Book Chapters

The magnitude 7.9 (Mw) Wenchuan, China, earthquake of May 12, 2008 caused at least 88,000 deaths of which one third are estimated to be due to the more than 56,000 earthquake-induced landslides. The affected area is mountainous, featuring densely-vegetated, steep slopes through which narrowly confined rivers and streams flow. Numerous types of landslides occurred in the area, including rock avalan

No abstract available.

Wildfire is a worldwide phenomenon that is expected to increase in extent and severity in the future, due to fuel accumulations, shifting land management practices, and climate change. It immediately affects the landscape by removing vegetation, depositing ash, influencing water-repellent soil formation, and physically weathering boulders and bedrock. These changes typically lead to increased eros

This chapter summarized the scope of what is known and not known about climate in the Southwestern United States. There is now more evidence and more agreement among climate scientists about the physical climate and related impacts in the Southwest compared with that represented in the 2009 National Climate Assessment (Karl, Melillo, and Peterson 2009). However, there remain uncertainties about th

Desertification, the broad-scale conversion of perennial grasslands to dominance by annuals or xerophytic shrubs, has affected drylands globally over the past several centuries. Desertification is a cumulative threat that includes both climatic (e.g., drought) and land-use drivers (e.g., livestock overgrazing, fire). In this chapter, we determine the vulnerability of different ecosystem services t

Photographic imaging is the oldest form of remote sensing used in coral reef studies. This chapter briefly explores the history of photography from the 1850s to the present, and delves into its application for coral reef research. The investigation focuses on both photographs collected from low-altitude fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, and those collected from space by astronauts. Different types o

No abstract available.

In most areas, rocks in the subsurface are saturated with water at relatively shallow depths. The top of the saturated zone—the water table—typically occurs anywhere from just below land surface to hundreds of feet below the land surface. Groundwater generally fills all pore spaces below the water table and is part of a continuous dynamic flow system, in which the fluid is moving at velocities ran

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

The MW 7.0, 12 January 2010, Haiti earthquake triggered more than 7,000 landslides in the mountainous terrain south of Port-au-Prince over an area that extends approximately 50 km to the east and west from the epicenter and to the southern coast. Most of the triggered landslides were rock and soil slides from 25°–65° slopes within heavily fractured limestone and deeply weathered basalt and basalti

Loess is aeolian silt visible in the field as a sedimentary body. It covers a significant portion of the land surface of the Earth. Loess thickness, particle size, and carbonate content decrease downwind from sources, useful trends for paleowinds. Many loess sections consist of relatively thick deposits of mostly unaltered sediment with intercalated paleosols. Paleosols represent periods of landsc