A proposal for a combined School of Earth Sciences at UA was submitted to the Provost today. She promised it would be made public shortly online. However, it is known that the plan would merge the departments of Geoscience, Atmospheric Sciences, Hydrology & Water Resources, Mining & Geologic Engineering, and bring in the Laboratory for Tree Ring Research, and the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Group.
The proposal is part of a campus-wide transformation process intended to realign university programs with a changing world and deal with repeated budget cuts from the state.
It's interesting that the Dept. of Planetary Sciences and the Lunar and Planetary Lab are apparently not part of the plan.