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Fundamental science and engineering questions in planetary cave exploration

Nearly half a century ago, two papers postulated the likelihood of lunar lava tube caves using mathematical models. Today, armed with an array of orbiting and fly-by satellites and survey instrumentation, we have now acquired cave data across our solar system—including the identification of potential cave entrances on the Moon, Mars, and at least six other planetary bodies. These discoveries gave
Authors
J. Judson Wynne, Timothy N. Titus, Ali-akbar Agha-Mohammadi, Armando Azua-Bustos, Penelope J. Boston, Pablo de León, Cansu Demirel-Floyd, Jo de Waele, Heather Jones, Michael J. Malaska, Ana Z. Miller, Haley M. Sapers, Francesco Sauro, Derek L. Sonderegger, Kyle Uckert, Uland Y. Wong, E. Calvin Alexander, Leroy Chiao, Glen E. Cushing, John DeDecker, Alberto G. Fairén, Amos Frumkin, Gary L. Harris, Michelle L. Kearney, Laura A. Kerber, Richard J. Léveillé, Kavya Manyapu, Matteo Massironi, John E. Mylroie, Bogdan P. Onac, Scott E. Parazynski, Charity M. Phillips-Lander, T. H. Prettyman, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Robert V. Wagner, William L. Whittaker, Kaj E. Williams

Constructing a large-scale landslide database across heterogeneous environments using task-specific model updates

Preparation and mitigation efforts for widespread landslide hazards can be aided by a large-scale, well-labeled landslide inventory with high location accuracy. Recent smallscale studies for pixel-wise labeling of potential landslide areas in remotely-sensed images using deep learning (DL) showed potential but were based on data from very small, homogeneous regions with unproven model transferabil
Authors
Savinay Nagendra, Daniel Kifer, Benjamin B. Mirus, Te Pei, Kathryn Lawson, Srikanth Banagere Manjunatha, Weixin Li, Hien Nguyen, Tong Qiu, Sarah Tran, Chaopeng Shen

#TheSmoreYouKnow and #emergencycute: A conceptual model on the use of humor by science agencies during crisis to create connection, empathy, and compassion

Studies from a variety of disciplines reveal that humor can be a useful method to reduce stress and increase compassion, connection, and empathy between agencies and people they serve during times of crisis. Despite this growing evidence base, humor's use during a geohazard (earthquake, volcanoes, landslides, and tsunami) to aid scientific agencies' crisis communication response has been rarely st
Authors
Sara McBride, Jessica L. Ball

New model of the Barry Arm landslide in Alaska reveals potential tsunami wave heights of 2 meters, values much lower than previously estimated

The retreat of Barry Glacier has contributed to the destabilization of slopes in Barry Arm, creating the possibility that a landslide could rapidly enter the fjord and trigger a tsunami.The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently released a report documenting potential tsunami wave heights in the event of a large, fast-moving landslide at the Barry Arm fiord near Prince William Sound, Alaska (Barnh
Authors
Marísa A. Macías, Katherine R. Barnhart, Dennis M. Staley

S/P amplitude ratios derived from single-component seismograms and their potential use in constraining focal mechanisms for micro-earthquake sequences

Focal mechanisms, which reflect the sense of slip in earthquakes, provide important constraints for understanding crustal tectonics and earthquake source physics, including the interactions among earthquakes during mainshock–aftershock sequences or seismic swarms. Focal mechanisms of small (magnitude ≲3.5) earthquakes are usually determined by first‐motion P‐wave polarities, sometimes supplemented
Authors
David R. Shelly, Robert John Skoumal, Jeanne L. Hardebeck

Earthquakes and tsunami

Earthquakes occur as a burst of sudden ground shaking created by the release of accumulated stress along a fault, often influenced by movement of the world’s tectonic plates. Ground shaking from an earthquake can generate additional hazards, including landslides, liquefaction, and tsunami. According to the 2019 “Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction”, earthquakes combined with tsunam
Authors
Julia S. Becker, Sara McBride, Lauren Vinnell, Wendy Saunders, Graham S. Leonard, Timothy J. Sullivan, Ken Gledhill

Nearshore bathymetric changes along the Alaska Beaufort Sea coast and possible physical drivers

Erosion rates along Alaska's Beaufort Sea coast, among the highest in the world, are negatively impacting communities, industrial and military infrastructure, and wildlife habitat. Decreasing maximal winter ice extent and increasing summer open water duration and extent in the Beaufort Sea may be making the coast more vulnerable to destructive storm waves than during recent, colder, icier decades.
Authors
Mark Zimmermann, Li H. Erikson, Ann E. Gibbs, Megan M. Prescott, Stephen M. Escarzaga, Craig E. Tweedie, Jeremy L. Kasper, Paul X. Duvoy

Orbital and in-situ investigation of periodic bedrock ridges in Glen Torridon, Gale Crater, Mars

