required pilot data for proposal.   

Awards + Recognition  

• Mellon Chair, 2024 
• Fellow, Ecological Society of America, 2024  
• Research Fellow, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 2023-  
• Wes Tunnell Distinguished Lecturer, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, 2023  
• Partnership of Distinction, awarded to the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory (directed by EM Elliott) University of Pittsburgh, 2023  
• Women's History Month - Women's History Month in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Celebrates: Dr. Emily Elliott  
• Collaboratory Awarded National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator Award 
• Emily Elliott Named Ecological Society of America 2024 Fellow! 
• Congratulations to GES Professor, Emily Elliott, for being named a 2024 ESA Fellow for your outstanding contributions to ecological research, communication, education, management, and policy.  

Students: Congratulations to 2024 GSA Research Grant Recipient - Congratulations to Camille Butkus on being awarded GSA graduate student research grant! this grant will support her work investigating how using liposomes as carriers for agrochemicals will impact carbon and nitrogen cycling in agricultural soils.  

John Gardner

• Assistant Professor 
• Google Scholar 

2024 News 

Dr. John Gardner joined the Department of Geology and Environmental Science as an Assistant Professor in 2020. He was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow with Tamlin Pavelsky in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of North Carolina from 2018 to 2020. He received his Ph.D. in 2018 under Martin Doyle in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and his M.S. in 2014 under Thomas Fisher in the Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Science Program at the University of Maryland (Horn Point Laboratory). 

His team has been collaborating with an international group on a manuscript currently under review, titled “Advancements in Satellite Observations of Inland and Coastal Waters: Building Towards a Global Validation Network.” They are also working on a manuscript invited by Nature-Water, titled “Remote Sensing and the New Global River Science.” Additionally, they have been mentoring a former undergraduate student towards publishing a paper on remote sensing of gross primary production in U.S. rivers and collaborating with an international team on ecological changes in the Loire River, France. They have numerous projects with the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory. 

Team members

Dr. Luisa Luchesse, a postdoctoral scholar in the group, was recently promoted to Research Assistant Professor in the department. Luisa’s project was awarded an additional year of funding by NASA. Luisa is leading the development of operational algorithms and workflows for observing suspended sediment concentration across Earth’s rivers using NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) satellites. This is part of a larger effort to operationalize and make open access data products for the community of both riverine sediment concentration and river flow (derived from the recent NASA Surface Water Ocean and Topography mission) to enable space-based observations of how sediment moves through Earth’s rivers to oceans.  

Dr. Elad Dente, a former postdoctoral scholar in the group, moved back to Israel last year to start a faculty position at the University of Haifa. We are continuing collaboration on measuring how Earth’s large rivers are eroding and migrating over time and the potential causes and consequences of changing migration rates.  

We are saddened to say that at the end of this fall semester, he will be leaving our department to follow an opportunity at the University of North Carolina. 

Awards + Recognition  

Some of Earth’s estuaries are warming, consistent with climate change. 

A team of scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) developed a spatially explicit database for 1,060 estuaries around the world using satellites. Their findings were published April 5 in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters.   

Student: Congratulations to our 2024 NASA FINNEST Fellowship Awardee 

Congratulations to Gabriella Zuccolotto on being awarded a 3 year NASA FINNEST fellowship! In this project, Gabi will be using remote sensing data from Landsat and Planet to build models of phycocyanin and chlorophyll to better understand harmful algal bloom dynamics in the Ohio and Illinois River Basins. 

Bill Harbert

• Professor 
• Co-Director Alfred E. Sloan Professional Masters of Science in Geographical 
• Information Systems and Remote Sensing, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• Co-Director Undergraduate Certificate Geographical 
•  Information Systems, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• Society of Exploration Geophysicists Council,  
• Member of Research Committee and Continuing Education Committee 
• Geophysical Society of Pittsburgh Executive Committee Member 

2024 News 

As a professor of geophysics at the University of Pittsburgh, he has interacted with professional, community, research, and academic scientists in petrophysics, reservoir monitoring, machine learning, GIS and geophysics.  At the University of Pittsburgh, he has successfully advised or co-advisor of 53 MS and Ph.D. students. During 2023-2024 Academic Year he continued the award of $77,819,349.34 of software and support resources for Pitt from Schlumberger. This represents $78 million in resources during this period. He also continued to work with an RUA with a major company to acquire an amazing geophysical dataset and am working with Mohamed Hamdallah, a Ph.D. graduate of geophysics.   

