Surface Processes
Understanding the physical, chemical, and biological processes occurring at and near the Earth’s surface and in the oceans is a major focus of the Earth sciences. Department research in this area spans the globe from the world’s oceans, to the Hawaiian Islands, the glacial valleys of Antarctica, and the dynamic shorelines of New England, Louisiana, and Brazil.
Some examples of questions currently being addressed by research in the department include: How is water cycled through soils and the atmosphere? How do coastal barriers and tidal inlets evolve? How do vegetation and sea-level rise influence the morphology of salt marshes? How stable is the polar ice sheet in Antarctica?
Our department offers graduate research in Surface Processes leading to M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, as well undergraduate degrees in both Earth Sciences and in Environmental Earth Sciences. In addition, members of the Surface Processes research group participate in the new Terrestrial Biogeosciences Ph.D. certificate program offered jointly by the departments of Earth Sciences, Geography and Environment, and Biology.
Examples of Ongoing Research Projects
- Hydrology, ecology, and geomorphology of coastal marshes and riverine systems; hillslope stability (Fagherazzi)
- Response of tidal inlets, marshes, and barriers to rising sea level (FitzGerald)
- Landform evolution of a nutrient enriched salt marsh (Fulweiler, FitzGerald, Fagherazzi)
- Land-ocean fluxes of weathering-derived solutes and organics from the Fly River, Papua New Guinea (Kurtz)
- Landscape evolution and climate change of Antarctica: Analogs for landscape evolution and climate change on Mars (Marchant)
- Estimation of evaporation and water balance from satellite remote sensing (Salvucci)
- Pore-scale analyses of evaporation from porous media (Shokri)
Faculty
- Sergio Fagherazzi geomorphology, hydrology, marine geology
- Duncan FitzGerald coastal marine geology
- Robinson Fulweiler marine biogeochemistry
- Andrew Kurtz low-temperature geochemistry, soils
- Amala Mahadevan physical and biogeochemical oceanography
- David Marchant Surface processes, sedimentology, geomorphology
- Richard W. Murray paleoceanography, marine geochemistry
- Maureen Raymo paleoceanography, marine geology
- Guido Salvucci hydrology
- Nima Shokri Flow and transport in porous media, vadose zone hydrology and environmental fluid mechanics
Surface Processes Research Facilities
A Selection of Relevant Graduate-level Courses
ES 514 Dynamic Landsurface Hydrology
ES 533 Quantitative Geomorphology
ES 534 Ice Age Systems
ES 531 Coastal Processes
ES 543 Estuaries and nearshore systems
ES 576 Aquatic Geochemistry
ES 671 Geochemistry
ES 683 Geodynamics II: Fluids and fluid transport
ES 701 Quantitative methods I: Mechanics of earth materials
ES 702 Quantitative methods II: Analysis and modeling of geologic processes
ES 762 Nonmarine terrigenous clastic deposits and processes
ES 830 Advanced topics in surface processes
Note: A complete list of our departmental course offerings is available here.
