Astrobiology [website]

The Penn State Astrobiology Research Center was created in 1998 as one of eleven member institutions of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). Its primary missions are to promote, conduct, and lead integrated multidisciplinary research, to train scientists, and to provide public access to the new field of astrobiology.

Sedimentary Record of Global Change [website]

When viewed at every possible space and time scale, Earth is a dynamic planet. This complex system is constantly evolving and adjusting to various influences, including human activity, which is forcing Earth’s climate and biogeochemical systems into realms that have analogues only in Earth’s distant past. Faculty and students at Penn State work in collaborative groups to unravel the history of Earth’s dynamic past so that we may better predict its future. They use a variety of approaches including field work, laboratory analyses and experiments, and numerical modeling to address perplexing questions ranging from “how did life emerge on Earth?” to “how much longer will Earth remain a habitable planet? Investigations of Earth-system evolution are directed toward a better understanding of the forces that drive long-term change in ocean chemistry and climate as well as the ways in which Earth’s environment and biota interact on the shorter time scales associated with mass extinction events and other episodes of rapid environmental change.

Paleoclimates [website]

Ice and Climate Research addresses the effects of ice on sea level, the history of climate in ice cores, and interactions of ice with its surroundings.  Even small changes in glaciers and ice sheets can reatly affect sea level, so Penn State ice researchers are active in studies especially focused on changes in the West Antarctic ice sheet.  Ice cores contain incomparable histories of past climates including startling revelations about abrupt climate changes, and Penn Staters use the physical properties of the ice to interpret past climates and ice-flow processes. Glacially sculpted landscapes record the power of ice to modify the landscape and perturb iogeochemical cycles, another focus of Penn State research. 

Recent student projects have included geophysical surveys of ice-stream initiation in West Antarctica, measuring ice motion in Alaska, characterizing ice cores at the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver and at remote Antarctic sites, and modeling of the future of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.  Faculty members Sridhar Anandakrishnan and Richard Alley are especially active in the Ice and Climate Group, together with esearchers Don Voigt, David Pollard, and Audrey Huerta.  Ties to many other isciplines broaden the field greatly.

Geodynamics [website]

The Geodynamics Research Group takes an interdisciplinary approach to attacking some of the research problems in Tectonics, Seismology, Lithospheric Deformation and Dynamics, and Plate Tectonics. The group includes faculty, graduate students and undergraduate researchers working on a broad selection of topics, including crustal deformation in Northern California associated with the northward migration of the Mendocino Triple Junction, modeling creep on the Hayward Fault, using GPS to estimate slip rates in Baja California, relocating earthquakes to examine seismicity origins in New Zealand, as well as many other exciting projects concentrating on areas of active tectonics worldwide.