Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Professor Chen Zhu

Professor Chen Zhu’s sabbatical leave was a welcome break after serving as the Henry Darcy Distinguished Lecturer during the pandemic. In that role, he gave 30 in-person lectures in six countries and 35 virtual lectures to about 4,000 attendees from ~30 countries.

Chen’s other ongoing project is on “critical minerals” for which a team of collaborators received a multi-million-dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study thermodynamic properties of rare earth elements. Two undergraduate students at IU’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Kevin Tu and Rob Hageboeck, who studied with Chen, contributed significantly to winning this grant. Kevin and Rob developed a cyber platform for geochemical modeling which has attracted ~4000 visits from 89 countries since 2020. This project leverages the cyber platform to disseminate basic science data that are critical to the energy transition.

 

Associate Professor Doug Edmonds

Land loss in coastal areas is a major concern worldwide. Following a publication by Associate Professor Douglas Edmonds and collaborators on March 6th, 2023 in Nature Sustainability, IU followed up with its own news article.

Read the IU article

The research reveals new information about the role humans have played in large-scale land loss in the Mississippi River Delta — crucial information in determining possible solutions to the crisis.

Read the Nature article

 

Senior Scientist Edward Herrmann

Edward W. Herrmann, Senior Scientist, Harrison Martin, PhD, and Brian Yanites, Associate Professor

Drone-based Lidar improves mapping of pre-contact Native American site at Cahokia Mounds

Long before European contact, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, was North America’s largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture from ~ AD 1050 until ~1425 with a population larger than that of European cities like London. Cahokia and surroundings contain over 100 human constructed mounds and other earthworks that form one of the 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites within the USA. High-resolution elevation mapping is essential for archaeological interpretation and future research and preservation.

In early 2023, Senior Scientist Edward W. Herrmann, PhD candidate Harrison Martin and Associate Professor Brian Yanites began collaborating with the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (IUMAA) and IU’s Geography Department to obtain drone-based Lidar (i.e. light detection and ranging) data at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site to reveal subtle differences in elevation. Drone-based Lidar operates much closer to the ground and at slower speeds than aircraft-based, which means that its data provide superior resolution.

The DEAS team is privileged to be able to work at this important and sacred site and acknowledges the American Indian people who studied and carefully constructed the landscape while residing at Cahokia. The team recognizes their descendants whose vibrant cultures thrive within many different tribes today.