BOONE – Appalachian State University has received more than $552,000 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to support six projects, four of which were research projects funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF). Appalachian also has submitted proposals for another $6.5 million in stimulus funding for additional projects related to economic growth and stability. [more]

BOONE—A $43,495 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will be used to purchase a cathodoluminescence (CL) microscopy system for Appalachian State University’s Department of Geology. [more]

BOONE—An Appalachian State University geology professor and an undergraduate student assistant spent several weeks this summer uncovering the footprints of human ancestors in Tanzania, East Africa.  The footprints, 58 in all, may represent the oldest known and best-preserved trackways of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in the world. [more]

BOONE—Appalachian State University’s William C. and Ruth Ann Dewel Microscopy Facility has received a $509,620 award from the National Science Foundation to purchase a state-of-the-art transmission electron microscope/scanning transmission electron microscope  (TEM/STEM). [more]

BOONE—A new undergraduate degree will be offered at Appalachian State University this fall – a bachelor of science degree in environmental science. The degree program is directed by Roy C. Sidle, a professor of geology and former professor with the Disaster Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan. [more]

BOONE—Students in an environmental geology class at Appalachian State University helped clean up a section of the Watauga River of Hwy. 321. The students and Crystal Wilson, an instructor in the Department of Geology, collected 15 bags of trash, five bags of recyclables, two tires, a car seat and several pieces of rebar. [more]

BOONE—Appalachian State University’s Ellen Cowan is part of a five-nation scientific team that has published new evidence that even a slight rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, a gas that drives global warming, affects the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). [more]

BOONE—Jessica Norman, an undergraduate geology major at Appalachian State University, has been working on the ultimate jigsaw puzzle. Since last fall, Norman has painstakingly assembled parts of a Triceratops skull. [more]

BOONE – Geologists from Appalachian State University have identified a link between the quantity of water resources in eastern North Carolina and climate oscillations originating in the Pacific Ocean.

Bill Anderson and Ryan Emanuel, assistant professors in Appalachian’s Department of Geology, analyzed 56 years of precipitation and baseflow data throughout central and Eastern North Carolina to look for correlations between climate oscillations and groundwater flow. [more]