Publications

Volcanic ash transport and dispersion (VATD) models are used to forecast tephra deposition during volcanic eruptions. Model accuracy is limited by the fact that fine-ash aggregates (clumps into clusters), thus altering patterns of deposition. In most models this is accounted for by ad hoc changes to model input, representing fine ash as aggregates with density ρagg, and a log-normal size...

Robert L. Smith, renowned volcanologist and distinguished scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), was a world authority on ash-flow tuffs, silicic volcanism, and caldera structures. Bob died peacefully in Sacramento, California, June 17, 2016, a few days short of his ninety-sixth birthday. His publications on ash flows and their deposits brought about an international...

The Cascade mountain system extends from northern California to central British Columbia. In Oregon, it comprises the Cascade Range, which is 260 miles long and, at greatest breadth, 90 miles wide (fig. 1). Oregon’s Cascade Range covers roughly 17,000 square miles, or about 17 percent of the state, an area larger than each of the smallest nine of the fifty United States. The range is...

The weakest explosive volcanic eruptions globally, Strombolian explosions and Hawaiian fountaining, are also the most common. Yet, despite over a hundred years of observations, no classifications have offered a convincing, quantitative way of demarcating these two styles. New observations show that the two styles are distinct in their eruptive timescale, with the duration of Hawaiian...

An extended earthquake swarm occurred beneath southeastern Long Valley Caldera between May and November 2014, culminating in three magnitude 3.5 earthquakes and 1145 cataloged events on 26 September alone. The swarm produced the most prolific seismicity in the caldera since a major unrest episode in 1997-1998. To gain insight into the physics controlling swarm evolution, we used large...

The oceans make up 71% of the Earth’s surface area and are a major component of the global climate system. They are the world’s primary heat reservoir, and knowledge of the global ocean response to past and present radiative forcing is important for understanding climate change. PAGES’ Ocean2k working group aims to place marine climate of the past century within the context of the...

Forecasting future activity and performing hazard assessments during the reactivation of volcanoes remain great challenges for the volcanological community. On August 14, 2015 Cotopaxi volcano erupted for the first time in 73 years after approximately four months of precursory activity, which included an increase in seismicity, gas emissions, and minor ground deformation. Here we discuss...

Lahars occur during volcanic eruptions--or, less predictably, through other processes on steep volcanic terrain--when large masses of water mixed with sediment sweep down and off volcano slopes and commonly incorporate additional sediment and water. Because lahars are water-saturated, both liquid and solid interactions influence their behavior and distinguish them from other related...

Kawah Ijen is a composite volcano located at the easternmost part of Java island in Indonesia and hosts the largest natural acidic lake in the world. We have gathered all available historical reports on Kawah Ijen’s activity since 1770 with the purpose of reviewing the temporal evolution of its activity. Most of these observations and studies have been conducted from a geochemical...

Since 2010, Kawah Ijen volcano has been equipped with seismometers, and its extremely acid volcanic lake has been monitored using temperature and leveling sensors, providing unprecedented time resolution of multiparametric data for an acidic volcanic lake. The nature of stress and mass changes of the volcano is studied by combining seismic analyses and volcanic lake measurements that...

Okmok is one of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian Arc. In an effort to improve our ability to detect precursory activity leading to eruption at Okmok, we monitor a recent, and possibly ongoing, GPS-inferred rapid inflation event at the volcano using ambient noise interferometry (ANI). Applying this method, we identify changes in seismic velocity outside of Okmok’s caldera, which...

Long Valley caldera lies within a left-stepping offset in the north-northwest-striking Sierra Nevada range-front normal faults with the Hilton Creek fault to the south and Hartley Springs fault to the north. Both Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF) 2 and its update, UCERF3, depict slip on these major range-front normal faults as extending well into the caldera, with...