Publications
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Landslide-dammed lake at Tangjiashan, Sichuan province, China (triggered by the Wenchuan Earthquake, May 12, 2008): Risk assessment, mitigation strategy, and lessons learned
Landslides and rock avalanches triggered by the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake produced 257 landslide dams, mainly situated along the eastern boundary of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau where rivers descend approximately 3,000 m into the Sichuan Basin. The largest of these dams blocked the Tongkou River (a tributary of the Fujiang River) at Tangjiashan. The blockage, consisting of 2.04 × 107 m3 of landslide d
Authors
P. Cui, C. Dang, J. Zhuang, Y. You, X. Chen, Kevin M. Scott
Mapping ground surface deformation using temporarily coherent point SAR interferometry: Application to Los Angeles Basin
Multi-temporal interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is an effective tool to detect long-term seismotectonic motions by reducing the atmospheric artifacts, thereby providing more precise deformation signal. The commonly used approaches such as persistent scatterer InSAR (PSInSAR) and small baseline subset (SBAS) algorithms need to resolve the phase ambiguities in interferogram stacks ei
Authors
L. Zhang, Zhong Lu, X. Ding, H.-S. Jung, G. Feng, C.-W. Lee
Generation and evolution of hydrothermal fluids at Yellowstone: Insights from the Heart Lake Geyser Basin
We sampled fumaroles and hot springs from the Heart Lake Geyser Basin (HLGB), measured water and gas discharge, and estimated heat and mass flux from this geothermal area in 2009. The combined data set reveals that diverse fluids share an origin by mixing of deep solute-rich parent water with dilute heated meteoric water, accompanied by subsequent boiling. A variety of chemical and isotopic geothe
Authors
J. B. Lowenstern, D. Bergfeld, William C. Evans, S. Hurwitz
Rootless shield and perched lava pond collapses at Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai'i
Effusion rate is a primary measurement used to judge the expected advance rate, length, and hazard potential of lava flows. At basaltic volcanoes, the rapid draining of lava stored in rootless shields and perched ponds can produce lava flows with much higher local effusion rates and advance velocities than would be expected based on the effusion rate at the vent. For several months in 2007–2008, l
Authors
Matthew R. Patrick, Tim R. Orr
Seawater capacitance – a promising proxy for mapping and characterizing drifting hydrocarbon plumes in the deep ocean
Hydrocarbons released into the deep ocean are an inevitable consequence of natural seep, seafloor drilling, and leaking wellhead-to-collection-point pipelines. The Macondo 252 (Deepwater Horizon) well blowout of 2010 was even larger than the Ixtoc event in the Gulf of Campeche in 1979. History suggests it will not be the last accidental release, as deepwater drilling expands to meet an ever-growin
Authors
Jeff Wynn, John A. Fleming
The 2010 explosive eruption of Java's Merapi volcano—A ‘100-year’ event
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
Authors
Surono, Philippe Jousset, John S. Pallister, Marie Boichu, M. Fabrizia Buongiorno, Agus Budisantoso, Fidel Costa, Supriyati Andreastuti, Fred Prata, David J. Schneider, Lieven Clarisse, Hanik Humaida, Sri Sumarti, Christian Bignami, Julia P. Griswold, Simon A. Carn, Clive Oppenheimer, Franck Lavigne
A robust method to forecast volcanic ash clouds
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
Authors
Roger P. Denlinger, Michael J. Pavolonis, Justin Sieglaff
Listening to the 2011 magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan, earthquake
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
Authors
Zhigang Peng, Chastity Aiken, Debi Kilb, David R. Shelly, Bogdan Enescu
Using rocks to reveal the inner workings of magma chambers below volcanoes in Alaska’s National Parks
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
Authors
Michelle L. Coombs, Charles R. Bacon
Displacement fields from point cloud data: Application of particle imaging velocimetry to landslide geodesy
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
Authors
Arjun Aryal, Benjamin A. Brooks, Mark E. Reid, Gerald W. Bawden, Geno Pawlak
Mechanics of debris flows and rock avalanches: Chapter 43
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
Authors
Richard M. Iverson
Volcanoes: observations and impact
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
Authors
Clifford Thurber, Stephanie G. Prejean