Top 25 / Earth & environmental sciences

The leading institutions for high-quality science in the United States, ordered by weighted fractional count (WFC) for 2016. Also shown are WFC for 2012, the change in WFC between 2012 and 2016, and the 2016 article count (Count). The top 10 states are ranked by summing the WFC for all institutions in each state. The top 10 institutions in each state are shown (see A guide to the Nature Index, page S26).

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1	National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)	District of Columbia	50.9	58.9	16%	254
2	National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)	Colorado	58.5	53.8	-8%	207
3	University of Washington (UW)	Washington	41.6	40.2	-3%	128
4	California Institute of Technology (Caltech)	California	52.2	40.1	-23%	165
5	The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)	Texas	19.7	38.4	95%	92
6	University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego)	California	49.1	38.3	-22%	98
7	U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)	Virginia	37.4	37.9	1%	112
8	Columbia University in the City of New York (CU)	New York	31.1	35.4	14%	124
9	Stanford University	California	21.5	34.6	61%	84
10	University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder)	Colorado	48.1	30.3	-37%	136
11	University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison)	Wisconsin	19.7	29.4	49%	74
12	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	Massachusetts	29.0	29.4	1%	86
13	Yale University	Connecticut	24.0	28.0	17%	74
14	Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)	Massachusetts	24.8	27.1	9%	75
15	National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)	Colorado	26.0	25.7	-1%	90
16	University of Hawai'i at Manoa (UH Mānoa)	Hawaii	27.4	25.6	-6%	71
17	University of California Davis (UC Davis)	California	23.3	25.0	7%	64
18	University of Michigan (U-M)	Michigan	19.8	24.3	23%	63
19	The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)	Pennsylvania	24.3	24.3	0%	73
20	Harvard University	Massachusetts	35.8	22.6	-37%	73
21	Oregon State University (OSU)	Oregon	17.2	21.9	28%	69
22	University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley)	California	40.6	21.3	-48%	72
23	Smithsonian Institution	District of Columbia	13.9	18.8	35%	67
24	University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)	California	18.7	18.4	-1%	81
25	Texas A&M University (TAMU)	Texas	14.9	17.5	17%	55