|
         
|
 |
|||||||||||
Welcome to the Department of Geoscience. Our mission is to serve the needs of the State of Nevada by being an active participant in the national and international geoscience community, and by training professional geoscientists for private and governmental employment in the region. We are an active and growing department conducting exciting research and providing our students with outstanding opportunities to broaden their minds and careers. On these pages you will find information regarding our teaching, research, and community service. If you have further questions, please contact the department today. |
||||||||||||
Geoscience faculty member Elisabeth (Libby) Hausrath and colleagues, in a recent paper in the journal Astrobiology (reprint), studied basalt and olivine weathering in the arctic Mars analog environment, Svalbard. They deployed CheMin, a miniature XRD scheduled to fly to Mars on the Mars Science Laboratory, and successfully detected olivine and weathering products in the field. Biological impacts were analyzed by XPS in samples buried for one year, and in long-term weathered samples, the relative dissolution rates of basalt glass and olivine were correlated to temperature. This suggests a relevant marker of different aqueous conditions on Mars.
Mandy Williams (Ph.D. Student) has won the Farouk El-Baz GSA Student Research Award for her work on Biological Soil Crusts in the Mojave Desert. Her dissertation research will identify environmental factors controlling biological soil crusts within the Mojave Desert and attempt to model their distribution effectively. She will employ a novel, interdisciplinary approach (combining biology, ecology, soil science, hydrology, statistics, chemistry, geomorphology, GIS, and remote sensing) to investigate and model a complex, natural system. This work will examine the ecology of primitive organisms under extreme conditions and will have implications for understanding basic requirements of life. Recent Publications of the UNLV Geoscience Department
|
 |
•The UNLV Geoscience Department is currently accepting applications for a Visiting Assistant Professor position, commencing Fall 2009. •Sign up today to participate in UNLV's Geology Field Camp •Applications for Undergraduate and Graduate Geoscience Department Scholarships for Spring 2010 are due by September 18, 2009. •ExxonMobil will be on campus to conduct interviews with students on September 22-24, 2009. Visit the ExxonMobil Interview web page for further details. Please contact Maria Figueroa (maria.figueroa@unlv.edu) or go by the main office to sign up. •The 2009 Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) will be held in Portland, Oregon on October 18-21, 2009. The deadline for submitting abstracts is August 11, 2009. •The Fall 2009 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) will be held in San Francisco, CA on December 14-18, 2009. The deadline for submitting abstracts is September 3, 2009. •Pan-American Current Research on Fluid Inclusions (PACROFI) Conference •The Department of Geoscience is pleased to offer Fay and Jack Ross Family Graduate Scholarships for exceptional applicants to our PhD program. Visit the Fay and Jack Ross Family Graduate Scholarship page to learn more about this opportunity. •Business is booming in the Geosciences! Read the article found in Science Careers, a publication of the journal Science.
|
||||||||||
Lilly
Fong Geoscience Building (LFG) 104B Phone: 702.895.3262; FAX 702.895.4064 Email: geodept@unlv.edu |
Department of Geoscience University of Nevada, Las Vegas 4505 S. Maryland Parkway Las Vegas, NV 89154-4010 |