Ajay Limaye leads the Landscape Evolution Group in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. The group investigates the processes that shape landscapes and sedimentary deposits from Earth’s seafloor to mountain canyons and the surface of Mars. Our current research is supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA and appears in Journal of Geophysical Research Earth Surface, Geology, and Geophysical Research Letters.
For more on our work, see the the Research and Out & About sections. To learn about the research team, see the People and Opportunities. And see Teaching for happenings in the classroom.
I contributed a post to Thoughts From the Lawn, which spotlights current research by faculty at the University of Virginia. I describe how the rivers around us are gateways to the deep history of our planet, and how we are building a laboratory to imagine the work of rivers to shape landscapes thousands of years. …
The end of the academic year is a time of transitions. But this year, with cautious optimism that the US is emerging from more than a year defined by the pandemic, the sense of transition is profound. To some, this time presents a singular opportunity to reimagine our lives and replace tired routines from pre-pandemic …
Hours after a 1929 earthquake, a tsunami battered the coast of eastern Canada. Twenty-three years later, a radical new picture of Earth history emerged from the ocean.
Research
Rivers are threads through time — linking the past, present, and future of planets.
We use lab experiments, numerical modeling, remote sensing and field work to unravel the stories of landscapes near and far.
What shapes Earth’s landscapes? This advanced undergraduate and graduate course tackles this question through lectures, laboratory assignments focusing on geospatial analysis and numerical modeling, and field trips to dynamic landscapes in Virginia. We dig into mechanistic models and quantitative observations to understand rivers, hillslopes, and whole landscapes. Students also design independent projects based on original topographic analysis. Next offered: Spring 2025.
In this advanced undergraduate/graduate class, we set out for the cosmos in search of what makes planets tick. Using a combination of astrophysics and geoscience, we seek out new worlds, consider life in the universe, peer into planetary interiors, and search foreign planetary surfaces for clues to their geologic history. Students in the laboratory section learn to work with planetary datasets for Mars, the Moon and beyond. This class is cross-listed in the Department of Astronomy and the Department of Environmental Sciences. Next offered: Spring 2026.
EVSC 2800/2801: Fundamentals of Geology (with optional Laboratory)
This is the introductory class for geosciences and a core class for all majors in Environmental Sciences. We study the composition, structure, and internal processes of earth; the organizing framework of plate tectonics; the perspective of deep time and geologic reasoning; and intersections between the solid Earth and society through natural resources and hazards. Next offered: Fall 2025 (and every semester with rotating instructors).
EVSC 4572 / EVGE 7542: Topics in Landscape Evolution
Next offered: Spring 2025. The Appalachians. In this seminar, we will dive into classic papers on the formation and evolution of the Appalachian Mountains, topics that played a major role in framing for landscape evolution theory.
Spring 2021 (as EVSC 4559/7559): Geomorphology and Ecology of Debris Flows in Virginia. This seminar focused on the geomorphic and ecological legacy of debris flows in central Virginia. Discussions of scientific literature covered geologic context, the mechanics of debris flows, and historic debris flow events in the region; Hurricane Camille, which triggered intense flooding and debris flows in 1969; ecological responses to hillslope disturbance; and the human impacts of flood and debris flow hazards in the region.
Lab
We are setting up a new Landscape Evolution Laboratory in a renovated space at the Environmental Sciences Shop Building at the University of Virginia. The centerpiece of the lab is a large basin — 7 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 1.5 meters deep — where we will evolve landscapes in miniature. In this setting we can precisely set fluxes of water and sediment , thereby studying controls on landscape evolution that are often difficult to isolate in nature. Design began in 2018, and in late 2023 we finished establishing a fully automated suite of basin controls, including an instrument cart for high-precision topography measurements. The lab is a short stroll through the woods from the heart of the UVA Grounds and is down the road from McCormick Observatory, which at the time of its construction in the 1880s was the largest telescope in the US.
Loading in the basin in the building in May 2021
The basin includes an observation deck for a bird’s-eye view of modeled landscapes
Testing the water system in summer 2023
Undergraduate researcher Cynthia Nguyen (BA ’24) and postdoctoral researcher Youwei Wang programming the instrument cart for high-precision topography measurements
