Hello! I am a professor of earth sciences at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. Most of my teaching and research interests are centered on processes related to Arctic and Alpine climate change, rocks, minerals, natural disasters, glaciers and volcanoes. I teach about Planet Earth, Environmental Hazards, Earth Materials, and Volcanoes. Most of my recent research is on interactions between volcanoes and ice, including work on lava flows from the 2010 eruptions in Iceland (Eyjafjallajokull and Fimmvorduhals), experiments on lava-ice-snow interactions conducted at Syracuse University, and studies of ancient volcanoes formed by eruptions through ice, located in British Columbia (Canada), Iceland, and even a bit of work on Martian deposits. Over the course of my academic career I’ve had the great fortune to be able to travel more extensively in the Arctic, including the Alaska Range (Noatak River), the Canadian Arctic (Baffin and Bylot islands), eastern Greenland, and of course Iceland (mostly just south of the Arctic Circle, but very much a near-Arctic to Arctic environment from many perspectives).

I am also part of a team working to build a program to take undergraduate students into Arctic and alpine environments to introduce them to fieldwork in these remote places, and also highlight studies of Earth’s climate from three different time perspectives: immediate (hrs-days-months), century (100’s of years), and ancient (100’s of thousands of years). Truly understanding how Earth’s climate operates requires knowledge of processes operating at all three of these different time scales.

This blog focuses on course field trips and updates on research results from several projects on which I’m presently working with collaborators from many different places. I love what I do and I want to share that passion (as well as some of the natural beauty that I get to witness) with you. Please feel free to email me (edwardsb@dickinson.edu) or leave a comment if you have questions.