One is that the Department of Geological Sciences itself has a very strong history of superb research, dating back to 1898. Its focus at that time was on mineralogy, petrology, and mining geology. The department has continued to grow and expand its expertise well beyond these initial focus points. One thing I also have to point out is that the University of Washington also has an Atmospheric Sciences Department, and that shows up high in the citation rankings in Geosciences. Nathan Mantua and John Wallace, who are investigators on two of the highly cited papers for the University of Washington in Geosciences, are in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. My point is it’s not all about us. When you analyze the citations for research in geosciences, you’re also picking up citations from Geological Sciences and Geophysics, when they were still separate departments, and from Atmospheric Sciences today.

Certainly Minze Stuiver, who is the originator of the calibration curve for carbon-14 dating. This is clearly a crucial asset to the field of geosciences, and that’s why Minze’s 1998 paper in the journal Radiocarbon has a tremendous number of citations (Stuiver M, et al., "INTCAL98 radiocarbon age calibration, 24,000-0 CAL BP," Radiocarbon 40[3]: 1041-83, 1998). That, in turn, boosts the performance of the entire department. One paper like that can have a department-wide effect.

Other researchers from our department whose papers tend to be highly influential in this field are Dave Montgomery, who works on the influence of what is called geomorphological processes on ecosystems and human societies, and another is Eric Steig, who specializes in developing time series of past environmental changes. There are numerous others as well that I’m not mentioning. With much of our research, the ultimate focus is on understanding the environmental and climate changes we’re seeing today and what they mean for the future.

Obviously, the last decade has seen continued global warming and a concerted effort to understand the driving forces and the implications for the future. Simply put, our climate is changing—that seems to be undeniable. Whether you believe the warming is being caused or accelerated by human efforts is another matter. By looking at dramatic changes in climate in the past we can get a better understanding of what is potentially in store for us as we undergo this present cycle of climate change. So clearly this is an important factor in the relevance of all geosciences research to today’s world and an important factor in the continuing upsurge in our department’s influence. The University of Washington has a long history of fostering research in climate change, and it’s this history and these efforts that have led us to where we are today.

Well, we have always believed that these subjects of climate and environmental changes require interdisciplinary approaches. And this is assuredly another factor in our success. We have several interdisciplinary programs at the University of Washington that feed into and foster this research. The oldest is known as the Quaternary Research Center (QRC). "Quaternary" refers to the geologic time period that covers roughly the last two million years. And the QRC was formed as an interdisciplinary center in 1971 to study specifically the changes in the global environment over that time period.

In 1977, we founded the Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) specifically to foster research between NOAA—the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration—and our university. JISAO researchers focus on four specific areas: climate, global environmental chemistry, coastal oceanography, and marine ecosystems.

Finally we now have what we call the Program on Climate Change (PCC), which unites all these areas and others as well. The PCC integrates all climate-change activities under one umbrella and so coordinates activities across a variety of disciplines. Our department is one of the core academic units in the PCC, as are the School of Oceanography and the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. But the PCC also encompasses the QRC, JISAO, and the Applied Physics Lab. The PCC not only funds research to develop cross-disciplinary research and training programs but also provides seed-grants to faculty to do research that might fall through the cracks of other institutional funding sources.

These initiatives and this mandate to foster interdisciplinary studies certainly make the University of Washington an extraordinary place to do research. They allow both faculty and students to move across and between traditional disciplines. My personal belief is that many or most of the big discoveries being made today are being made at interdisciplinary boundaries and not within traditional disciplines. It’s also worth noting that studies of the climate, environment, and atmosphere have always been important components in the university’s research mission and so, in that sense, we’re seeing the natural evolution of these research programs as they weave together into one tapestry in the 21^st century.

Well, what you might notice is that we not only have a lot of citations per paper, but we also have a large number of papers coming out of our unit today. This demonstrates that we have a very active department when it comes to research. But we take an interdisciplinary approach to research even within our department.

I’ve always been particularly impressed, for example, by the group in glaciology, which is the study of glaciers. We have a range of different research groups that interact with each other to study glaciers. There are geophysicists who study the structure of the ice using ground-penetrating radar, for example, to get well below what one can sample easily. Others study glaciers from ice-core samples, looking at isotope structure. We have other researchers looking at the current retreat of glaciers, and how that is modified by global climate change, and we have others who study how glaciation has changed our landscape.

So this is a perfect example of interdisciplinary work, a whole class of different scientists providing a whole range of different insights into the phenomena, from a whole range of different perspectives. On top of that our department has a very long history of studying glaciers. In fact, we just lost one of our emeritus professors, Lincoln Washburn, who did pioneering research in the study of polar ice and associated phenomena.

My feeling here is that there are two areas in particular. Clearly, as we have discussed at length, climate change is a critically important issue. But also important is the study of geological hazards as urban populations continue to expand into areas that would normally be considered at risk for severe geological or weather events—flooding and landslides, for example, or even volcanic activity, which is particularly the case for the state of Washington.

I would say our role here at the University of Washington is to understand the major impact of geological events and climate change and to train the next generation of scientists to continue this research. Both efforts will contribute to trying to minimize the impact of climate change and geological events on society and understanding society’s impact on the environment.

Professor Robert Winglee
Department of Earth and Space Sciences
University of Washington
Seattle, WA, USA