Benjamin R. Edwards

Ben Edwards is a professor of earth sciences and the Walter E. Beach Chair in Sustainability at Dickinson College, in Carlisle PA. His research interests are focused on fire and ice, literally exploring ice covered volcanoes while they are erupting. The majority of his work tries to use volcanic deposits formed from glaciovolcanism to reconstruct Earth’s past climate history, although he has recently begun taking students into the Arctic to show them how to measure the impact of climate change on glaciers, too. He has a B.A. in Geology from Carleton College, a M.S. in Geology from the University of Wyoming, and a Ph.D. in physical and chemical volcanology from the University of British Columbia.


Edwards has helped to write more than 50 scientific papers and co-wrote the first book on volcano-ice interactions, Glaciovolcanism on Earth and Mars. Most of these papers examine the structures and histories of specific volcanoes in British Columbia, Canada, in Peru, and in Iceland, as well as erupting volcanoes in Kamchatka, Russia, in Chile, and in Iceland. He has also co-authored papers on glaciers response to climate change, including a chapter in the 2014 Global Land Ice Measurements from Space volume. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Michigan NASA Space Grant Consortium, Dickinson College, and National Geographic. His most recent NatGeo research on the 2015 eruption of Villarrica volcano is currently being completed with collaborators in Chile.