Research - Foci

EESI research is renowned worldwide for fundamental environmental science and how it applies to today’s real-world challenges with respect to energy choices, land use, and climate change. Faculty directly associated with EESI can be broadly categorized into four main areas (below) and often work in one of our centers or initiatives. The four areas are:

Researchers in energy and the environment study environmental impacts of fossil fuel and renewable energy systems to address sub-topics that vary from socioeconomics, to policy, to environmental considerations. Environmental issues of interest include air quality, ecology, induced seismicity, human-environment interactions, and water resources. Researchers in this area also provide extensive stakeholder outreach and education to industry, academia, government officials, NGOs, businesses, landowners, and the general public, especially (but not solely) related to wind and solar energy and the shale-gas industry. EESI researchers in this field are:

Researchers in critical zone science study all aspects of the chemical, physical, biological, and geological processes – including processes caused or perturbed by humans – in the critical zone, a layer of the Earth extending from the top of vegetation to the bottom of groundwater. Field work in critical zone science at Penn State mainly takes place in the Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory. EESI researchers in this field are: