To the east of North America are the White Mountains of New Hampshire. To the north, the Monteregian Hills of Quebec. Just west of these is Cannon Point, a cape on Lake Champlain near Essex, N.Y. These three formations typify the uncommon magmatic activity (behavior of molten rock) in the Northeast. Moving past Cannon Point to the west, a person would be hard pressed to find any magmatic features before coming upon the magnificent Rocky Mountains. That makes Cannon Point a rarity among eastern rock structures, and its magnetic igneous intrusions make up the western-most activity of the region. Jonathan Traylor ’10 is studying these rocks to see what they might say about regional magmatic activity that dates back to the Cretaceous period. More ...

Eugene Domack, the J. W. Johnson Family Professor of Geosciences, attended the 16th International Symposium on Polar Sciences in June in Incheon, Korea, where he presented an invited talk titled “Larsen Ice Shelf System (LARISSA): A Multi-disciplinary Earth Systems Approach to Antarctic Environmental Change.” More ...

Anoop Pandey '10 is responsible for distributing the famed "golden bikes" for free student use on campus, but the part of the globe he's studying certainly isn't accessible by bike. This summer, Pandey is using remote sensing to study unusual fold structures along faults in the Western Desert of Egypt. He is working with Upson Chair for Public Discourse and Professor of Geosciences Barbara Tewksbury.  More ...

During the last Ice Age, the whole country of Iceland was covered in a thick sheet of ice. From an aerial view, most of the island would have appeared to be in a state of frigid serenity. But under the ice, chaos ensued – massive volcanoes entombed in the ice erupted often, causing the overlying ice to melt. As the hot lava erupted into cold water, explosions occurred, depositing fragmented rock and glass with few lava flows. More ...

Eugene Domack, the J. W. Johnson Family Professor of Geosciences, and Hamilton students Natalie Elking '12 (geoscience) and Izzy Cannell '11, (environmental studies) are spending part of the summer in South America to fact-find issues related to energy development in Chilean Patagonia. More ...

The LARISSA team met at National Science Foundation for a Principal Investigators meeting on May 5 and 6 in Washington, D.C. LARISSA is a National Science Foundation-funded initiative that joins an international, interdisciplinary team together to address a significant regional problem with global change implications, the abrupt environmental change in Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf System. Lead Principal Investigator (PI) and Project Director Eugene Domack, the J. W. Johnson Family Professor of Environmental Studies, and Principal Investigator and Associate Professor of Biology Michael McCormick attended along with several representatives from National Geographic Magazine. More ...

Professor of Geosciences Barbara Tewksbury delivered the commencement address at Virginia Tech's Department of Geosciences graduation ceremony on May 10. The title of her address was "Insights from Apollo for Teaching and Learning Geoscience in the 21st Century."  More ...

The published work of Eugene Domack, the Joel W. Johnson Family Professor of Geosciences, was cited in the recently released IPCC Climate Report, The Physical Science Basis, (Chapter 6 Palaeoclimate). The IPCC is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that issues state of the earth's climate reports based upon the recent scientific findings, greenhouse gas emissions and predictions for the future of the earth's climate. The final report of the organization was issued on November 17. Jonathan Overpeck '79 is a coordinating lead author for the Palaeoclimate chapter. A scientist at the University of Arizona, he was one of the international body of climate scientists who authored the first IPCC report.  More ...

The Antarctic Peninsula is undergoing greater warming than almost anywhere on Earth, a condition perhaps associated with human-induced greenhouse effects. According to the cover article published in the August 4 issue of the journal Nature, the spectacular collapse of Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, is unprecedented during the past 10,000 years. Eugene Domack, professor of geosciences at Hamilton College and the author of the paper, has been the lead scientist of a multi-institutional, international effort that combines a variety of disciplines in examining the response of the Antarctic Peninsula to modern warming. Domack says, "Our work contributes to the understanding of these changes -- where they are occurring first and with greatest magnitude and impact upon the environment."

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