Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences

Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University

The Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS) integrates teaching and research to investigate fundamental phenomena affecting the Earth and planets. Our students engage in hands-on learning, in collaboration with DEEPS faculty, to explore natural hazards, global climate, and planetary bodies.

In a new Science Advances publication, Assistant Professor James Dottin III demonstrates how Hydrogen may leak from the core into the lowermost mantle, become entrained in mantle plumes, and mix into the upper mantle. "We typically think about the water cycle on the surface," explained Dottin, "but we often don't consider what happens to water beneath our feet through deep Earth processes." By measuring 2H/1H ratios in olivine-hosted basaltic melt inclusions from a Baffin Island lava, Dottin and his team investigated whether mantle plumes contain Hydrogen from the core. "This means that some the the water you're drinking today might be seeing the surface for the first time since the Earth was formed."
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New research finds that despite large rivers and seas of liquid methane, Saturn’s moon Titan seems mostly devoid of river deltas, raising new questions about the surface dynamics on this alien world.
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Contact Us

Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences

Box 1846
324 Brook Street
Providence, RI 02912

DEEPS@Brown.edu
(401) 863-3339