He has served as an external member on Ph.D. committees in Civil and Environmental Engineering. In addition to being an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) associate at the US Department of Energy/NETL, he is actively participating with professional and scientific organizations.  He is a member of the AAPG, SEG, and SPE.  He was an officer of the Geophysical Society of Pittsburgh and helped organize the fifth Appalachian Basin Geophysical Symposium (ABGS) meeting, which was held in-person. In addition, he aided the organization  of the SAGE/GAGE Community Science workshop for IRIS that was held in Pittsburgh.  He is a lifetime member in the SEG, and he presented two separate 8-hour short courses within the SEG continuing education activity focused on 1) Petrophysics relevant to CO₂ Sequestration and 2) the H₂ energy transition.   

Awards + Recognition 

Student: 3D hidden Archaeological inscriptions in Alexandria 

Mohamed Hamdallah and William Harbert from the University of Pittsburgh attended the ARCE 2024 Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. This international yearly meeting has attracted global researchers in all aspects of research related to this region to Pittsburgh.   

Charles Jones

• Teaching Professor 
• Geology Program Advisor 
• Member of the Environmental Science advisory board for West Chester University 
• Multiple scholarship committee member, including the Mellon Scholarship 
• Curator for the GES Rock Museums 
• Google Scholar 

2024 News 

Recently there has been tremendous growth in the Environmental Science program, and we sadly lost two advisors (Danielle Andrews-Brown and Kyle Whittinghill) at once.  We’ve managed to bounce back from COVID, and after a rough year of Mark Collins and I taking on a lot of extra advising duties, we’ve hired two excellent staff advisors who take care of class registrations. All field trips are also back up and running.

After getting the new geology minor passed through the department last year, I managed to upload the minor into Curriculog and get it moved through the system.  It finally got approved!  Because of prior advising, we immediately had two geology minors who fulfilled all requirements, and I believe that one will graduate in August.  

I ran seven field trips this past year:  Two for fall GEOL 0055, two for Fall GEOL 1020, two for Spring GEOL 0055, and one for GEOL 0060.

I now regularly run the GEOL 0055 field trip twice (one on Saturday, one on Sunday) to accommodate the larger class sizes that I am running in order to meet demand. 

Awards + Recognition 

How ancestral rivers carved up — and flattened — Pittsburgh 

Charles Jones, a professor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Geology and Environmental Science, is featured in an NPR segment on the geology of Pittsburgh. 

Nadine McQuarrie

• Professor 
• Associate Editor, Elsevier Journal Basin Research 
• GES Department Chair, beginning 2025 
• Google Scholar 

2024 News 

Our group continues to integrate geologic cross section kinematics and erosional exhumation through thermokinematic and landscape evolution models.  We test these models against a suite of datasets that include thermochronometers, peak temperatures, basin location, thickness and provenance, and geomorphic metrics.  Matching modeled responses to measured data allows us to predict valid thermal histories, erosional histories and topographic evolution.  Through integrating kinematic and landscape evolution models, we have been able to replicate first order characteristics of the modern topography of the Himalayan and Andean mountain ranges.   

Chloë Glover (GS) – is evaluating the causes of deep canyon incision in the eastern cordillera, southern Peru and evaluating the stratigraphic, structural and climatic controls on the northern edge of the Andean plateau. Jennie Johnson (GS) –Jennie is also examining the deformation, uplift and incision history of the eastern edge of the Andean Plateau in Peru. Her research has focused on integrating kinematic and climate models to model the landscape response to these two inputs.Finnegan Cooper (UGS) undergraduate researcher who compiled thermochronologic data for the northern Andes (Columbia and Ecuador). M.K. Siar (UGS) undergraduate researcher who compiled thermochronologic data for the northern Andes (Columbia and Ecuador), as well as sort, analyze and model the data based on location, age and existing cross sections. Hannah Kovic (UGS) undergraduate researcher who is using Move to test the viability of different cross section geometries for Taiwan. 

