EOAS Core Strengths
A Broad and Deep Program of Exploration
Cross-Disciplinary and Cross-School Collegality
Deep Regional Ties in a Heavily Urbanized, Environmentally Vulnerable State
Global Networks
The Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS) has been transitioned into the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute (RCEI). The calendar and news posts will no longer be updated on this site. As we continue to transition, the remaining information from this website will be migrated over to the new RCEI website.
The Trans-Antarctic Mountains are so remote that Dr. Juliane Gross and her team were likely the only living organisms for 150 miles when they were hunting meteorites there.
At the core of the EOAS community is a program of exploration, focused on the hydrosphere, cryosphere, geosphere, atmosphere and biosphere of our home planet and its neighbors, as well as their evolution over time. The breadth and depth of our faculty’s expertise are our central strengths. Our more than one hundred faculty members explore a wide swath of the Earth system – from the poles to the tropics, from Earth’s core and deep ocean ecosystems to its polar ice sheets and stratosphere. Their research spans from the earliest days of the solar system to the coming centuries of climate and ecological change. We have strong disciplinary expertise across the oceanographic, atmospheric, cryospheric, geological, geographic, hydrological, and ecological sciences. EOAS’s role is to help sustain and grow research capacity within and across these disciplines.
The Rutgers Center for Fisheries and Ocean Sustainability expands the reach and visibility of fisheries and aquaculture research at Rutgers through 1) active collaboration with allies in industry, government, and conservation NGOs, 2) a vibrant education program centered around graduate programs in Oceanography and Ecology & Evolution, and 3) the innovative undergraduate minor in Fisheries Science.
Parts of New Jersey and New York with 8 feet of sea-level rise. An almost 8-foot rise is possible by 2100 under a worst-case scenario, according to projections. The light-blue areas show the extent of permanent flooding. The bright green areas are low-lying.
Image: NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer
One driver of EOAS’s mission is an ethic of planetary stewardship. As New Jersey’s state university and land-grant university, Rutgers has a special responsibility toward our home state, which is currently experiencing rapid climatic and ecological change. Our deep ties within the state, combined with our institutional history of collaboration among Earth system sciences, environmental social sciences, and environmental policy, make the EOAS community well-suited for tracking the regional effects of environmental change, developing an integrated understanding of our changing regional Earth system, and leveraging observations and scientific knowledge to inform the civic stewardship of our corner of the planet. EOAS’s role is as a hub for research, education, public engagement, and policy engagement related to this regional stewardship mission.
Rutgers doctoral student Didik Prasetyo collecting data on orangutans in the Tuanan Orangutan Research Station in the Mawas Conservation Area in Indonesia.
Photo: Erin R. Vogel/Rutgers University–New Brunswick
EOAS’s stewardship mission is not limited to our state alone. New Jersey’s path of urbanization is now being followed around the world, and the lessons learned here can inform the planet’s numerous rapidly urbanizing regions. Our faculty have global networks of collaborators and are actively engaged in a variety of international institutions. Leveraging both our strong New Jersey roots and our global networks, EOAS’s role is to facilitate the development and testing of frameworks for integrating Earth system science, environmental social sciences, and environmental governance to advance sustainability, resilience, and planetary health in a rapidly urbanizing world.