Water, Climate & Environment
Program lead: Dr. Daniella Rempe
The department’s program on Water, Climate and Environment (WCE) include faculty who study Earth’s surface, atmosphere, oceans, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere and the interactions between these Earth system components. Faculty, scientists, and students in this research program seek to understand the connections and feedbacks between changes in climate, the atmosphere, the land surface, water resources, soils, vegetation, snow and ice, and oceans, as well as the implications of these changes for society. The programs’ researchers are experts in diverse observational, analytical, and computational tools. These tools are applied across a broad range of problems representing time and spatial scales spanning from milliseconds to millions of years, and from microns to global. Research by WCE members help guide policy and management at the local, state, federal and global levels. WCE faculty often collaborate with stakeholders and colleagues in other disciplines to inform applications of research to practice, management and policy. To learn more, please join the WCE research program for their seminar series.
Daniel S Alessi specializes in environmental geochemistry and geomicrobiology, with current focuses on developing technologies for critical minerals extraction.
Jay L Banner investigates 1) the impacts of urbanization on water resources and 2) reconstruction of past climate change.
Daniel O Breecker investigates biogeochemical processes at or near the land surface like soils & paleosols, caves & stalagmites that give us insight into ancient Earth.
M. Bayani Cardenas is a hydrologist with expertise on surface and subsurface flow and reactive transport phenomena.
Ginny Catania studies the natural and climate-forced variability of Earth's ice sheets using in-situ and remotely-sensed observations.
Kerry H Cook is an atmospheric scientist who uses observations and simulations to understand and predict climate change and variability.
Anna Ruth (Ruthie) Halberstadt integrates geologic data and numerical models to reconstruct Antarctic climate and ice sheet dynamics during warm periods spanning the past and future.
Patrick Heimbach is a computational oceanographer who studies the global ocean circulation and its role in climate variability and change.
Marc A Hesse studies geological fluid dynamics. He is currently interested in the brine dynamics & habitability of icy ocean worlds.
Tony Hollenback studies the development of new methods for stable isotope analysis of transient organic species in soil, sediment, and water.
Ashley M Matheny works on ecohydrology, bio- and micro-meteorology, vegetation hydrodynamics, watershed hydrology, land-atmosphere interactions.
Dev Niyogi studies hydroclimatic & environmental extremes (hurricanes, heavy rain systems, heat waves, droughts) for sustainable cities and agricultural communities.
Geeta Persad uses climate models to study interactions between aerosols/air pollution, climate change, and the hydrologic cycle to inform climate policy and decision-making.
Mary F Poteet uses environmental sensors and synoptic sampling to study metabolic and thermal regimes of creek ecosystems, with an emphasis on urban creek degradation and resilience.
Daniella M Rempe investigates hydrology, geomorphology, ecohydrology, catchment hydrology, near-surface geophysics, hydrogeology.
Timothy M Shanahan studies paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, paleolimnology, sedimentary geology & geochemistry, organic and isotope geochemistry.
Zong-Liang Yang studies the atmosphere-Earth exchange of momentum, radiation, heat, water & carbon dioxide at small & very large scale (remote-sensing & modeling).