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Geologic Hazards Science Center

The Geologic Hazards Science Center (GHSC), on the Colorado School of Mines campus, is home to the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), many scientists in the Earthquake Hazards Program and Landslide Hazards Program, as well as the Geomagnetism Program staff.

News

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New USGS-FEMA study highlights economic earthquake risk in the United States

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Volcanic explosion penetrates both upper atmosphere and upper crust around the globe

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New Interactive Geonarrative Explains the 2023 Turkey, Earthquake Sequence

Publications

The rainfall intensity-duration control of debris flows after wildfire

Increased wildfire activity in the western United States has exposed regional gaps in our understanding of postfire debris-flow generation. To address this problem, we characterized flows in an unstudied area to test the rainfall intensity-duration control of the hazard. Our rainfall measurements and field observations from the northern Sierra Nevada (California, USA) show that debris flows result
Authors
Matthew A. Thomas, Donald N. Lindsay, David B. Cavagnaro, Jason W. Kean, Scott W. McCoy, Andrew Paul Graber

Laboratory simulation of earthquake-induced damage in lava dome rocks

Earthquakes can impart varying degrees of damage and permanent, inelastic strain on materials, potentially resulting in ruptures that may promote hazards such as landslides and other collapse events. However, the accumulation of damage in rocks under the frequency and amplitude of shaking experienced during earthquake events is rarely systematically measured due to technical limitations. Here, we
Authors
Lauren N. Schaefer, Jackie E. Kendrick, Yan Lavallée, Jenny Schauroth, Oliver D. Lamb, Anthony Lamur, Takahiro Miwa, Ben M. Kennedy

Mapping landslide susceptibility over large regions with limited data

Landslide susceptibility maps indicate the spatial distribution of landslide likelihood. Modeling susceptibility over large or diverse terrains remains a challenge due to the sparsity of landslide data (mapped extent of known landslides) and the variability in triggering conditions. Several different data sampling strategies of landslide locations used to train a susceptibility model are used to m
Authors
Jacob Bryson Woodard, Benjamin B. Mirus, Matthew Crawford, Dani Or, Ben Leshchinsky, Kate E. Allstadt, Nathan J. Wood