Dartmouth Earth and Planetary Sciences

10/26/2026

Students in the field! PhD Student Alec Getraer and Undergraduate Researcher Aidan Silvestro went to Inuvik in NWT Canada to date the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet in the Mackenzie River delta using cosmogenic dating methods. They found glacial erratics on the Campbell uplift and will use them to produce the first cosmogenic nuclide dates of the area. They want to investigate human migration into America and understand climate dynamics such as the timing of meltwater pulses to the ocean.

This work was done on the ancestral Gwich’In lands with a wildlife monitor from the Gwich’In tribal council.

09/30/2026

A recent study by EAPS alum Janelle Wargo, Guarini ’25, along with Geography professors Justin Mankin & Jonathan Winter, shows that in the Northeast, increased precipitation outpaces water loss from warmer temperatures. This is leading to a decrease in Northeastern droughts.

See more at the recent Valley News article here: https://vnews.com/2026/09/22/dartmouth-study-northeast-drought-nh-granite-geek/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--TXH3uzxbgvdTs1n7kXwFUuRTvSnfUINTxn998AuoERYiJ90Ki65ovuFLzRQ5UVUA-Mz8Vs7AM6mx49OqQ-AW_hmZtOwuepmflfihoSX8GWw562Xw&_hsmi=253870156&utm_content=253870156&utm_source=hs_email

Photo by Jane Lindholm/Vermont Public

A Dartmouth study shows climate change has caused fewer and less intense droughts in the Northeast due to increased precipitation.

09/29/2026

Using NH as a classroom! Last week, students in the EAPS 18 (Environmental Earth Science) lab run by Dr. Vivian Taylor went out to Storrs Pond to measure dissolved oxygen and collect sediment in sediment traps to investigate the biological pump and to see if Storrs Pond is a carbon flux or sink!

09/28/2026

AGU awards just dropped, and EAPS Assistant Professor Dr. Sarah Slotznick has received the Takesi Nagata Early Career Award!! The award is presented to an early career scientist who has excelled in research and service to the fields of geomagnetism, paleomagnetism, and electromagnetism.
(Link: https://www.agu.org/honors-home/announcement)

09/25/2026

Did you know that some rivers used to flow in their own valley, but in the opposite direction? Postdoc Appreciation Week continues with Dr. Elhanan Harel, a new postdoc who recently joined Marisa Palucis's group. His research focuses on rivers and flow systems, ranging from ancient river deposits preserved in the rock record to submarine transport pathways, and the geomorphological processes that shape modern landscapes. During his PhD, he investigated changes in drainage system patterns across the globe, due to, for example, tectonic activity. In his upcoming work, he will be studying similar phenomena, but on another planet: Mars! Here he is under a blanket to avoid direct sunlight while soil sampling in the Negev desert, Israel; this sampling eventually revealed a piece of drainage reorganization history over the last 250,000 years!

See his last paper at the link in our bio (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2408426122)

09/24/2026

Postdoc Appreciation Week continues with Dr. Shanti Penprase! Shanti is a Guarini Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellow, and is interested in how changes in climate, glaciation, and land use impact the morphology of landscapes. Her research connects landscapes of the icy past during the Last Glacial Maximum (approx. 20,000 years ago) to more modern changes caused by anthropogenic activity.

Shanti received her PhD from University of Minnesota in 2024 and started in the EAPS department in November 2024. During her PhD she focused on how the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreat and Euro-American settlement modified river systems in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. In EAPS, she is working with Marisa Palucis to study how periglacial processes impact alluvial fan morphology in the Northwest Territories of Canada. She is also working with undergrad Lang Burgess (’27) to run laboratory experiments quantifying the morphology of glacial kettles (depressions formed by melting buried ice).

See more about Shanti here: https://spenprase.github.io/

09/23/2026

Postdoc Appreciation Week continues with Dr. Thom Chaffee! Thom’s research focuses on rock and mineral magnetism in exotic natural materials. His current work is on a US Department of Energy funded project studying the fundamental magnetic properties of a variety of cobalt sulfide minerals. What excites him is the possibility to discover new ferromagnetic natural materials and make the first measurements of previously unstudied properties.

See more about Thom in this article:

Thom Chaffee is a postdoc in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and recipient of the department’s Elizabeth L. Drake Award for outstanding service. Chaffee was also awarded the Po…

09/22/2026

It’s Postdoc Appreciation Week! Today we are spotlighting Dr. Johan "Yoshi" Gilchrist, a geophysist joining us this fall under the Joseph B. Obering Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Earth Sciences. He is coming from the University of Oregon, where he was a NSF EAR Post-doctoral Fellow. Before that, he obtained his Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of British Columbia. Here he is sampling the 7.7 ka Mazama eruption deposit at Crater Lake, OR.

Yoshi’s core research bridges volcanology, glaciology, landslide physics, wildfire plumes, and fluid mechanics to better understand natural hazards on Earth and beyond. He studies turbulent flow dynamics of explosive eruptions, developing better eruption classification systems that more accurately predict climate and hazard impacts. He also studies landslide responses to extreme weather events and climate change in Oregon, Alaska, and British Columbia, with the goal of building affordable monitoring and early-warning systems for local communities. Beyond Earth, Yoshi investigates methane-ethane-nitrogen river-sea systems on Saturn's moon Titan, using lab experiments and numerical models to understand delta formation on an alien world.

09/17/2026

EAPS Summer field work! Dartmouth PhD Students Andrea Chen and Bavani Kathir joined their advisor, Dr. Marisa Palucis, to perform fieldwork at Salar de Quisquiro and El Tatio geyser field for a week in the Atacama Desert! They collected samples for their NASA Exobiology project - predictive mapping of biosignatures in the Atacama Desert using remote sensing data, field measurements, and lipid stable isotope probing (LH-SIP). They also worked with the Comunidad Lickan Antay de Toconao to plan an outreach day at their school, where they had multiple science activities introducing students to life in extreme environments and remote sensing tools.

Atacama field team: Marisa Palucis, Bavani Kathir, Andrea Chen (Dartmouth), Floyd Nichols & Maia Bhattacharyya (Virginia Tech), Wil Leavitt (University of Utah), Max Amenabar (UST, Chile)

This fieldwork was conducted on Salar de Quisquiro, which is the territory of the Lickan Antay Community of Toconao, Chile. They collaborated with the community members to collect samples during this field season.

09/15/2026

Congratulations to the AY 25-26 recipient of the A. Lincoln Washburn Award for outstanding mentoring. This year the recipient is research scientist Dr. Justin Stroup.