Academic expertise. Research prowess. Student success.

There’s a whole world of discovery in the ground beneath your feet. From the shifting of tectonic plates to the eruption of volcanoes, learn about the Earth and all of the natural processes that have shaped it over time.

Department faculty, researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate students pursue field, laboratory, experimental, and modeling studies of geological and environmental problems around the world. The department's excellent facilities and technical personnel support a range of methods and the department's ideal location also provides ready access to the many natural laboratories of Nevada, California and the western United States. Research specialties include Earth and planetary surface processes, geodynamics, volcanology, geochemistry, petrology, earthquakes and seismology, mineral and energy resources, hydrology and hydrogeology.

Recent news from the Department

Several groups of people stand around desks in a classroom with yellow technology kits in front of them.

CTEMPs hosts hands-on summer workshop, conducts groundbreaking experiment at the Nevada Experiment Station

Workshop provided training in environmental monitoring applications

Collage image of portraits of Paula Noble, Jean-Paul Perrotte, Montana Hodges and Wendy Calvin

University faculty to give lectures at Nevada Museum of Art

The lectures are part of the “Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada” exhibit

A man walking toward a rocky outcropping on a hillside.

Andrew Siciliano receives National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Siciliano will continue to study geochemistry at the University of Utah