Matthew Saltzman has been appointed to serve as director of the School of Earth Sciences, beginning July 1, 2017. Saltzman received his PhD at the University of California - Los Angeles in 1996. He joined Ohio State’s School of Earth Sciences autumn 2000, after two-years as a visiting professor at the University of Iowa. He studies the role of the carbon cycle in climate change and biotic events during the past half billion years of Earth history. 

Saltzman’s research group engages in ongoing investigations that include the Late Ordovician glaciation and uplift of the Appalachian Mountains; and the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event in China, the Alps, Antarctica, Iran and the Great Basin. Their emphasis is analyses of stable carbon isotope ratios in sedimentary rocks (carbonates and organic matter), and strontium and neodymium isotopes in carbonate rocks to determine rates of organic-matter burial and chemical weathering of the continents.

The group focuses broadly on the relationship between Earth’s climate and the evolution of life throughout geologic time, with particular emphasis on the Paleozoic Era.

Saltzman has conducted fieldwork on 7 continents that involved measuring sedimentary successions and sampling for isotope stratigraphy in tens of kilometers of accumulated rock representing 300 million years of Earth history. This work has been published in journals such as PNAS, Nature, and Geology, as well as edited volumes including The Geologic Time Scale.

Saltzman teaches students from general-education Earth history courses; undergraduate-majors courses; and field-based courses to graduate-level courses and seminars.