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

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, UNLV
Campus News |

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

Madison Montellano
People |

Madison Montellano knows what it means to take the road less traveled, embracing each twist and turn through her academic adventure.

students in spring
Campus News |

News highlights starring UNLV students and faculty who made local and national headlines.

a crane pours glowing hot steel into a large vat
Research |

Funding is part of Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program to develop zero emissions ironmaking and ultra-low life cycle emissions steelmaking.

A view of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park from the Rim Trail
Campus News |

UNLV geology class challenges students to answer the question: How green is green? 

Geoscience In The News

Desert Research Institute

The question of whether Mars ever supported life has captivated the imagination of scientists and the public for decades. Central to the discovery is gaining insight into the past climate of Earth’s neighbor: was the planet warm and wet, with seas and rivers much like those found on our own planet? Or was it frigid and icy, and therefore potentially less prone to supporting life as we know it? A new study finds evidence to support the latter by identifying similarities between soils found on Mars and those of Canada’s Newfoundland, a cold subarctic climate.

Center for Biological Diversity

Local and national public-interest groups, as well as Havasupai Tribe members, delivered more than 17,000 petition signatures to Gov. Katie Hobbs today urging her to use her authority to close the Pinyon Plain uranium mine that threatens the waters of the Grand Canyon and the Havasupai Tribe.

KVVU-TV: Fox 5

Clark County School District teachers took a field trip on Wednesday—not with students, but with UNLV professors. They went to Late Night Trailhead to check out some of the rock formations unique to the Las Vegas Valley and to find ways to add new and exciting lessons that engage students on top of their existing curriculum.

Mirage News

Mars has a distinct structure in its mantle and crust with discernible reservoirs, and this is known thanks to meteorites that scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and colleagues have analyzed on Earth.

Good News Network

When a meteorite smashed into Mars eleven million years ago, pieces of the Red Planet hurtled into space—and some of them landed on Earth in the form of meteorites, depositing unparalleled evidence of the planet’s makeup. Now, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have released a report after their detailed study of the Martian meteorites collected from locations across the world, including Africa and Antarctica.

Science Mag

Mars has a distinct structure in its mantle and crust with discernible reservoirs, and this is known thanks to meteorites that scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and colleagues have analyzed on Earth.

Geoscience Experts

Carrie Tyler is a marine conservation paleobiologist.
An expert in planetary science, igneous petrology, and Martian geology.
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An expert on water resources, paleoclimatology, and environmental pollution. 
Brian Hedlund in an expert in microbial ecology at high temperatures, biofuels and genomics. 
An expert in earthquakes, structural geology, tectonics, and neotectonics.
Lachniet is an expert in paleoclimatology, quaternary geology, climate change and stable isotope geochemistry.

Recent Geoscience Accomplishments

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 UNLV), 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…
David Rice,  Zachary Grande, Ashkan Salamat, Jason Steffen (all Physics and Astronomy), and Oliver Tschauner (Geoscience), along with former UNLV postdoc Chenliang Huang (Physics and Astronomy) published a study on the properties of the interiors of distant, extrasolar planets in the "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society." This…
David Kreamer (Geoscience) was invited by the president of the United Nations General Assembly to speak to the member states in open session at a high-level UN meeting on the "Implementation of the Water-Related Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda" earlier his month. Kreamer spoke on an interactive panel on water data, information, and…