Publications

During one week (28 March–4 April 1982), three powerful explosive eruptions (VEI 5) of El Chichón Volcano caused the worst volcanic disaster in Mexico's recorded history. Pyroclastic flows and surges obliterated nine villages, killing about 2,000 people, and ashfalls downwind posed socio–economic hardships for many thousands of inhabitants of the States of Chiapas and Tabasco. The...

Changes beneath a volcano can be observed through position changes in a GPS network, but distinguishing the source of site motion is not always straightforward. The records of continuous GPS sites provide a favorable data set for tracking magma migration. Dense campaign observations usually provide a better spatial picture of the overall deformation field, at the expense of an episodic...

Lava lakes experience filling, circulation, and often drainage depending upon the style of activity and location of the vent. Features formed by these processes have proved difficult to document due to dangerous conditions during the eruption, inaccessibility, and destruction of features during lake drainage. Kilauea Iki lava lake, Kilauea, Hawai'i, preserves many such features, because...

Volcanic activity has caused significant hazards to numerous airports worldwide, with local to far-ranging effects on travelers and commerce. Analysis of a new compilation of incidents of airports impacted by volcanic activity from 1944 through 2006 reveals that, at a minimum, 101 airports in 28 countries were affected on 171 occasions by eruptions at 46 volcanoes. Since 1980, five...

To gain a better understanding of the topographic and landscape evolution of the Cenozoic Sierra Nevada and Basin and Range, we combine geochemical and isotopic age correlations with palaeoaltimetry data from widely distributed ignimbrites in the northern Sierra Nevada, California. A sequence of Oligocene rhyolitic ignimbrites is preserved across the modern crest of the range and into...

Diffuse CO2 efflux near the Ukinrek Maars, two small volcanic craters that formed in 1977 in a remote part of the Alaska Peninsula, was investigated using accumulation chamber measurements. High CO2 efflux, in many places exceeding 1000 g m−2 d−1, was found in conspicuous zones of plant damage or kill that cover 30,000–50,000 m2 in area. Total diffuse CO2 emission was estimated at 21–44...

Uncertainty remains on the origin of distal mass deposition maxima observed in many recent tephra fall deposits. In this study the link between ash aggregation and the formation of distal mass deposition maxima is investigated through reanalysis of tephra fallout from the Mount St. Helens 18 May 1980 (MSH80) eruption. In addition, we collate all the data needed to model distal ash...

Joint measurements of ground deformation and micro-gravity changes are an indispensable component for any volcano monitoring strategy. A number of analytical mathematical models are available in the literature that can be used to fit geodetic data and infer source location, depth and density. Bootstrap statistical methods allow estimations of the range of the inferred parameters...

Evaluation of the extent of volatile element recycling in convergent margin volcanism requires delineating likely source(s) of magmatic volatiles through stable isotopic characterization of sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen in erupted tephra with appropriate assessment of modification by degassing. The climactic eruption of Mt. Mazama ejected approximately 50 km3 of rhyodacitic magma into the...

Ground surface displacement (GSD) in large calderas is often interpreted as resulting from magma intrusion at depth. Recent advances in geodetic measurements of GSD, notably interferometric synthetic aperture radar, reveal complex and multifaceted deformation patterns that often require complex source models to explain the observed GSD. Although hydrothermal fluids have been discussed as...

We have inverted polarity and amplitude information of representative microearthquakes to investigate source mechanisms of seismicity induced by hydraulic fracturing in the Carthage Cotton Valley, east Texas, gas field. With vertical arrays of four and eight three-component geophones in two monitoring wells, respectively, we were able to reliably determine source mechanisms of the...

Strontium, Nd, Pb, Hf, Os, and O isotope compositions for 30 Quaternary lava flows from the Mount Adams stratovolcano and its basaltic periphery in the Cascade arc, southern Washington, USA indicate a major component from intraplate mantle sources, a relatively small subduction component, and interaction with young mafic crust at depth. Major- and trace-element patterns for Mount Adams...