Awards + Recognition  

Chloë Glover Awarded the Mendenhall Fellowship 

University of Pittsburgh Department of Geology and Environmental Science Student Awarded U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mendenhall Research PostDoctoral Fellowship 

Evan Ramos

• Assistant Professor 
• Google Scholar 

2024 News 

I am one of the newest members of the faculty here in GES but increasingly finding myself at home in the department. I moved here from Houston, TX this summer with my girlfriend and 2 cats, and as much I miss Texas barbecue (can someone please tell me where I can get good barbecue around here?), I am thoroughly enjoying the Eastern Europe fare that Pittsburgh boasts and relishing in the Fall foliage. Mostly though, I have enjoyed the process of getting my research programming up and running, with seemingly endless support from my faculty colleagues and our great staff. 

I successfully recruited one PhD student (Claire Mock) and a research associate (Noah Jemison) to join me in my first semester, and they have been advancing our research on the role of water-rock reactions in the global carbon cycle. This July, Claire and I conducted 2 weeks of fieldwork in the East River watershed in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado collecting river sediment and water. We are trying to understand how alpine watersheds store and release carbon against the backdrop of a warming climate, with particular attention given to the role of clay minerals and floodplain dynamics in regulating carbon transfer. Noah has been leading the charge on building process-based models of rock weathering, which we will use to interpret the chemistry of samples collected this field season. Brian Stewart, Rosemary Capo, Molly O’Beirne, and Joe Werne have all been helpful in lending their laboratory spaces and expertise as my laboratory facilities are still being designed. With new lab facilities to construct, Geology 0800 to teach in the Spring, and too many manuscripts and grants to get off my desk, this next year should be an interesting one! 

Awards + Recognition  

Student: Congratulations to 2024 ARCS Foundation – Pittsburgh Chapter Scholar Award Recipient 

Claire Mock has been selected to receive the ARCS Foundation – Pittsburgh Chapter Scholar Award! The Pittsburgh Chapter of ARCS Foundation aims to sustain the best emerging scientists, by providing financial support to the most promising graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.   

Mike Ramsey

• Professor 
• Member of Pitt Space Initiative  
• Representative Dean’s Tenure Council, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• United Nations Global Risk Assessment Framework (GRAF) Working Group 
• NASA Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) subject matter expert 
• NASA Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) science study group 
• NASA Lunar Surface Science Study 
• NASA Deep Space Gateway 

2024 News 

During the recent academic year, I focused on expanding the scope and size of my external research projects and awards. I had four new NASA projects funded totaling more than $1.7M. This new research includes a Venus science project, which is the first time that I have worked with data from this planet. It also includes development of a new drone-based multi-camera, multispectral infrared system for wildfire hazards here on Earth. That is leadled by a former graduate student of mine (James Thompson) and funded by NASA’s technology development office. Another of the new projects centers on acquiring data with my new ground-based multispectral camera system (developed with prior NASA funding) at three volcanoes in Italy over the next three years. I will be leading a large research team in Italy this summer in collaboration with colleagues at their institute of volcanology. Finally, the last of the four projects is a new (extended appointment) on NASA’s Surface Biology and Geology mission planned for launch in 2028. I will continue my position on the science development team leading the effort to finalize the geology algorithms for the data, which include mapping surface mineralogy and detection of high temperature features.  

During the past year, I had 5 peer-reviewed papers published/in-review, 14 conference abstracts, and 4 new science proposals funded. I also have 3 new proposals pending with NASA Earth Science, NASA Technology Development, and the Australian Research Council in the upcoming year 

A member of Mike’s team was recently published: Ian Flynn on the Cover of Journal Icarus 

Eitan Shelef

• Assistant Professor 
• Member of the Executive Committee for Earth and Planetary Surface Processes Section (EPSP) at AGU 
• Associate Director in the Pittsburgh Collaboratory for Water Research, Outreach and Education at the University of Pittsburgh 
• Chair of judging of Outstanding Student Paper Award (OSPA) competition,  
• American Geophysical Union conferences 
• Google Scholar 

2024 News 

My research is focused on the multi-scale interactions between  geomorphology, climate,  tectonics and hydrology. My group studies these processes using a combination of field methods, process-based models, topographic analysis, and geospatial statistics. We apply an integrated approach where field observations inspire hypotheses, numerical and analytical models aid in quantitatively testing them, and topographic, statistic, and field-based analyses test model consistency with natural processes and forms. In conducting our research, we pursue opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations to enhance the impact and scope of our research and to promote interactions with diverse research communities.  

