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Northern Arizona University
School of Earth and Sustainability
We are dedicated to understanding Earth's complex systems and fostering sustainable solutions for our planet's future. Through innovative research, hands-on education, and community engagement, we prepare the next generation of Earth scientists and sustainability leaders.
Future Students
Find your program
Degrees and certificates in geology, environmental sciences, climate, and sustainability, from bachelor's to PhD. Meet our students on video and see where our alumni land.
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Current Students
Grad student resources
Handbooks, course planning, thesis and defense procedures, the events calendar, scholarships, and the people who can help.
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Our Research
Research that matters
Explore a decade and a half of SES science: every publication, citation trends, and the themes that organize our work, updated weekly.
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This week at SES
Updated with every weekly data refresh
Upcoming events
- Aug 24 First day of semester
- Dec 11 Last day of semester
- Jan 4 Grad students on contract
Newest publications
- Regional base-flow index in arid landscapes using machine learning and instrumented records Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies · 2025 · student author: Caelum Mroczek
- Multi‐scale spatial variations in Pacific mantle seismic anisotropy: Constraints on plate evolution and asthenospheric flow Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth · 2026 · student author: Joseph Phillips
- Carbon credits as a mechanism for municipal climate finance: evaluating the practice of double claiming mitigation outcomes Frontiers in Sustainability · 2026 · student author: Brandon McNamara
Flagstaff, Arizona
Your classroom is the Colorado Plateau
We work at 7,000 feet in the world's first International Dark Sky City, at the edge of the largest ponderosa pine forest on the continent. The Grand Canyon is a day trip. So are Sedona's red rocks, the San Francisco volcanic field, and desert, forest, and alpine ecosystems stacked within an hour of campus. Our courses use all of it.
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Academic Programs
Undergraduate Degrees
Comprehensive programs in Geology, Environmental Sciences, and Sustainability Studies preparing students for professional careers.
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Graduate Degrees
Advanced research programs including Master's and PhD options in cutting-edge Earth and environmental sciences.
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Certificate Programs
Specialized training for career advancement in high-demand environmental and sustainability fields.
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Research Themes
Ecology & Conservation
SES faculty lead research programs investigating biodiversity, ecosystem function, the ecological impacts of human activities, and strategies for ecosystem conservation and management.
Environment & Society
Social science and interdisciplinary research on natural resource management and socio-economic policies combining natural and social sciences to improve ecological and social well-being.
Past & Present Climate Change
Understanding climate system changes and interactions between atmosphere, oceans, biosphere, and frozen Earth to improve earth-system models and assess climate impacts.
Sedimentary Geology and Geomorphology
Studying Earth's marine and terrestrial surfaces using field surveys, remote sensing, lab analyses, and numerical modeling in diverse environments including deserts, mountains, rivers, and coastal areas.
Tectonics & Earth's Interior
Study of Earth's internal and surface processes, plate boundaries, crustal processes, and landscape evolution to understand plate boundary processes and tectonic evolution of the American Cordillera.
Water Management Policy & Science
Human impact on Earth's surface processes with research on hydrologic systems in arid/semi-arid Western North America, including springs ecohydrology and environmental flow needs assessment.
Latest News
All news →August 18, 2026
Why one stretch of the Aleutian megathrust sticks while its neighbor slips
In Geology, PhD student Valeria Cortés-Rivas traces the difference between a locked and a creeping stretch of the Aleutian Subduction Zone to fluids escaping through faults above it.
August 18, 2026
An Arizona basin records the plate boundary from 100 kilometers away
Timothy Brickey's mapping and dating of the south Dome Rock Mountains basin, published in Geosphere, pins down when western Arizona switched from stretching apart to sliding sideways.
August 18, 2026
Reading 15,800 years of carbon burial in an Alaskan lake
PhD student Leah Marshall's sediment record from Eight Mile Lake shows that the levers controlling carbon storage in northern lakes are not the same ones that build carbon-rich permafrost soils around them.
Our Commitment
We believe that understanding Earth's systems is essential for building a sustainable future. Our students work alongside faculty on research that matters, in the field, in the lab, and in the communities of the Colorado Plateau and beyond.
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