Department of Earth Sciences

Program Structure

This program is designed as a 2 year Master of Science Degree with the following components:

Field Component
A team of faculty teach GCEC students how to collect, analyze, and interpret, climate records from glaciers, lakes, trees and sediments in the Sierra Nevada Mountains based out of the University of California White Mountain Research Station. This affords students an extended period of time in the high Sierras to gain the strategies and skills necessary for obtaining paleoclimate data. This is the core class for the program.

Class & Class-Oriented Field Training A range of seminars and classes in the first year, both at UC Riverside and at White Mountain Research Station, provide the theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary to study the complexity of the climate system.

Individual Research Project written up as a Thesis In the second year, GCEC students under the mentorship of a chosen faculty member embark on their own research project, drawing on the skills gained inthe first year to conduct field studies, analyze samples in the laboratory, and write these results up as thesis toward and award of Masters of Science.

State of the Art Laboratory Facilities

The Earth Sciences Department houses a variety of analytical equipment in state-of-the-art laboratory facilities that opened this year and four additional labs to open in 2009. Facilities provide opportunities to integrate field studies in the Sierras and elsewhere with a laboratory component using any of six brand new mass spectrometers, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and x-ray diffraction. This provides the opportunity for a variety of studies, including: isotopic studies of carbonates, organic materials and waters, elemental analysis of organics and sediments, and optical, geochemical and diffraction-based studies of sediments and rocks.