Wind has been the dominant agent of landscape modification on Mars for the past ~3 billion years. Among the diversity of features formed by aeolian abrasion on the surface of Mars are periodic bedrock ridges (PBRs), a relatively recently recognized class of erosional bedforms on Mars for which Earth analogues are rare. Gale crater, the field site for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover
Authors
K. M. Stack, W. E. Dietrich, M. P. Lamb, Robert Sullivan, John R. Christian, Claire E Newman, Catherine O'Connell-Cooper, Jonathan W Sneed, Mackenzie D. Day, Mariah Baker, R. A. Arvidson, Christopher M. Fedo, Sabrina Khan, Rebecca Williams, Kristen A. Bennett, A. B. Bryk, Shannon Cofield, Lauren A. Edgar, V. F. Fox, Abigail A. Fraeman, Christopher H House, D. M. Rubin, Vivian Z. Sun, Jason K. Van Beek

Revealing active Mars with HiRISE digital terrain models

Many discoveries of active surface processes on Mars have been made due to the availability of repeat high-resolution images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE stereo images are used to make digital terrain models (DTMs) and orthorectified images (orthoimages). HiRISE DTMs and orthoimage time series have been crucial for adv
Authors
Sarah S. Sutton, Matthew Chojnacki, Alfred S. McEwen, Randolph L. Kirk, Colin M. Dundas, Ethan I Schaefer, Susan J. Conway, Serina Diniega, Ganna Portyankina, Margaret E. Landis, Nicole F Baugh, Rodney Heyd, Shane Byrne, Livio L. Tornabene, Lujendra Ojha, Christopher W. Hamilton

Friction in clay-bearing faults increases with the ionic radius of interlayer cations

Smectite can dramatically reduce the strength of crustal faults and may cause creep on natural faults without great earthquakes; however, the frictional mechanism remains unexplained. Here, our shear experiments reveal systematic increase in shear strength with the increase of the ionic radius of interlayer cations among lithium-, sodium-, potassium-, rubidium-, and cesium-montmorillonites, a smec
Authors
Hiroshi Sakuma, David A. Lockner, John Solum, Nick Davatzes

Atmospheric waves and global seismoacoustic observations of the January 2022 Hunga eruption, Tonga

The 15 January 2022 climactic eruption of Hunga volcano, Tonga, produced an explosion in the atmosphere of a size that has not been documented in the modern geophysical record. The event generated a broad range of atmospheric waves observed globally by various ground-based and spaceborne instrumentation networks. Most prominent was the surface-guided Lamb wave (≲0.01 hertz), which we observed prop
Authors
Robin S. Matoza, David Fee, Jelle D. Assink, Alexandra M. Iezzi, David N. Green, Keehoon Kim, Liam Toney, Thomas Lecocq, Siddharth Krishnamoorthy, Jean-Marie Lalande, Kiwamu Nishida, Kent L. Gee, Matthew M. Haney, Hugo D. Ortiz, Quentin Brissaud, Léo Martire, Lucie Rolland, Panagiotis Vergados, Alexandra Nippress, Junghyun Park, Shahar Shani-Kadmiel, Alex Witsil, Stephen Arrowsmith, Corentin Caudron, Shingo Watada, Anna Perttu, Benoit Taisne, Pierrick Mialle, Alexis Le Pichon, Julien Vergoz, Patrick Hupe, Philip S. Blom, Roger M. Waxler, Silvio De Angelis, Jonathan Snively, Adam T. Ringler, Robert E. Anthony, Arthur Din Jolly, Geoff Kilgour, Gil Averbuch, Maurizio Ripepe, Mie Ichihara, Alejandra Arciniega-Ceballos, Elvira Astafyeva, Lars Ceranna, Sandrine Cevuard, Il-Young Che, Rodrigo de Negri Leiva, Carl W. Ebeling, Läslo G. Evers, Luis E. Franco-Marin, Tom Gabrielson, Katrin Hafner, R. Giles Harrison, Attila Komjathy, Giorgio Lacanna, John J. Lyons, Kenneth A. Macpherson, Emanuele Marchetti, Kathleen McKee, Rob Mellors, Gerardo Mendo-Pérez, T. Dylan Mikesell, Edhah Munaibari, Mayra Oyola-Merced, Iseul Park, Christoph Pilger, Cristina Ramos, Mario Ruiz, Roberto Sabatini, Hans Schwaiger, Dorianne Tailpied, Carrick Talmadge, Jérôme Vidot, Jeremy Webster, David C. Wilson

A progressive flow-routing model for rapid assessment of debris-flow inundation

Debris flows pose a significant hazard to communities in mountainous areas, and there is a continued need for methods to delineate hazard zones associated with debris-flow inundation. In certain situations, such as scenarios following wildfire, where there could be an abrupt increase in the likelihood and size of debris flows that necessitates a rapid hazard assessment, the computational demands o
Authors
Alexander Gorr, Luke A. McGuire, Ann Youberg, Francis K. Rengers