Earth Sciences

Atop the Oregon Cascades, UO team finds a huge buried aquifer

EARTH SCIENCES - Oregon’s Cascade Range mountains might not hold gold, but they store another precious resource in abundance: water. Scientists from the University of Oregon and their partners have mapped the amount of water stored beneath volcanic rocks at the crest of the central Oregon Cascades and found an aquifer many times larger than previously estimated — at least 81 cubic kilometers.

UO scientists rewrite eruption history of Oregon’s South Sister

EARTH SCIENCES - Graduate student Annika Dechert at the University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences and a team of researchers are working on studying the eruption history of South Sister volcano in the Oregon Cascades. The results of the study will inform the way the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory draws up hazards maps for Central Oregon and help shape the way scientists think about other similar volcanoes. The research team published their latest findings in August in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.

Space probe carrying UO research takes off for Jupiter moon

EARTH SCIENCES - Carol Paty, a comparative planetologist in the College of Arts and Sciences helped develop one of the scientific instruments aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper, which blasted off Oct. 14, on the world’s first mission to conduct a detailed study of Jupiter's moon Europa. Paty, an Earth sciences professor, is a member of the research teams behind two of the nine scientific instruments the spacecraft will use to confirm and measure what scientists strongly suspect is a vast sea of salty water buried under a sheet of ice enveloping the moon’s surface.
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CRESCENT awards grants for Cascadia earthquake research

EARTH SCIENCES - The Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT) has awarded 14 grants to researchers across the US and beyond to study the Cascadia subduction zone, a massive fault along the West Coast that could generate a magnitude 9.0+ earthquake at any moment. The CRESCENT Seed Grant Program was established to enlist more researchers in the effort to meet those goals.
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Scientists, community leaders discuss resilience at CRESCENT workshop

EARTH SCIENCES - More than 100 scientists and community partners recently convened to discuss resilience and preparedness planning in a workshop hosted by the Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT), a new multi-institution earthquake research center led by the University of Oregon. Attendees discussed the latest science and resilience planning needs of communities related to a better understanding of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. 
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Four UO researchers win NSF awards for early career faculty

Three College of Arts and Sciences researchers have received the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious honor for early-career faculty members in the past year: Luca Mazzucato (biology, mathematics and physics), Brittany Erickson (computer science and earth sciences) and Julia Widom (chemistry). Known as the CAREER Awards, the organization recognizes and fosters rising stars by funding innovative research.

Recognizing outstanding research

The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation announced this year's Outstanding Research Awards, many of which went to College of Arts and Sciences faculty members: Professor Carlos Aguirre (history and Latin American studies), Assistant Professor Gabriel Sanchez (anthropology) and Leland O'Driscoll (associate director of the Oregon Hazards Lab).

Earth scientists describe a new kind of volcanic eruption

EARTH SCIENCES - Twelve back-to-back explosions at Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano back in 2018 may be proof of a different kind of eruption. The explosions were driven by sudden pressure increases as the ground collapsed, which blasted plumes of rock fragments and hot gas into the air, much like a classic stomp-rocket toy, according to researchers at the University of Oregon collaborated with the US Geological Survey and China’s Sichuan University. The findings were published in Nature Geoscience on May 27.
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