Conference Papers
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The USGS provides unbiased, objective, and impartial scientific information upon which our audiences, including resource managers, planners, and other entities, rely.
Browse almost 5,000 conference papers authored by our scientists and refine search by topic, location, year, and advanced search.
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Automated road breaching to enhance extraction of natural drainage networks from elevation models through deep learning
High-resolution (HR) digital elevation models (DEMs), such as those at resolutions of 1 and 3 meters, have increasingly become more widely available, along with lidar point cloud data. In a natural environment, a detailed surface water drainage network can be extracted from a HR DEM using flow-direction and flow-accumulation modeling. However, elevation details captured in HR DEMs, such as roads a
Authors
Larry Stanislawski, Tyler Brockmeyer, Ethan J. Shavers
Forecasting for dry and wet avalanches during mixed rain and snow storm events
Natural wet slab avalanches release when rain or melt water decreases snowpack strength, and natural dry slab avalanches release when an increased load overcomes snowpack strength. This study investigates avalanche activity resulting from mixed rain and snow falling on a faceted snowpack. This scenario produced an extensive slab avalanche cycle in March 2018 in the mountains near Ketchum, Idaho, w
Authors
Scott Savage, Erich Peitzsch, Simon Trautman, Benjamin VandenBos
Detecting snow depth change in avalanche path starting zones using uninhabited aerial systems and structure from motion photogrammetry
Understanding snow depth distribution and change is useful for avalanche forecasting and mitigation, runoff forecasting, and infrastructure planning. Advances in remote sensing are improving the ability to collect snow depth measurements. The development of structure from motion (SfM), a photogrammetry technique, combined with the use of uninhabited aerial systems (UASs) allows for high resolution
Authors
Erich H. Peitzsch, Daniel B. Fagre, Jordy Hendrikx, Karl W. Birkeland
Identifying major avalanche years from a regional tree-ring based avalanche chronology for the U.S. Northern Rocky Mountains
Avalanches not only pose a major hazard to people and infrastructure, but also act as an important ecological disturbance. In many mountainous regions in North America, including areas with existing transportation corridors, reliable and consistent avalanche records are sparse or non-existent. Thus, inferring long-term avalanche patterns and associated contributory climate and weather factors re
Authors
Erich H. Peitzsch, Daniel B. Fagre, Gregory T. Pederson, Jordy Hendrikx, Karl W. Birkeland, Daniel Stahle
Wetland stratigraphic evidence for variable megathrust earthquake rupture modes at the Cascadia subduction zone
Although widespread agreement that the Cascadia subduction zone produces great earthquakes of magnitude 8 to 9 was reached decades ago, debate continues about the rupture lengths, magnitudes, and frequency of megathrust earthquakes recorded by wetland stratigraphy fringing Cascadia’s estuaries. Correlation of such coastal earthquake evidence along the subduction zone has largely relied on relative
Authors
Alan R. Nelson, Robert C. Witter, Simon Englehart, Andrea Hawkers, Benjamin P. Horton
Development of a domestic earthquake alert protocol combining the USGS pager and FEMA Hazus systems
The U.S. Geological Survey’s PAGER automated alert system provides rapid (10-20 min) loss estimates in terms of ranges of fatalities and economic impact for all significant earthquakes around the globe. In contrast, FEMA’s Hazus software, which is currently operated manually by FEMA personnel internally within several hours of any large domestic earthquake, provides more detailed loss information
Authors
David J. Wald, H.A. Seligson, Jesse Rozelle, J. Burns, Kristin Marano, Kishor S. Jaiswal, Mike Hearne, D Bausch
Increasing earthquake insurance coverage in California via parametric hedges
California has the highest earthquake risk of any state in the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reported in 2017 that 73% of the nation’s annual losses to earthquakes were expected to be concentrated in California and the Pacific Northwest. California alone constitutes 61% ($3.7 billion out of an estimated $6.1 billion annual losses nationwide). Despite this overwhelmi
Authors
Guillermo Franco, G Tirabassi, M Lopeman, David J. Wald, W.J. Siembieda
Area-preserving simplification of polygon features
Developing simplified representations of a two-dimensional polyline is an important problem in cartographic data analytics where datasets must be integrated across spatial resolutions. This problem is generally referred to as line simplification, and is increasingly driven by preservation of specific analytic properties such as positional accuracy and high-frequency detail. However, the distinctio
Authors
Barry J. Kronenfeld, Larry V. Stanislawski, Tyler Brockmeyer, Barbara P. Buttenfield
State transportation agencies partner to deploy and enhance ShakeCast
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is organizing and leading a three-year Transportation Pooled Fund (TPF) project, Connecting the Dots: Implementing ShakeCast Across Multiple State Departments of Transportation for Rapid Post-Earthquake Response. Ten state Departments of Transportation (DOT)—CA, ID, MO, MS, OK, OR, SC, TX, UT, AND WA—have partnered and combined research funds
Authors
L. Turner, David J. Wald, Kuo-wan Lin, Brian Chiou, Daniel Slosky
New methods for predicting and measuring dispersion in rivers
To develop a better predictive tool for dispersion in rivers over a range of temporal and spatial scales, our group has developed a simple Lagrangian model that is applicable for a wide range of coordinate systems and flow modeling methodologies. The approach allows dispersion computations for a large suite of discretizations, model dimensions (1-, 2-, or 3-dimensional), spatial and temporal discr
Authors
Jonathan M. Nelson, Richard R. McDonald, Carl J. Legleiter, Paul J. Kinzel, Travis Terrell Ramos, Yutaka Higashi, Il Won Seo, Donghae Baek, Du Han Lee, Yonguk Ryu
Similarity assessment of linear hydrographic features using high performance computing
This work discusses a current open source implementation of a line similarity assessment workflow to compare elevation-derived drainage lines with the high-resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) surface-water flow network. The process identifies matching and mismatching lines in each dataset to help focus subsequent validation procedures to areas of the NHD that more critically need updates
Authors
Larry V. Stanislawski, Jeffrey Wendel, Ethan J. Shavers, Ting Li
Thermally induced fracture of macroscale surficial granite sheets
Geologically diverse landforms around the world show indications of energetic macroscale fracture. These fractures are sometimes displayed dramatically as so-called “A-tents”, whereby relatively thin rock sheets push upwards and fracture, forming tent-like voids beneath the ruptured sheets. The origin and formation of such features has been a topic of considerable interest and analysis for over a
Authors
Brian D. Collins, Greg M. Stock, Martha C. Eppes