The great societal challenges of this century, and many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, are directly related to earth and ocean science: increasing vulnerability to geological hazards (floods, earthquakes); increasing need for renewable energy to replace oil and gas and to capture and store anthropogenic carbon; increasing demand for rare minerals and metals to support modern technology; and increasing need to sustainably manage all water resources as our climate changes. Our research work in EOS is focused on marine and terrestrial environments, exploring, assessing and understanding those environments, particularly in the context of climate change impacts.

Current projects based in or incorporating EOS researchers working on EU funded projects and on projects funded by the Marine Institute and Research Ireland, and by Teagasc, EPA, iCRAG and Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine:

OCEAN CITIZEN: marine forest coastal restoration of marine communities (including artificial reefs)

HORIZON-WIDERA-2021: Twinning Microplastic Free Environment 

HORIZON-MISS-2021-Ocean-02 Atlantic-Arctic Lighthouse CLIMAREST: Coastal Climate Resilience and Marine Restoration Tools for the Arctic Atlantic basin;

BioProtect: Adaptable ecosystem-based solutions to accelerate the effective protection and restoration of biodiversity in marine and coastal ecosystems

PLASTIMPACT: Fate and impact of plastics on planetary health

REDRESS: Restoration of deep-sea habitats

TRACEFISH: Development and application of traceability tools for Irish shellfish and fish of economic and conservation concern

PERMOTOX: Occurrence and sources of PERsistent, MObile and TOXic substances in Irish waters,

AQUAMAN: Source, pathways, impacts (and mitigations) of manganese on the aquatic environment

SAPHIRE: Water resource resilience associated with undisturbed, disturbed and degraded blanket bog

REWET: Assessing impact of national peat soil rewetting scheme

D=TECT: Assessing new technologies to improve estimates of carbon emission factors from grassland

In addition we have a number of Research Ireland, GSI and EPA funded projects looking at deep seated karst features in Carboniferous limestones in Ireland, groundwater/surface water interactions in the Burren, and use of Machine Learning Algorithms in predicting extreme river flow events in remote upland environments