Brazil (2023)

In May 2023, EARTH Professors Jeroen Ritsema and Jeff Wilson Mantilla and graduate students Ethan Shirley and Rodrigo Figueroa took 10 graduate and undergraduate students on an 18-day field trip to Brazil, which included stops at Rio de Janeiro, Mato Grosso, and Piauí. Brazil offers an incredible natrural laboratory for examining environmental questions, and is a flashpoint for environmental issues in modern times. The field trip provided students with numerous opportunities for hands-on field inspection of outstanding geological features and ecosystems across the region, in addition to visits to sites and museums of cultural and natural interest.

Highlights included visiting the iconic Sugarloaf of Rio de Janeiro (metamorphosed granite blocks formed during the formation of Gondwanaland), and hunting for fossils in the Teresina region at sites with well-preserved Permain amphibians. Students also spent several days observing the ecosystem of the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the world.