Together with my students and collaborators in Israel (Drs. Liran Goren and Onn Crouvi, and co-advised students Elhanan Harel, as well as Tianyue Qu) we documented tyclic climatic effects on drainage reorganization. This is the first time that this has been documented. 

One of my students, Emrah Ozpolat, has been working on research on erosion and permafrost in Alaska. He has used data from lake sediments together with landscape evolution models to constrain model parameters that govern the rates of hillslope and channel erosion and showed that hillslope processes are the dominant mechanism of the two, and that their intensity is higher in areas of discontinuous permafrost compared to continuous permafrost. 

Awards + Recognition 

Research: Prolonged Influence of Urbanization on Landslide Susceptibility 

Landslides pose a threat to life and infrastructure and are influenced by anthropogenic modifications associated with land development. Learn more from Dr. Tyler Rohan and Dr. Eitan Shelef about their research on "Prolonged Influence of Urbanization on Landslide Susceptibility". 

Patrick Shirey

• Assistant Professor
• Associate Director in the Pittsburgh Collaboratory for Water Research, Outreach and Education at the University of Pittsburgh
• Provost’s Ad Hoc Committee for Sustainability
• Ad Hoc Member, American Fisheries Society’s Resource Policy Committee
• ‪Patrick Shirey - ‪Google Scholar

2024 News

Dr. Patrick Douglas Shirey is a recent assistant professor hire (2021) for the Environmental Studies Program in the department. Patrick is the grandson of steelworker families from the Pittsburgh area. His father enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and attended college supported by the G.I. Bill and his mother worked as a secretary at Gulf Oil Corporation while attending night classes to earn her degree at the University of Pittsburgh. Patrick was inspired to study science after serving the Carnegie Museum of Natural History as a volunteer teen docent in high school, including work in the Hall of Dinosaurs. Inspired by explaining to the public what could be learned from macrofossils, some of Patrick’s research includes work with microfossils (diatoms) and connecting that knowledge to solving environmental problems for our communities. His roots in Pittsburgh are valuable for connecting with our students.

Patrick is a Certified Ecologist (Ecological Society of America) and Certified Fisheries Professional (American Fisheries Society). He is a Leonard Peters Faculty Fellow in Sustainability with the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh and serves on the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory’s Faculty Advisory Board as an Associate Director (water.pitt.edu). Patrick conducts multidisciplinary research using techniques from his terminal degrees in ecology (Ph.D.) and law (J.D.). His recently published research topics include water policy, fisheries history, urban stream restoration, endangered species conservation, environmental DNA, and science communication. As a responsible strategic thinker, Patrick brings this multidisciplinary knowledge to the classroom, teaching courses in Environmental Justice (GEOL 1316/2316), Environmental Law and Policy (GEOL 1312/2312), and Current Issues in Sustainability (ENGR 1905/2905) in the Environmental Studies Program. Patrick recently redesigned the Environmental Law and Policy course to focus on training students to improve their science communication via written and oral assignments while learning about federal and local laws. The result: five student groups from 2023 and 2024 have published their course manuscripts in the Journal of Science Policy & Governance (https://www.sciencepolicyjournal.org/).  

Three graduate students and several undergraduates are working in Patrick Shirey’s research group. Ph.D. student Beth Ann Eberle, M.S., is studying the hydrology and biology of stream and wetland systems being restored in the Churchill Valley Greenway. Ph.D. student Sara Khan, M.S., is studying diatoms from sediment cores as indicators of changing environments. Ph.D. student Poushalee Banerjee, M.S. is studying the science of non-native species impacts on native species at risk and potential policy solutions.

