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Earth and Marine Sciences are interdisciplinary specializations. Students study elements from a wide variety of fields including biology, chemistry, physics, geology, mathematics, and geography.
Geonomy is a branch of earth sciences that studies endogenous processes and combines geology, geophysics, and geochemical methods. Students study animals, plants living in the ocean: what they eat, how they live, how they affect the ocean itself.
From nutrients and gases in ocean waters to tides, currents, coastline formation, waves, sea movement. Young people explore the complex relationship between the ocean and the environment, how their interactions affect each other, and explore the challenges and threats facing the ocean today and how they can be addressed.
Many oceanology, geonomy programs at US universities give students the opportunity to work directly in the ocean through on-site laboratories, internships and research projects. The field of oceanography, geonomy includes several specializations:
- Biological oceanography
- Chemical oceanography
- Marine geology
- Physical oceanography
- Geophysical hydrodynamics
- Broadcast meteorology
- Remote Sensing Physics
- An introduction to atmospheric dynamics.
Best earth & marine sciences universities in USA 2026 - QS World University rankings
| 1 | Harvard University |
| 2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) |
| 3 | University of California, Berkeley (UCB) |
| 4 | California Institute of Technology (Caltech) |
| 5 | Stanford University |
| 6 | Columbia University |
| 7 | University of Washington |
| 8 | Princeton University |
| 9 | University of Colorado Boulder |
| 10 | University of Texas at Austin |
| 11 | Pennsylvania State University |
| 12 | University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) |
| 13 | University of California, San Diego (UCSD) |
| 14 | Colorado School of Mines |
| 15 | Yale University |
| 16 | Texas A&M University |
| 17 | The University of Arizona |
| 18 | University of Maryland, College Park |
| 19 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor |
| 20 | Arizona State University |
| 21 | Colorado State University |
| 22 | Cornell University |
| 23 | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| 24 | Johns Hopkins University |
| 25 | Oregon State University |
| 26 | Purdue University |
| 27 | University of California, Davis |
| 28 | University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) |
| 29 | University of Chicago |
| 30 | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa |
| 31 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| 32 | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| 33 | Duke University |
| 34 | Northwestern University |
| 35 | The Ohio State University |
| 36 | University of California, Irvine |
| 37 | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| 38 | University of Florida |
| 39 | University of Miami |
| 40 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| 41 | Brown University |
| 42 | Florida State University |
| 43 | Michigan State University |
| 44 | Rice University |
| 45 | University of California, Riverside |
| 46 | University of Minnesota Twin Cities |
| 47 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| 48 | University of Oklahoma |
| 49 | University of Oregon |
| 50 | University of Pennsylvania |
