Publications

Merapi volcano (Indonesia) is one of the most active and hazardous volcanoes in the world. It is known for frequent small to moderate eruptions, pyroclastic flows produced by lava dome collapse, and the large population settled on and around the flanks of the volcano that is at risk. Its usual behavior for the last decades abruptly changed in late October and early November 2010, when the volcano

Ash clouds emanating from volcanic eruption columns often form trails of ash extending thousands of kilometers through the Earth's atmosphere, disrupting air traffic and posing a significant hazard to air travel. To mitigate such hazards, the community charged with reducing flight risk must accurately assess risk of ash ingestion for any flight path and provide robust forecasts of volcanic ash dis

The magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan, earthquake on 11 March 2011 is the largest earthquake to date in Japan’s modern history and is ranked as the fourth largest earthquake in the world since 1900. This earthquake occurred within the northeast Japan subduction zone (Figure 1), where the Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Okhotsk plate at rate of ∼8–9 cm/yr (DeMets et al. 2010). This type of ex

Alaska is one of the most vigorously volcanic regions on the planet, and Alaska’s national parks are home to many of the state’s most active volcanoes. These pose both local and more distant hazards in the form of lava and pyroclastic flows, lahars (mudflows), ash clouds, and ash fall. Alaska’s volcanoes lie along the arc of the Aleutian-Alaskan subduction zone, caused as the oceanic Pacific plate

Acquiring spatially continuous ground-surface displacement fields from Terrestrial Laser Scanners (TLS) will allow better understanding of the physical processes governing landslide motion at detailed spatial and temporal scales. Problems arise, however, when estimating continuous displacement fields from TLS point-clouds because reflecting points from sequential scans of moving ground are not def

Debris flows are geophysical phenomena intermediate in character between rock avalanches and flash floods. They commonly originate as water-laden landslides on steep slopes and transform into liquefied masses of fragmented rock, muddy water, and entrained organic matter that disgorge from canyons onto valley floors. Typically including 50%–70% solid grains by volume, attaining speeds >10 m/s, and

Volcanoes are critical geologic hazards that challenge our ability to make long-term forecasts of their eruptive behaviors. They also have direct and indirect impacts on human lives and society. As is the case with many geologic phenomena, the time scales over which volcanoes evolve greatly exceed that of a human lifetime. On the other hand, the time scale over which a volcano can move from inacti

Carbon dioxide emissions and heat flow have been determined from the Ohaaki hydrothermal field, Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ), New Zealand following 20 a of production (116 MWe). Soil CO2 degassing was quantified with 2663 CO2 flux measurements using the accumulation chamber method, and 2563 soil temperatures were measured and converted to equivalent heat flow (W m−2) using published soil temperature

[No abstract available]

Hydrogen isotope ratio, water content and Fe3 +/Fe2 + in coexisting amphibole and biotite phenocrysts in volcanic rocks can provide insight into shallow pre- and syn-eruptive magmatic processes such as vesiculation, and lava drainback with mixing into less devolatilized magma that erupts later in a volcanic sequence. We studied four ~ 35 ka and younger eruption sequences (i.e. Kings Creek, Lassen

No abstract available.

Recent research provides clear geologic evidence that floods even larger than the lethal floods of 1972 have occurred repeatedly over recent millennia in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This information is vitally important for planning for flash flood events in this area.