Publications
Filter Total Items: 865
Mobility characteristics of landslides triggered by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico
Mobility is an important element of landslide hazard and risk assessments yet has been seldom studied for shallow landslides and debris flows in tropical environments. In September 2017, Hurricane Maria triggered > 70,000 landslides across Puerto Rico. Using aerial imagery and a lidar digital elevation model (DEM), we mapped and characterized the mobility of debris slides and flows in four differe
Authors
Erin K. Bessette-Kirton, Jeffrey A. Coe, William Schulz, Corina Cerovski-Darriau, Mason Muir Einbund
Temporal and spatial variability of shallow soil moisture across four planar hillslopes on a tropical ocean island, San Cristóbal, Galápagos
Study Region: This paper provides a summary of findings from temporal and spatial studies of soil water content on planar hillslopes across the equatorial island of San Cristóbal, Galápagos (Ecuador).
Study Focus: Soil water content (SWC) was measured to generate temporal and spatial records to determine seasonal variation and to investigate how the behavior of surface and near-surface root-zone
Authors
Madelyn S. Percy, Diego A. Riveros-Iregui, Benjamin B. Mirus, Larry K. Benninger
Landslides across the United States: Occurrence, susceptibility, and data limitations
Detailed information about landslide occurrence is the foundation for advancing process understanding, susceptibility mapping, and risk reduction. Despite the recent revolution in digital elevation data and remote sensing technologies, landslide mapping remains resource intensive. Consequently, a modern, comprehensive map of landslide occurrence across the United States (USA) has not been compiled
Authors
Benjamin B. Mirus, Eric S. Jones, Rex L. Baum, Jonathan W. Godt, Stephen L. Slaughter, Matthew Crawford, Jeremy T. Lancaster, Thomas Stanley, Dalia Kirschbaum, William J. Burns, Robert G. Schmitt, Kassandra O Lindsey, Kevin McCoy
The future of landslides’ past—A framework for assessing consecutive landsliding systems
Landslides often happen where they have already occurred in the past. The potential of landslides to reduce or enhance conditions for further landsliding has long been recognized and has often been reported, but the mechanisms and spatial and temporal scales of these processes have previously received little specific attention. Despite a preponderance of qualitative and anecdotal evidence, there h
Authors
A. Temme, F. Guzzetti, J. Samia, Benjamin B. Mirus
Map depicting susceptibility to landslides triggered by intense rainfall, Puerto Rico
Landslides in Puerto Rico range from nuisances to deadly events. Centuries of agricultural and urban modification of the landscape have perturbed many already unstable hillsides on the tropical island. One of the main triggers of mass wasting on the island is the high-intensity rainfall that is associated with tropical atmospheric systems. Puerto Rico’s geographic position and rugged topography re
Authors
K. Stephen Hughes, William Schulz
The influence of frost weathering on the debris flow sediment supply in an alpine basin
Rocky, alpine mountains are prone to mass wasting from debris flows. The Chalk Cliffs
study area (central Colorado, USA) produces debris flows annually. These debris flows
are triggered when overland flow driven by intense summer convective storms mobilizes
large volumes of sediment within the channel network. Understanding the debris flow
hazard in this, and similar alpine settings, requires
Authors
Francis K. Rengers, Jason W. Kean, Nadine G. Reitman, Joel B. Smith, Jeffrey A. Coe, Luke McGuire
Using a dense seismic array to determine structure and site effects of the Two Towers earthflow in northern California
We deployed a network of 68 three-component geophones on the slow moving Two
Towers earthflow in northern California. We compute horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratios
(HVSRs) from the ambient seismic field. The HVSRs have two prominent peaks, one near
1.23 Hz and another between 4 and 8 Hz at most stations. The 1.23 Hz resonance is a property of the background noise field and may be due to a v
Authors
Amanda M. Thomas, Zack Spica, Miles Bodmer, William Schulz, Joshua J. Roering
Controls on debris‐flow initiation on burned and unburned hillslopes during an exceptional rainstorm in southern New Mexico, USA
AbstractUsing observations from 688 debris flows, we analyse the hydrologic and landscape characteristics that influenced debris‐flow initiation mechanisms and locations in a watershed that had been partially burned by the 2012 Whitewater‐Baldy Complex Fire in the Gila Mountains, southern New Mexico. Debris flows can initiate due to different processes. Slopes can fail as discrete landslides and t
Authors
Anne C. Tillery, Francis K. Rengers
Physically based estimation of rainfall thresholds triggering shallow landslides in volcanic slopes of southern Italy
On the 4th and 5th of March 2005, about 100 rainfall-induced landslides occurred along volcanic slopes of Camaldoli Hill in Naples, Italy. These started as soil slips in the upper substratum of incoherent and welded volcaniclastic deposits, then evolved downslope according to debris avalanche and debris flow mechanisms. This specific case of slope instability on complex volcaniclastic deposits rem
Authors
F. Fusco, P. De Vita, Benjamin B. Mirus, Rex L. Baum, V. Allocca, R. Tufano, D. Calcaterra
An initial assessment of areas where landslides could enter the West Arm of Glacier Bay, Alaska and implications for tsunami hazards
Tsunamis generated by landslides in Glacier Bay are uncommon, but have potential to be extraordinarily destructive when they occur. This article identifies areas that are susceptible to landslides that could generate tsunamis and discusses approaches to characterize hazard and risk from these events.
Authors
Jeffrey A. Coe, Robert G. Schmitt, Erin Bessette-Kirton
Developing and testing physically based triggering thresholds for runoff‐generated debris flows
Runoff in steep channels is capable of transitioning into debris flows with hazardous implications for downstream communities and infrastructure, particularly in alpine landscapes with minimal vegetation and areas recently disturbed by wildfire. Here, we derive thresholds for the initiation of runoff‐generated debris flows based on critical values of dimensionless discharge and Shields stress. The
Authors
Hui Tang, Luke A. McGuire, Francis K. Rengers, Jason W. Kean, Dennis M. Staley, Joel B. Smith
Effects of infiltration characteristics on the spatial-temporal evolution of stability of an interstate highway embankment
Infiltration-induced landslides are among the most common natural disasters threatening modern civilization, but conventional methods for studying the triggering mechanisms and predicting the occurrence of these slides are limited by incomplete consideration of underlying physical processes and the lack of precision inherent in limit-equilibrium analyses. To address this problem the spatial-tempor
Authors
Eric Hinds, Ning Lu, Benjamin B. Mirus, Alexandra Wayllace