Publications

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...

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...

[No abstract available]

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...

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...

Hydrogen isotope ratio, water content and Fe3 +/Fe2 + in coexisting amphibole and biotite phenocrysts in volcanic rocks can provide insight into shallow pre- and syn-eruptive magmatic processes such as vesiculation, and lava drainback with mixing into less devolatilized magma that erupts later in a volcanic sequence. We studied four ~ 35 ka and younger eruption sequences (i.e. Kings...

Carbon dioxide emissions and heat flow have been determined from the Ohaaki hydrothermal field, Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ), New Zealand following 20 a of production (116 MWe). Soil CO2 degassing was quantified with 2663 CO2 flux measurements using the accumulation chamber method, and 2563 soil temperatures were measured and converted to equivalent heat flow (W m−2) using published soil...

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...

Convection in magma chambers is thought to play a key role in the activity of persistently active volcanoes, but has only been inferred indirectly from geochemical observations or simulated numerically. Continuous microgravity measurements, which track changes in subsurface mass distribution over time, provide a potential method for characterizing convection in magma reservoirs. We...

The eruptive activity of a volcano is fundamentally controlled by the rate of magma supply. At Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai‘i, the rate of magma rising from a source within Earth’s mantle, through the Hawaiian hotspot, was thought to have been relatively steady in recent decades. Here we show that the magma supply to Kīlauea at least doubled during 2003–2007, resulting in dramatic changes in...

Redoubt Volcano, an ice-covered stratovolcano on the west side of Cook Inlet, erupted in March 2009 after several months of escalating unrest. The 2009 eruption of Redoubt Volcano shares many similarities with eruptions documented most recently at Redoubt in 1966–68 and 1989–90. In each case, the eruptive phase lasted several months, consisted of multiple ashproducing explosions...

Hotspot: The Snake River Geothermal Drilling Project was undertaken to better understand the geothermal systems in three locations across the Snake River Plain with varying geological and hydrological structure. An extensive series of standard and specialized geophysical logs were obtained in each of the wells. Hydrogen-index neutron and γ-γ density logs employing active sources were...