Publications

• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-7QgFmYAAAAJ&hl=en
• Web: https://www.geology.pitt.edu/people/patrick-shirey

Awards + Recognition

Sustainability: GES Sponsors Eco Friendly Art

• Pitt students, faculty and staff display eco-friendly creations at an art expo organized by students in a Department of Geology and Environmental Science Sustainability course. Hear from others who are helping to keep Pitt green at the University's annual sustainability symposium at 8:30 a.m. Friday, 4/19. (Photo by Aimee Obidzinski)

Students: Congratulations Beth Ann Eberle

• GES Ph.D.student project finalist from the TC^2 True Co-equal x Transformative Collaborations

Two Pitt Undergraduate Student Author Teams Published in JSP&G

• Congratulations to our student teams from our undergraduate programs in Environmental Studies, Environmental Science, and other Pitt majors are published alongside graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty from highly ranked science departments, medical schools, and policy programs. 
• Students from Team 1: Yasmine Florent, Mackenzie Nemoto, Vanessa Pratt, Ana Rowley and Maria Isabel Villegas,  and Team 2: Mina Kimak.and Ashlynn Moretti.

Brian Stewart

• Professor 
• Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies,  Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• Academic Integrity Officer, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• Faculty Diversity Committee member, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences 
• Co-chair: Recruiting Subcommittee Sloan Center for Systemic Change,  
• University of Pittsburgh 
• 3MT Judge Grad Expo and Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences  
• At-large member: Award Committee Geological Society of America  
• Doris M. Curtis Outstanding Woman in Science  
•  Co-convener: International Goldschmidt Conference,  
• “Energy Resources: Critical metals” (2023) 
•  Co-convener: Geological Society of America Annual National Meeting  
• “Characterization of Critical Metals in Unconventional Ores to Inform Recovery Potential”;  
• “Pittsburgh Coal: History, Attributes, Resources and Concerns” 
• Google Scholar

2024 News 

Our students, graduate and undergraduate, have been the real drivers of our research accomplishments this year. Our current graduate students (Camille Schaffer, Kristi Dobra, and Tashane Boothe, who are advised by both Dr. Capo and me) have been advanced to candidacy and have submitted or are very near to submitting manuscripts to scientific journals. Undergraduate researchers Tyler Weinberger and Amelia Aceves are working with Kristi Dobra to refine our understanding of trace metal and isotope uptake by freshwater mussel shells as environmental indicators. Jack McGuane (BS 2024) also worked with us on sample preparation techniques for measuring Nd isotopes in coal. In total, our students managed to submit six abstracts to the 2023 GSA meeting in Pittsburgh and present them orally or as posters.  

Additionally, Dr. Capo and I have developed techniques to measure very small amounts of mass-dependent fractionation of neodymium (Nd) isotopes from experiments that probe adsorption and co-precipitation processes of rare earth elements (REE). These are critical resources for batteries and clean energy. We are expanding these efforts to understand the effects of sulfate, which is relevant to resource recovery from acid mine drainage treatment systems. These efforts complement our ongoing work on Ba and Sr isotope variations in natural systems, and future applications to deep groundwater, weathering processes, and paleohydrology. 

Research 

There were a great deal of research accomplishments this past year: 

• Former Ph.D. student Ben Hedin (now President and co-owner of Hedin Environmental) had his third first author paper published in Chemosphere; he continues to collaborate with our group as a co-investigator on our Dept of Interior and NSF-funded projects centered on acid mine drainage.  
• We also ran a field trip for the Geological Society of America meeting held in Pittsburgh. We met up with former Ph.D. student Becca Matecha at the meeting – she’s starting a tenure track position as Asst. Professor of Geology at Mercyhurst University this fall.  
• Ph.D. student Camille Schaffer published a first author paper and has a second in revision – she presented research results on the geochemical evolution of coal mine drainage at GSA and the International Mine Water Assoc. conference this year; she also traveled to the Stanford SLAC facility to do synchrotron characterization of metal oxides.  
• Tashane Boothe was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow this year; she presented results of her research on critical metal uptake on biotically mediated AMD Mn oxides at the Goldschmidt Conference in Lyon France and at AGU and GSA.  
• Ph.D. student Kristi Dobra and undergrads Tyler Weinberger and Amelia Aceves presented results on projects related to trace metal uptake by freshwater native and invasive bivalves in the Ohio River watershed at GSA; Kristi will present at the Goldschmidt meeting in Chicago later this year.  
• Undergrad Jack McGuane worked on Nd isotopes to understand REE behavior and graduated this spring. 
• With Brian Stewart - collaboration with Oliver Chadwick to use Nd isotopes to assess eolian input to soil from Rapa Nui. 

