Connect climate science with sustainable solutions

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Science helps us understand environmental change. Planning and design help communities visualize and respond to it.

The Department of Earth Sciences, Planning, and Design brings these disciplines together. Our students pursue degrees in either geosciences or landscape architecture, with each program maintaining its distinct curriculum and accreditation. So whether your goal is to study Earth’s systems, shape communities through planning, or design resilient landscapes, you’ll have the opportunity to develop specialized expertise while engaging with the broader environmental challenges that connect both fields. The world needs people who can bridge knowledge and action–here you’ll learn how.

Academics

Explore undergraduate and graduate degrees in geoscience and landscape architecture, an accelerated BLS to master’s, and graduate certificates.

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People

Our faculty in both landscape architecture and geosciences spread their teaching and scholarship across the region, the country, and the world.

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Research

Areas of expertise among our faculty include topics such as climatology, geobiology, hydrology, solid earth, and more.

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News

Tracking nutrient pollution: Q&A with Carissa Sherman - Carissa Sherman is bringing GIS and environmental data to bear on one of Narragansett Bay's most persistent water-quality challenges.
Bridging Earth Science and Community: Q&A with Carolina Michel - Dr. Carolina Michel is excited to explore how Indigenous knowledge and Western science can inform each other, how arts-integrated and place-based learning shape students' sense of belonging in the geosciences, and what it means to build a department where interdisciplinary work is the starting point, not an afterthought.

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