2025-09-26
- While rivers are popular magnets for fishing, boating, and kayaking, they are also potential powerhouses in the fight against climate change. Rivers and streams carry inorganic carbon from land to oceans in a process called lateral carbon flux. In recent years, environmental engineers have proposed to utilize this movement in a class of carbon sequestration strategies known as “enhanced...
2025-09-17 - Sarah Austin didn’t set out to become a geologist. In fact, she jokes that she “messed up” when she first enrolled at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, mistakenly thinking the College of Education and Human Development was the right path to medical school. But one introductory geology course changed everything.“I sat in the second row and was so enthralled the whole class, and then...
2025-08-14 - Jenna Shelton (B.S., 2011, Environmental Geology) recently joined the Prairie Research Institute as the new director of the Illinois State Water Survey.Shelton is a hydrobiogeochemist with 14 years of experience at the U.S. Geological Survey. She has a dynamic background of research and leadership, with expertise in strategic planning, machine learning, budgeting, the energy-water nexus,...
2025-07-22 - Earth science and environmental change professor Bruce Fouke and his interdisciplinary team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have pioneered the field of GeoBioMed, a unique integration of geology, biology, and medicine aimed at tackling complex health challenges through a geoscientific lens. This innovative approach, previously applied to kidney stones and cardiac...
2025-06-27 - Illinois Geology students are currently in the middle of the Wasatch-Uinta Field Camp! Here they are 'On Top of the World' at Chalk Creek in the foothills of the Uinta Mountains in Utah.
2025-06-27 - When Hayley Woodrich learned she'd been awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in June, she almost didn’t believe it.“I got an email from NSF and thought, ‘Oh, great! Feedback is finally out!” she said. “Then I opened the email, started reading, and said, ‘Wait a minute.’ I took a screenshot and sent it to my advisors, saying, ‘What?’”The honor is one of the most...
2025-05-28 - In a reflective piece for the Illinois News Bureau’s “In My Own Words” series, Professor Ellen Buckley of Earth Science and Environmental Change recounts the surreal and powerful experience of teaching sea ice science while standing directly on the frozen Arctic Ocean in Utqiaġvik, Alaska....
2025-02-10 - Check out this article from the Yellowstone Institute featuring Prof. Bruce Fouke explaining the importance of Yellowstone in fields as different as medicine and space exploration! Dr. Fouke has worked in Yellowstone for 30 years, exploring the science of this incredible landscape and sharing his insights with others!...
2024-11-22 - The department took part in the Champaign Park District National STEM day celebration on November 9th, 2024. The event, held at the Park District’s new Martens Center, welcomed children of all ages to explore many facets of science and meet scientists from the U of I. Graduate student Hayley Woodrich attended and brought a mini-seismometer with her to...
2024-08-20 - Take a look at the new 940 Feet interview with Geology Prof. Max Christie!
2024-07-12 - Professor Michael Stewart and former student Chloe Marks recently were on Cool Science Radio to talk about the Wasatch-Uinta Field Camp! Check it out here! https://www.kpcw.org/show/cool-science-radio/2024-07-11/university-students-immerse-themselves-in-utahs-diverse-geology
2024-07-09 - Take a look at ESEC Professor Bruce Fouke and IGB Researcher Miyandi Sivaguru's fascinating work combining Geoscience and Medicine (GeoBioMed)! Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide and one of the keys in combating this threat is understanding the geology of the heart! Read the LAS Story here:...
2024-06-27 - Petroleum Experts has renewed through December 2024 a grant of a collection of industry-leading software packages to the Illinois State Geological Survey and the Department of Earth Science and Environmental Change to use in research and education. This includes the MOVE and IPM software suites....- 2023-11-03 - PhD candidate Jinyu Wang recently published her first lead author paper in Science of the Total Environment! Jinyu’s study employs a new ‘lab-in-the-field’ technology which we refer to as the RiverLab. Essentially the concept is to circumvent the need to go out to a stream or river and collect a water sample, bring it back to the lab and then analyze its chemical composition. Instead, the...
2023-09-12 - A new mammoth sculpture is rearing its head on the same ground where real mammoths wandered 30,000 years prior. That’s even older than the neighboring Natural History Building (NHB), built in 1892, from where the sculpture draws inspiration.