Awards + Recognition 

Student: Pittsburgh District researcher flexes her ‘mussels’ toward doctorate degree 

• Kristi Dobra, an environmental resource specialist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District, is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh while researching metals in the Ohio River watershed and their impact on freshwater mussels. She is supported by the Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholarship, which is funded by the Department of Defense. 

Josef Werne

• Professor
• Department Chair 

2024 Chair's Letter

Daniel Williams

• Teaching Assistant Professor 
• GIS Certificate Program Advisor 

2024 News 

In arguably the easiest job transition of all time (since I’ve now been in this department in some way for over a decade!), I began my role in August 2023 as Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Science. My focus in this new position is primarily in GIS and Remote Sensing. We have taken great strides in expanding the certificate this year. Our core classes run in both semesters, as does the Independent Study program, giving students much greater flexibility in their schedules, which in turns increases the enrollment in the very popular GIS Certificate program. I spent this year learning how the certificate runs from Prof. Bill Harbert, who has now handed me the reins to the certificate. I am looking forward to helping students meet their goals in this program and guiding them through it! Part of this role has also ben identifying where GIS should be going at an educational level. We have made an important point of including and introduction to Deep Learning in GIS at the introductory level – this is an area that will only continue to grow over the years, and our aim is to give students as much of a head start as possible with these techniques. Resulting from this, I was interviewed for the ESRI ArcUser magazine, that was published in Fall 2023 (https://www.esri.com/content/dam/esrisites/en-us/newsroom/arcuser/au-fall-2023.pdf) to discuss how we have incorporated these new tools into our introductory level GIS classes.  

I have also been continuing my research into the remote sensing of volcanic activity and have put an emphasis on UG student involvement. My collaboration with Dr. Ian Flynn on using ASTER DEMs to determine the volumes of erupted lava flows and domes is currently under review in Remote Sensing of Environment, and I have an undergraduate student, Ben Schuler, who has been applying these data and methods to look at the syn-eruptive volumetric and thermal changes during the 2004-08 Mt St Helens eruption.  

Furthermore, I have also been able to take part in new research in planetary science. Elijah Coppich has been using the Deep Learning toolboxes in ArcGIS Pro to identify the locations of fissure vents on the Tharsis region of Mars, something that is important to map in order to better understand the eruptive processes that led to its formation. Additionally, I am also a co-author on a paper looking at the surfaces of so-called ‘lava world’ exoplanets, as part of a collaboration with Cornell University and the IVIS Laboratory Group at the University of Pittsburgh, led by Prof. Mike Ramsey. We created a library of emissivity spectra at different temperatures using a unique microfurnace experiment housed in the IVIS lab, that could be used with James Webb Space Telescope data to identify the composition of planetary surfaces that may be partially or fully molten. This work is currently under review in Nature Astronomy. Finally, I also published my review paper into the use of spectroscopy in volcanology, which is available in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2024.1308103/full).   

Awards + Recognition  

GIS Classes Featured in ESRI's ArcUser Magazine 

Daniel Williams, teaching assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Environmental Science, is featured in this ArcUser article which showcases the teaching deep learning of modern GIS skills using resources available from Esri. 

Undergraduates

Undergraduate Studies 

(Flint Award Recipients with members of the Flint family featured here)

AY 2024 News 

2024 Pitt Sustainability GES Awardees 

Congratulations GES Awardees! You have demonstrated an extraordinary impact on campus sustainability by innovating sustainable practices that align with categories stated in the Pitt Sustainability Plan. 

Student Category   

• Maggie Lincoln (Environmental Science, ’24)  
• Martina Frederick (Environmental Studies, ’24)   

Erika Ninos Student Leadership Award  

• Christy Kim (Environmental Studies, ’24)  

Student Sustainability Champions  

Undergraduate Students:  

• Julia Evers (Environmental Studies, ’24)   
• Emily Hoag (Geology, ’24)  
• Elise Rinke (Environmental Studies, ’24)   
• Mollie Rothbaum (Environmental Studies, ’24)  
• Ana Rowley (Environmental Science, ’24)   

Publications by students:

