Publications

A network of three new infrasound station arrays was installed around Kīlauea Volcano between July 2012 and September 2012, and a preliminary analysis of open-vent monitoring has been completed by Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO). Infrasound is an emerging monitoring method in volcanology that detects perturbations in atmospheric pressure at frequencies below 20 Hz, which can result...

Landslides reflect landscape instability that evolves over meteorological and geological timescales, and they also pose threats to people, property, and the environment. The severity of these threats depends largely on landslide speed and travel distance, which are collectively described as landslide “mobility”. To investigate causes and effects of mobility, we focus on a disastrous...

On March 19, 2008 a small explosive event accompanied the opening of a 35-m-wide vent (Overlook vent) on the southeast wall of Halema‘uma‘u Crater in Kīlauea Caldera, initiating an eruptive period that extends to the time of writing. The peak of activity, in 2008, consisted of alternating background open-system outgassing and spattering punctuated by sudden, short-lived weak explosions...

Lava output from Kīlauea's long-lived East Rift Zone eruption, ongoing since 1983, began waning in 2010 and was coupled with uplift, increased seismicity, and rising lava levels at the volcano's summit and Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō vent. These changes culminated in the four-day-long Kamoamoa fissure eruption on the East Rift Zone starting on 5 March 2011. About 2.7 × 106 m3 of lava erupted, accompanied...

Most silicate melt inclusions (MI) contain bubbles, whose significance has been alternately calculated, pondered, and ignored, but rarely if ever directly explored. Moore et al. (2015) analyze the bubbles, as well as their host glasses, and conclude that they often hold the preponderance of CO2 in the MI. Their findings entreat future researchers to account for the presence of bubbles in...

Earth-surface mass flows such as debris flows, rock avalanches, and dam-break floods can grow greatly in size and destructive potential by entraining bed material they encounter. Increasing use of depth-integrated mass- and momentum-conservation equations to model these erosive flows motivates a review of the underlying theory. Our review indicates that many existing models apply depth...

The onset of a basaltic eruption at the summit of Kīlauea volcano in 2008 is recorded in the products generated during the first three weeks of the eruption and suggests an evolution of both the physical properties of the magma and also lava lake levels and vent wall stability. Ash componentry and the microtextures of the early erupted lapilli products reveal that the magma was largely...

Faulting and fluid transport in the subsurface are highly coupled processes, which may manifest seismically as earthquake swarms. A swarm in February 2014 beneath densely monitored Mammoth Mountain, California, provides an opportunity to witness these interactions in high resolution. Toward this goal, we employ massive waveform-correlation-based event detection and relative relocation...

The main component of this publication is a geologic map database prepared using geographic information system (GIS) applications. The geodatabase of geologic points, lines, and polygons was produced as a compilation from five adjoining map sections originally published as printed maps in 1987 (see references in metadata). Four of the sections (U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Field...

Inflation of narrow tube-fed basaltic lava flows (tens of meters across), such as those confined by topography, can be focused predominantly along the roof of a lava tube. This can lead to the development of an unusually long tumulus, its shape matching the sinuosity of the underlying lava tube. Such a situation occurred during Kīlauea Volcano's (Hawai'i, USA) ongoing East Rift Zone...

In order to identify the origin of Mauna Loa volcano's Nīnole Hills, Bouguer gravity was used to delineate density contrasts within the edifice. Our survey identified two residual anomalies beneath the Southwest Rift Zone (SWRZ) and the Nīnole Hills. The Nīnole Hills anomaly is elongated, striking northeast, and in inversions both anomalies merge at approximately −7 km above sea level...

Since the mid-19th century, western Oregon's Willamette Valley has been a source of remains from a wide variety of extinct megafauna. Few of these have been previously described or dated, but new chronologic and isotopic analyses in conjunction with updated evaluations of stratigraphic context provide substantial new information on the species present, timing of losses, and...