Publications

The Pu'u 'O'o-Kupaianaha eruption (1983-present) is the longest lived rift eruption of either Kilauea or neighboring Mauna Loa in recorded history. The initial fissure opening in January 1983 was followed by three years of episodic fire fountaining at the Pu'u 'O'o vent on Kilauea's east rift zone ∼19km from the summit (episodes 4–47). These spectacular events gave way in July 1986 to...

A large field of blocky sea-floor hills, up to 10 km long and 500 m high, are gigantic slide blocks derived from the west flank of Mauna Loa volcano on the island of Hawaii. These megablocks are embedded in the toe of the South Kona landslide, which extends ∼80 km seaward from the present coastline to depths of nearly 5 km. A 10–15-km-wide belt of numerous, smaller, 1–3-km-long slide...

Mammoth Mountain, in the western United States, is a large dacitic volcano with a long history of volcanism that began 200 kyr ago and produced phreatic eruptions as recently as 500 ± 200 yr BP. Seismicity, ground deformation and changes in fumarole gas composition suggested an episode of shallow dyke intrusion in 1989–90. Areas of dying forest and incidents of near asphyxia in confined...

No abstract available

No abstract available.

Mount Rainier—at 4393 meters (14,410 feet) the highest peak in the Cascade Range—is a dormant volcano whose load of glacier ice exceeds that of any other mountain in the conterminous United States. This tremendous mass of rock and ice, in combination with great topographic relief, poses a variety of geologic hazards, both during inevitable future eruptions and during the intervening...

Geologists commonly infer the flow conditions and the physical properties of debris flows from the sedimentologic, stratigraphic, and morphologic characteristics of their deposits. However, such inferences commonly lack corroboration by direct observation because the capricious nature of debris flows makes systematic observation and measurement of natural events both difficult and...

The purpose of this report is to make available fluid-inclusion information from drill holes in five geothermal areas: The Geysers and Long Valley caldera in northern California; Steamboat Springs, Nevada; the Ahuachapan field of El Salvador, Central America; and the Mutnovsky geothermal field, Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. These data were produced at the request of various individuals to...

Native Hawaiian forest birds are facing a major extinction crisis with more than 75% of species recorded in historical times either extinct or endangered. Reasons for this catastrophe include habitat destruction, competition with non-native species, and introduction of predators and avian diseases. We tested susceptibility of Iiwi (Vestiaria coccinea), a declining native species, and...

New heat-capacity measurements are reported for four rock types; Westerly granite from Bradford, RI, andesite from Lake County, OR, peridotite from Sonoma County, CA, and basalt from the Columbia River Group. Measurements were made on powders of the rocks in the temperature range of 340 to about 1000 K. Our measured heat-capacity values for rocks and other measurements of heat capacity...

No significant change in the rate of strain accumulation in a 40×120 km trilateration network spanning the San Gabriel mountains was observed from 1977.5 to 1991.8 despite an apparent increase in seismicity (ML > 4.5) beginning in late 1987 in the northern Los Angeles basin immediately to the south. The observed deformation (0.13±0.01 µstrain/yr right‐lateral shear across a vertical...

Apparent phreatic explosion craters, caldera-floor volcanic cones, and geothermal features outline a ring fracture zone along which Mount Mazama collapsed to form the Crater Lake caldera during its climactic eruption about 6,850 yr B.P. Within a few years, subaerial deposits infilled the phreatic craters and then formed a thick wedge (10-20 m) of mass flow deposits shed from caldera...