Climate Change Research
Climate change has been identified as the biggest threat facing humanity today, in part because it is a “threat multiplier" that exacerbates issues like water scarcity, food insecurity, and weather events. Most research by faculty and students in ESS is either directly or indirectly related to climate change and its impacts. Climate change research by faculty and students in ESS spans physical and social sciences, and includes glacier and ice sheet responses to changing climate, disparities in impacts of increasing heat, changing wildfire and fire impacts, investigating past environmental changes in response to changing climate, impacts of climate on migration and violence, climate and dust impacts on melting snow in the Wasatch, remote sensing of greenhouse gas plumes, and many others. ESS also excels in teaching climate change, with our climate change course series that forms the core of an interdisciplinary certificate in climate change.
Climate Change Faculty
Associate Professor
Past and present climate change, paleoecology, environmental modeling, data mining and analysis.
Associate Professor, SPARC Environmental Lab Director
Environmental Justice, Food Justice, Belonging, Critical Participatory Action Research, Eco-Justice Pedagogy
Associate Professor
American Politics, energy & environmental politics, public opinion, political socialization
Professor; School of Environment, Society, and Sustainability; Department of Sociology; Environmental Humanities
Professor; Co-Director, Center for Natural and Technological Hazards
Human-environment interactions; Vulnerability; Hazards and Disasters; Environmental Justice; Health Disparities; Climate Change, Water, Wildfire, and Air Pollution
Professor; Director, School of Environment, Society, and Sustainability; Director, URSA Lab
Hyperspectral, Multispectral, and Lidar Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Ecosystems, Wildfire and Firefighter Safety, Imaging Spectroscopy
Director, Shah Analytical Group for the Environment (SAGE) Lab
Global Change Effects on the Metabolism and Biogeochemistry of Lotic and Riparian Ecosystems, Theoretical Ecology, River and Riparian Restoration
Professor
Microwave Remote Sensing of the Cryosphere, Application of Radar Interferometry to Studies of Glaciers and Ground Displacement
Professor of Sociology and ESS.
Co-Director, Center for Natural and Technological Hazards.
Associate Professor
Political Geography, Political Violence, Kenya, Spatial Statistics, GIS, Climate Change,
and Conflict
Professor
Geomorphology, Stratigraphy, Sedimentology, Geoarchaeology, Arid Lands, Petroleum Geology
Professor, Curator of the Garrett Herbarium (Utah Museum of Natural History), and Power Paleoecology Lab Director
Vegetation History, Historical Biogeography, Fire, Paleoecology and Paleoclimatology
Professor, Associated Director of Graduate Studies
Glaciology, Climate Change, Modeling Glacier Mass Balance, Ice Core Analysis, Glacier Geomorphology.
Associate Professor, Director of Snow Hydrology Research-to-Operations Laboratory (Snow HydRO Lab)
Mountain Hydrology, Snow Optics and Remote Sensing, Radiative Forcing by Light Absorbing Particles in Snow and Ice, Cryosphere-Climate Interaction.
Assistant Professor,
Associate Director, RED Lab
Director, Sustainability Education
Paleoecology, Environmental Science