DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL, EARTH AND OCEAN SCIENCES

The Environmental, Earth and Ocean Sciences Department (EEOS) integrates the natural and social sciences to generate and apply new knowledge about the quality of our environment and the sustainable use of its resources. It focuses on promoting integrated science, planning, policy, spatial analysis and education for understanding earth-system processes and managing the impacts of urbanization on linked watershed and coastal marine systems. The department’s strong interdisciplinary makeup (natural and social sciences within the same department) and its focus on linked watershed-coastal systems are unique in this country.

The department’s undergraduate programs highlight geological, oceanic, geographic and environmental sciences. These programs use an interdisciplinary approach to address relationships between physical, natural and human environments. As environmental systems of all types become increasingly impacted by both natural and human causes, interdisciplinary approaches become crucial for understanding the inherent complexities of these systems, and for designing solutions to address environmental degradation.

In addition to the EEOS major and minor (BS and BA), the department houses the Environmental Studies Program, an independent, interdepartmental program of study offering students at the undergraduate level a broad-based interdisciplinary curriculum focusing on the environment. This program was created to address the complexity of the environmental problems facing us all in the coming years, and to acknowledge their cross-disciplinary nature. It is aimed at students seeking to understand the underlying causes of environmental problems, and to make preserving and improving the environment part of their personal and professional lives. A description of the program can be found in the section on College of Science and Mathematics Programs in this catalog, page 247.

Department facilities include the Applied Geographical Information Science (GIS) Center, the Center for Estuarine and Coastal Observation (CECO), the Trace Element analysis Facility, and the Laboratory of Theoretical, Computational and Observational Oceanography. In addition, the Department houses specialized laboratories for earth, ocean and environmental sciences, including state-of-the-art facilities for GC/MS, CHN analysis, forensic environmental analysis, hydrogeology, coastal geology, environmental toxicology, stable isotope sample preparation, benthic ecology and zooplankton analysis, as well as inshore/near shore research vessels.