• Yasmine Florent (Environmental Science, ’24), Mackenzie Nemoto (Environmental Studies, ’23), Ana Rowley (Environmental Science, ’24), Vanessa Pratt (Environmental Studies, ’24) and Maria Isabel Villegas (Environmental Studies, ’24) wrote “Dangers of Oxybenzone in Sunscreens on Coral Reefs: Proposed Policy Approaches.”  
• Ashlynn Moretti (Environmental Studies, ’24), Madilyn Cianci, Mina Kimak (Environmental Studies, ’24) and Savannah Johns wrote “Mitigating the Invasive Method of Hydraulic Fracturing Through a Phase Out Policy Plan,”  

Congratulations to GES Undergraduate Sustainability Summer Research Participants with the Mascaro Center 

Each summer, the Sustainability Summer Research Program at the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation selects students to participate in advanced, hands-on research. This program goes beyond the classroom curriculum, enabling students to develop their ideas and work independently.  We are pleased to announce that out of the 27 students selected for the 2024 program, 7 are from GES. We look forward to seeing their results at the Undergraduate Research Symposium!  

Congratulations to: 

• Leanni Barreiros, Geology & Environmental Science - Exploring Sustainable Design (John C. Mascaro Scholar) 
• Rachael Betz, Geology & Environmental Science - ​Using Diatoms to Reconstruct Environmental Change in Central Chile During the Common Era (Charles and Linda Sorber Scholar 
• Madison Conn, Environmental Science & Geology - Phytoremediation of Environmental Pollutants (Charles and Linda Sorber Scholar) 
• Tyler Henry, Geology & Environmental Science  - ​Laccase-Mimicking Bionanozyme for Sustainable Removal of Water Contaminants (John C. Mascaro Scholar) 
• Neeharika Kolli, Environmental Science & Geology - ​Alternative Energy Opportunities (John C. Mascaro Scholar) 
• Pip Mostern, Geology & Anthropology - Urban Permaculture (John C. Mascaro Scholar) 
• Olivia Rossi, Geology & Environmental Science - Storm Chasing to Understand Nutrient Cycling in the Urban Tree Canopy (John C. Mascaro Scholar) 

Learn about past undergraduate research by exploring student-made video summaries on the Pitt Sustainability YouTube channel. 

Congratulations to GES Undergraduate 2024 Brackenridge Fellowship Recipients 

The Brackenridge Fellowship is one of the University of Pittsburgh’s most prestigious awards. Recipients earn funding to conduct independent research, scholarship or creative work under the guidance of a Pitt faculty mentor. Congratulations to:  

• Olivia Carson, an Environmental Science major in the Dietrich School and Frederick Honors College — “Polyploid Population Establishment and Bioremediation Potential in Duckweed” 
• Kayleigh Phillips, a Geology major in the Dietrich School and Frederick Honors College — “Unraveling Poison Ivy's Response to Climate Change: A Historical Analysis of Toxicity” 

MCSI Special Awards 

Congratulations to GES students Neeharika Kolli (Best Presentation Awards - Alternative Energy Opportunities) to Olivia Rossi (Best Video Award - Storm chasing to understand nutrient cycling in the urban tree canopy). If you are interested in learning more about this year’s projects, please visit our students’ project videos.  

Publicity  

• Three University of Pittsburgh students in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences launched Clean Green, a project committed to bringing more sustainable laundry options to Pitt.  The students — Emily Gagliardi, a sophomore environmental science major and Spanish minor pursuing a certificate in sustainability; Delaney Wright, a senior environmental studies and political science double major; and Lydia Ciani, a senior environmental science major pursuing a certificate in sustainability (PittWire, December 15, 2022)   
• Clare Sierawski, senior energy counselor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is this year’s recipient of the Department of Geology and Environment Science Distinguished Alumni Award. (PittWire), November 15, 2023  
• Fired Up: A Pitt student (Helene Tracey, Environmental Science) helps make history as a member of one of the National Park Service’s first all-women wildland fire fighting corps. (Pitt Magazine, Winter 2023) 

Department Initiatives

GES is part of several initiatives that enable world-class research and education. Through integrated, interdisciplinary science we are tackling 21st century challenges, from water and energy to climate, land use, natural resources and natural hazards.

Climate Change

• Climate & Global Change - Mark Abbott 

Climate and Global Change Center | University of Pittsburgh