Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences

Environmental Science

Leading diverse, interdisciplinary research programs investigating Earth’s changing environments related to natural processes and human impacts across a large range of temporal and spatial scales.

Environmental research at Brown is strongly interdisciplinary, relying on fieldwork, remote sensing, biogeochemical analyses, and numerical modeling to better understand and address some of the most pressing problems facing our environment. Our research efforts span polar to tropical regions, including terrestrial, marine, lacustrine, and atmospheric processes. Research focuses include environmental policy, atmospheric and aquatic pollution, environmental biogeochemistry, polar ice sheets, and the impacts of climate change on ecosystems. Our overarching goals are to understand Earth’s environments, educate the next generation of scientists, and influence the direction of our shared future. 

Research Highlight

Microbial Intrusions in the Mediterranean Sea

Mara Freilich on a research boat.

Microbial organisms such as phytoplankton performing photosynthesis generate most of the ocean’s organic carbon, but little is understood about how this carbon is transported to the deep dark sea ecosystems below. 

In collaboration with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Marine Biological Laboratory, Assistant Professor Mara Freilich and her team at Brown investigated the role of eddies in connecting the ocean surface to deep ocean ecosystems. Other collaborators include researchers at IMEDEA (Spain), UCSD, and University of Washington.

The researchers followed the trajectories of water masses and sampled microbial communities along those trajectories. The project included trips on sea vessels where samples were collected at different depths in the ocean, which were then examined in the lab. They found that the communities were largely preserved as they moved to the interior ocean, but began to evolve as they are exported by eddies – an indication that eddies have an important impact on the ecology.

This project combined the perspectives of physical, biological, and chemical oceanography to create a fundamental understanding of how much and where carbon is being taken up by the ocean, and how that might change. 

“In ecological terms, by really paying attention to the physical dynamics, we began to untangle ecological secession.” – Mara Freilich

Environmental Science News

Voss Postdoctoral Research Associate Lina Pérez-Angel discussed the rapid acceleration of climate change in an interview with The Guardian, saying “there’s nothing in Earth’s history that shows a change happening this quickly.”
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Since last July, Earth’s average temperature has been at least 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. IBES Director and DEEPS Professor Kim Cobb spoke with the Washington Post about this trend, saying “We’re dancing about a climate average that is very dangerous for communities and ecosystems around the world.” Read more.
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