In The News: Department of Geoscience

Las Vegas Review Journal

This winter’s near-record snowpack on Mount Charleston is melting away as temperatures rise, but experts are not expecting that warming water to pose any major flood problems as it melts off the Spring Mountains.

Science Daily

The Grand Canyon is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, visited by millions of admirers each year. So, naturally, you'd think that all of its rock layers had been studied and named. But you'd be wrong.

Las Vegas Review Journal

When environmental advocacy organization Get Outdoors Nevada holds volunteer clean up events at public lands around the valley, they typically bring buckets.

KLAS-TV: 8 News Now

David Kreamer’s connection to the Colorado River is stronger than most, formed during an epic kayak adventure almost 40 years ago.

Mashable

Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels averaged over 417 ppm in 2022, and even recently reached a daily reading of over 424 ppm. When this story first published in 2019, CO2 levels hovered around 412 ppm. They keep rising, relentlessly.

City Cast Las Vegas

The dams built along the Colorado River some hundred years ago paved the way for Western cities to boom. Las Vegas wouldn’t exist without Lake Mead, our nation’s largest reservoir. But these dams came with a cost: environmental impact, cultural loss, and fraught political battles.

Bezinga

As the climate crisis pushes more and more people to rethink their relationship with the environment, electric vehicles are becoming one of the main products consumers can purchase to make a positive change.

Global Finance Magazine

India has found 5.9 million tonnes (about 6.5 million US tons) of lithium in the federally administered, long-disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, a discovery that can transform the country into a lithium global powerhouse. India currently relies on China and Hong Kong for its lithium requirements and about 96% of its lithium-ion cell and battery imports. Yet, it will be a lengthy and complicated process to get the new reserves into smartphones, electric vehicles (EVs) and wind turbines.

Euronews

“Lithium and rare earths will soon be more important than oil and gas", European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last September. The Commission chief pronounced these words as Europe was reeling from an energy crisis accelerated by Russia' war in Ukraine and which led to the bloc pledging to wean itself off fossil fuels — most of which it has traditionally supplied from Russia — and accelerate its transition towards "homegrown" renewables and other green tech.

Scripps

Neighborhoods all over southern Nevada have been ripping up grass for cash and replacing it with rocks, artificial turf and desert plants.

Scripps

The water dispute between states is heating up after California could not come to an agreement with six other Colorado River Basin states about how to cut down on water needed from the Colorado River.

A Rock and A Hard Place

We look at the field of economic geology, or the scientific discipline concerned with the distribution of mineral deposits, the economic considerations involved in their recovery, and the assessment of the reserves available. Simon also discusses some of his latest work on looking at the impact of COVID-19 on the mineral supply chain and how the global pandemic and geopolitical tensions with China may change the way we think about raw materials and their supply chains.