Sean Bemis put his hands together side by side to demonstrate two plates of the earth’s crust with a smooth boundary running between them. But that boundary is not always smooth and those plates do not always sit together neatly, which makes the earth’s crust a dynamic and complex surface.
Graduate student Edward Lo studies the sediment patterns and hydrology of a region in Brazil called the Pantanal, which is the world’s largest freshwater wetlands. Often American geologists base their research on a region within the U.S. One of the many things that makes Lo and his work unique is his commitment to research abroad.
Whether it’s summer camp in Costa Rica or a weekend-long trip to Mammoth Cave, Natural Resources and Environmental Studies students have more opportunities than ever to gain first hand experience.
In the field of geology, the University of Kentucky is not traditionally known as a petroleum school. But through participation in the Imperial Barrel Award, a team of graduate students in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences not only gained invaluable insight into the oil industry, but elevated UK’s standing as a geoscience program.
For most Americans, levees are man-made engineering projects, rarely mentioned outside of the flooding that follows disasters like Hurricane Katrina.However, recent research conducted by Earth and Environmental Science (EES) Assistant Professor Derek Sawyer published in the journal “Geology” sheds new light on levees most of us never see – those built naturally by underwater rivers deep below the ocean’s surface.
