research

At Lehigh, faculty and students in the EES Department carry out externally funded research in a broad range of subjects. This work spans the fields of ecology, environmental science, and geology, many of which might be unfamiliar to people having focused high-school or undergraduate training in the traditional disciplines of geology, biology, chemistry,or physics. Have a look at our faculty and student research activities and if something piques your interest, please contact us.

A wide range of research programs, equipment and computing facilities are available to support research in EES, located both within the department and in cooperating departments. The department houses some major, NSF-supported equipment and laboratories, and several groups of faculty and students are involved in larger collaborative research efforts of various types. Below, you will find links to pages describing these facilities and programs.

Programs and Projects

• Lehigh's Environmental Initiative
• Geodynamics of Indentor Corners (Nanga Parbat, Eastern Tibet)
• Lehigh Earth Observatory (LEO)
• Lehigh River Watershed

Faculty Research

• David Anastasio (Structural Geology)
• Gray Bebout (Petrology and High-Temperature Geochemistry)
• Robert Booth (Ecology, paleoecology, and paleoclimatology)
• Edward Evenson (Glacial and Quaternary Geology)
• Benjamin Felzer (Climate and biogeochemical modeling)
• Bruce Hargreaves (Physiological and Ecosystem Ecology)
• Ken Kodama (Paleomagnetism)
• Anne Meltzer (Seismology, tectonics)
• Don Morris (Microbial Ecology and Limnology)
• Frank Pazzaglia (Surface Processes and Tectonics)
• Steve Peters (Low-temperature geochemistry)
• Joan Ramage (remote sensing, cryosphere)
• Dork Sahagian (tectonics, environmental change)
• Zicheng Yu (Paleoecology and Paleoclimatology)
• Peter Zeitler (Geochronology and Tectonics)

Recent Faculty and Staff Publications

Hargreaves, B. R., S. F. Girdner, M. W. Buktenica, R.W. Collier, E. Urbach, G. L. Larson, 2007. Ultraviolet Radiation and Bio-optics in Crater Lake, Oregon. Hydrobiologia, v. 574, p. 107-140.

Felzer, B. S., Cronin, T., Reilly, J. M., Melillo, J. M. and Wang, X. 2007. Impacts of ozone on trees and crops. Comptes rendus Geosience, v. 339, p. 784-798.

Kopczynski, S., Ramage, J., Lawson, D., Goetz, S. Evenson, E., Denner, J., and Larson, G., 2008. Passive microwave (SSM/I) satellite predictions of valley glacier hydrology, Matanuska Glacier, Alaska, Geophysical Research Letters, v. 35, p. L16502, doi:10.1029/2008GL034615.

Li, C., Van der Hilst, R. D., Meltzer, A. S., and Engdahl, R. E., 2008. Subduction of the Indian lithosphere beneath the Tibetan Plateau and Burma. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 274, p. 157-168.

Li, L., Bebout, G. E., and Idleman, B. D., 2007. Nitrogen concentration and isotopic compositions of altered oceanic crust obtained on ODP Legs 129 and 185: Insights into alteration-related nitrogen enrichment and the nitrogen subduction budget. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, v. 71, p. 2344-2360.

Morris, D. P., in press. Optical Properties of Water. In: Encyclopedia of Inland Waters. G.E. Likens [Ed.]. Elsevier, Oxford, UK.

Picotti, V. and Pazzaglia, F. J., 2008. A new active tectonic model for the construction of the Northern Apennines mountain front near Bologna (Italy). Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 113, doi:10.1029/2007JB005307.

Sol, S., Meltzer, A., Burgmann, R., Van der Hilst, R. D., King, B., Chen, Z., Koons, P., Lev, E., Liu, Y. P., Zeitler, P.K., Yuping, L., Zhang, X., Zhang, J., and Zurek, B., 2007. Geodynamics of the southeastern Tibetan plateau from seismic anisotropy and geodesy. Geology, v. 35, p. 563-566.

Stewart, R. J., Hallet, B., Zeitler, P. K., Malloy, M. A., Allen, C. M., and Trippett, D., 2008. Brahmaputra sediment flux dominated by highly localized rapid erosion from the easternmost Himalaya. Geology, v. 36, p. 711-741, doi: 10.1130/G24890A.1.

Tan, X., Kodama, K. P., Gilder, S., and Courtillot, V., 2007. Rock magnetic evidence for inclination shallowing in the Passaic Formation red beds from the Newark basin and a systematic bias of the Late Triassic apparent polar wander path for North America, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 254, p. 345-357.

Yu, Z. C., 2007. Rapid response of forested vegetation to multiple climatic oscillations the last deglaciation in the northeastern United States. Quaternary Research 67: 297Ð303.

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