José Silvestre, a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, is part of a team of scientists that analyzed 50 years of satellite imagery to generate the first global database of river avulsions. Avulsions occur when a river abruptly jumps course and forges a new river channel. Silvestre hopes to gain a better understanding of what controls avulsion location in the context of climate and land use changes.

In a CNN report on the $48 million federal project to move families from Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, where the Gulf of Mexico is inundating homes, Torbjörn Törnqvist, professor and chair of earth and environmental science, said that one day it won’t be villages thinking of relocation, it will be cities. “The reality is that there are other, even larger cities that may actually be even more vulnerable, like Miami, for example.”