School of Earth & Sustainability
Graduate Student Research Opportunities
Admissions for Fall 2022 are complete. If you are interested in beginning graduate school in Fall 2023, please start by reaching out to individual faculty about your specific research interests. It is a good idea to be in touch with potential advisors a few months before the January 1 application deadline.
Join the School of Earth & Sustainability for your graduate school experience! Here is a list of projects/research foci available for students starting Fall 2022 in a thesis-based Master’s program (MS Geology or MS Environmental Sciences & Policy) or in our PhD Program in Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability.
If you are interested in applying to our graduate programs, talk to any faculty member you are interested in working with about whether they are accepting new students and whether they have funding available to support you and your research. Some funding is also available via Teaching Assistantships. All funding decisions are made as part of the standard admissions process, which starts after the January 1st deadline. SES is committed to providing funding and support to serve a diverse and inclusive student body in our programs.
To learn more about any of the following projects, follow the link or email the faculty member (PI).
| PI | MS GLG | MS ES&P | PhD | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aslan | x | Pollinator response to energy rights-of-way | ||
| Best | x | x | Maintaining aquatic biodiversity across climate gradients using natural vs. anthropogenic habitats | |
| Best | x | Ecology and evolution of plasticity in riparian trees and the ecosystems they support | ||
| Huntzinger | x | x | Land-atmosphere carbon exchange and how the terrestrial carbon cycle impacts and is influenced by climate | |
| Johnson | x | x | Mycorrhizal microbiomes of biofuel sorghum | |
| Kaufman | x | x | x | Climate controls on carbon accumulation in upland permafrost at millennial scales, Alaska |
| Kaufman | x | x | Amino acid geochronology: methods and applications | |
| McKay, Kaufman, Erb | x | Collaborative Research: Patterns and processes of abrupt Arctic warming based on paleoclimate observations and models | ||
| Mueller | x | Valuing springs ecosystem services to inform sustainable rangeland management | ||
| Mueller and Little | x | Displacing wood use with electric thermal storage heating to improve ambient air quality storage heating to improve ambient air quality | ||
| Porter | x | Seismic Monitoring of Debris Flow Associated with the Museum Fire | ||
| Porter | x | Earth Analogues of Planetary Geophysical Exploration | ||
| Porter | x | Thermal and Compositional State of the Western US from Seismic Imaging | ||
| Regalla | x | Late Holocene paleoseismicity in the Eastern California Shear Zone | ||
| Regalla | x | Fault slip histories in the Cascadia, Nankai, and Japan subduction forearcs | ||
| Regalla | x | x | Near trench deforamtion in the region of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, Northeast Japan subduction zone | |
| Rowe | x | Restoration in the Sonoran Desert - testing seed mixes and site treatments (RestoreNet) | ||
| Rowe | x | x | Assessing global conservation status of priority Sonoran Desert plant species (IUCN) | |
| Rowe | x | Biodiversity monitoring on public lands: how do we decide what to survey and what to skip? | ||
| Ruddell | x | Powell Synthesis Center | ||
| Ruddell | x | x | x | StreamCLIMES ephemeral/drying stream data science and outreach |
| Ruddell | x | FloodAware urban flood sensors and hydrology | ||
| Ruddell | x | SNOWPACS: Western snowmelt fed agricultural community water resources | ||
| Sankey | x | UAV remote sensing of riparian vegetation and invasive species | ||
| Shillington | x | x | Examining the subduction zone offshore Mexico with marine seismic reflection and refraction data | |
| Shillington | x | x | Quantifying synrift sediment properties and fault slip in the Gulf of Corinth from seismic waveform inversion | |
| Shillington | x | x | Crustal thinning in the Malawi Rift, East Africa, from 3D seismic refraction modeling | |
| Souther | x | Conservation and restoration of traditionally used plants KNAU story / inaturalist.org Project Page | ||
| Springer | x | x | Assessing hydrological responses of land management practices | |
| Springer | x | Karst hydrogeology projects in the Greater Grand Canyon region and the Southern Colorado Plateau | ||
| Springer | x | Restoration, management and sustainability of springs ecosystems |