Paul Bierman has been a geologist and professor at the University of Vermont since 1993. His research and teaching expertise focus on the interaction of people, climate, and Earth’s dynamic surface. Public science communication, including books, essays, images, and talks is his passion.
Bierman’s research has taken him around the globe. He has studied erosion in Australia, South America, and several countries in Africa and the Middle East. In Greenland, Bierman and his graduate students are tracing the history of the Greenland Ice sheet over the last several million years, an adventure that repeatedly takes them helicoptering over the ice as well as dissecting ice cores, some collected more than half a century ago. In Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, Bierman and his students created the first record of storminess and erosion that extended back over the last 10,000 years.
He teaches summer science programs for highly motivated high school students, has been co-author since 2005 of an introductory Environmental Geology textbook, and is the lead author of NSF-funded textbook Key Concepts in Geomorphology, that uses extensive visuals and photographs to teach about the workings of Earth’s surface. His first publication for the general public, When the Ice is Gone, was published in 2024 with WW Norton.
