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Landslide hazards: A national threat

Landslides occur and can cause damage in all 50 States. Severe storms, earthquakes, volcanic activity, coastal wave attack, and wildfires can cause widespread slope instability. Landslide danger may be high even as emergency personnel are providing rescue and recovery services. To address landslide hazards, several questions must be considered: Where and when will landslides occur? How...
Authors

Late Pleistocene granodiorite source for recycled zircon and phenocrysts in rhyodacite lava at Crater Lake, Oregon

Rhyodacite tephra and three lavas erupted ∼27 ka, interpreted to be early leaks from the climactic magma chamber of Mount Mazama, contain ubiquitous resorbed crystals (antecrysts) that were recycled from young granodiorite and related plutonic rocks of the same magmatic system. The shallow composite pluton is represented by blocks ejected in the 7.7-ka climactic eruption that formed...
Authors
C. R. Bacon, J. B. Lowenstern

Repeating coupled earthquakes at Shishaldin Volcano, Alaska

Since it last erupted in 1999, Shishaldin Volcano, Aleutian Islands, Alaska, has produced hundreds to thousands of long-period (1-2 Hz; LP) earthquakes every day with no other sign of volcanic unrest. In 2002, the earthquakes also exhibited a short-period (4-7 Hz; SP) signal occurring between 3 and 15 s before the LP phase. Although the SP phase contains higher frequencies than the LP...
Authors
J. Caplan-Auerbach, T. Petersen

Experimental and geochemical evidence for derivation of the El Capitan Granite, California, by partial melting of hydrous gabbroic lower crust

Partial melting of mafic intrusions recently emplaced into the lower crust can produce voluminous silicic magmas with isotopic ratios similar to their mafic sources. Low-temperature (825 and 850°C) partial melts synthesized at 700 MPa in biotite-hornblende gabbros from the central Sierra Nevada batholith (Sisson et al. in Contrib Mineral Petrol 148:635–661, 2005) have major-element and...
Authors
K. Ratajeski, T. W. Sisson, A. F. Glazner

Rainfall-induced landslides in Puerto Rico: An overview

Rainfall-induced landslides are common in Puerto Rico (PR). The presence of steep slopes in mountainous terrain, coupled with weathered soils and intense rainfall, leads to severe slope-stability problems throughout the island. Episodic triggering events such as hurricanes and earthquakes further exacerbate these problems. All physiographic provinces of the island have experienced...
Authors
M.A. Pando, M.E. Ruiz, M. C. Larsen

DUCKS: Low cost thermal monitoring units for near-vent deployment

During 1999 we designed and tested a thermal monitoring system to provide a cheap, robust, modular, real-time system capable of surviving the hostile conditions encountered proximal to active volcanic vents. In November 2000 the first system was deployed at Pu'u 'O'o (Kilauea, Hawai'i) to target persistently active vents. Aside from some minor problems, such as sensor damage due to...
Authors
A. Harris, D. Pirie, K. Horton, H. Garbeil, E. Pilger, H. Ramm, R. Hoblitt, C. Thornber, M. Ripepe, E. Marchetti, P. Poggi

An integrated view of the chemistry and mineralogy of martian soils

The mineralogical and elemental compositions of the martian soil are indicators of chemical and physical weathering processes. Using data from the Mars Exploration Rovers, we show that bright dust deposits on opposite sides of the planet are part of a global unit and not dominated by the composition of local rocks. Dark soil deposits at both sites have similar basaltic mineralogies, and...
Authors
A. S. Yen, Ralf Gellert, C. Schroder, R.V. Morris, J.F. Bell, A.T. Knudson, B. C. Clark, D. W. Ming, J.A. Crisp, R. E. Arvidson, D. Blaney, J. Brückner, P. R. Christensen, D.J. DesMarais, P.A. De Souza, T.E. Economou, A. Ghosh, B.C. Hahn, Kenneth E. Herkenhoff, L.A. Haskin, J.A. Hurowitz, B.L. Joliff, J. R. Johnson, G. Klingelhofer, M.B. Madsen, S. M. McLennan, H.Y. McSween, L. Richter, R. Rieder, D. Rodionov, Laurence A. Soderblom, S. W. Squyres, N.J. Tosca, A. Wang, M. Wyatt, J. Zipfel

Estimation of regional material yield from coastal landslides based on historical digital terrain modelling

High-resolution historical (1942) and recent (1994) digital terrain models were derived from aerial photographs along the Big Sur coastline in central California to measure the long-term volume of material that enters the nearshore environment. During the 52-year measurement time period, an average of 21 000 ?? 3100 m3 km-1 a-1 of material was eroded from nine study sections distributed...
Authors
C.J. Hapke

Water alteration of rocks and soils on Mars at the Spirit rover site in Gusev crater

Gusev crater was selected as the landing site for the Spirit rover because of the possibility that it once held a lake. Thus one of the rover's tasks was to search for evidence of lake sediments. However, the plains at the landing site were found to be covered by a regolith composed of olivine-rich basaltic rock and wind-blown 'global' dust. The analyses of three rock interiors exposed...
Authors
L.A. Haskin, A. Wang, B.L. Jolliff, H.Y. McSween, B. C. Clark, D.J. Des Marais, S. M. McLennan, N.J. Tosca, J.A. Hurowitz, J.D. Farmer, A. Yen, S. W. Squyres, R. E. Arvidson, G. Klingelhofer, C. Schroder, P.A. De Souza, D. W. Ming, Ralf Gellert, J. Zipfel, J. Brückner, J.F. Bell, Kenneth E. Herkenhoff, P. R. Christensen, S. Ruff, D. Blaney, S. Gorevan, N.A. Cabrol, L. Crumpler, J. Grant, L. Soderblom

The carbon dioxide cycle

The seasonal CO2 cycle on Mars refers to the exchange of carbon dioxide between dry ice in the seasonal polar caps and gaseous carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This review focuses on breakthroughs in understanding the process involving seasonal carbon dioxide phase changes that have occurred as a result of observations by Mars Global Surveyor.
Authors
Philip B. James, Gary B. Hansen, Timothy N. Titus

Source mechanism of Vulcanian degassing at Popocatépetl Volcano, Mexico, determined from waveform inversions of very long period signals

The source mechanism of very long period (VLP) signals accompanying volcanic degassing bursts at Popocatépetl is analyzed in the 15–70 s band by minimizing the residual error between data and synthetics calculated for a point source embedded in a homogeneous medium. The waveforms of two eruptions (23 April and 23 May 2000) representative of mild Vulcanian activity are well reproduced by...
Authors
Bernard A. Chouet, Phillip B. Dawson, Alejandra Arciniega-Ceballos

InSAR studies of Alaska volcanoes

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a remote sensing technique capable of measuring ground surface deformation with sub-centimeter precision and spatial resolution in tens-of­meters over a large region. This paper describes basics of InSAR and highlights our studies of Alaskan volcanoes with InSAR images acquired from European ERS-l and ERS-2, Canadian Radarsat-l, and...
Authors
Zhong Lu, Chuck Wicks, Daniel Dzurisin, John A. Power
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