Publications

Space geodetic measurements from the Envisat satellite between 2003 and 2010 show that subsidence rates near the southeastern shoreline of the Salton Sea in Southern California are up to 52mmyr−1 greater than the far-field background rate. By comparing these measurements with model predictions, we find that this subsidence appears to be dominated by poroelastic contraction associated...

At least 170 volcanoes in 12 States and 2 territories have erupted in the past 12,000 years and have the potential to erupt again. Consequences of eruptions from U.S. volcanoes can extend far beyond the volcano’s immediate area. Many aspects of our daily life are vulnerable to volcano hazards, including air travel, regional power generation and transmission infrastructure, interstate

High-resolution seismic-reflection and refraction images of the 1906 surface rupture zone of the San Andreas Fault near Woodside, California reveal evidence for one or more additional near-surface (within about 3 meters [m] depth) fault strands within about 25 m of the 1906 surface rupture. The 1906 surface rupture above the groundwater table (vadose zone) has been observed in...

One of the major Mars discoveries of recent years is the existence of recurring slope lineae (RSL), which suggests that liquid water occurs on or near the surface of Mars today. These dark and narrow features emerge from steep, rocky exposures and incrementally grow, fade, and reform on a seasonal basis and are detected in images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera...

Before NASA’s Dawn mission, the dwarf planet Ceres was widely believed to contain a substantial ice-rich layer below its rocky surface. The existence of such a layer has significant implications for Ceres’s formation, evolution, and astrobiological potential. Ceres is warmer than icy worlds in the outer Solar System and, if its shallow subsurface is ice-rich, large impact craters are...

Previous studies have identified carbon dioxide (CO2) on the surfaces of Jovian and Galilean satellites in regions of non-ice material that are too warm for CO2 ice to exist. CO2 ice would quickly sublimate if not retained by a less-volatile material. To ascertain what non-ice species may be responsible for stabilizing this CO2, we performed CO2 gas adsorption experiments on thirteen...

During the summer 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey collected geologic and geotechnical data for two sites on coastal bluffs along the eastern shore of Puget Sound, Washington. The U.S. Geological Survey also installed hydrologic instrumentation at the sites and collected specimens for laboratory testing. The two sites are located on City of Mukilteo open-space land and are about 0.6...

Wind blowing over sand on Earth produces decimeter-wavelength ripples and hundred-meter– to kilometer-wavelength dunes: bedforms of two distinct size modes. Observations from the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal that Mars hosts a third stable wind-driven bedform, with meter-scale wavelengths. These bedforms are spatially uniform in size...

In the search for evidence of past aqueous activity by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, fracture-filling veins and rock coatings are prime candidates for exploration. At one location within a segment of remaining rim material surrounding Endeavour Crater, a set of “boxwork” fractures in an outcrop called Esperance are filled by a bright, hydrated, and highly siliceous (SiO2 ~ 66...

On 1 June 2014 (03:35 UTC), an Mw 3.2 earthquake occurred in Weld County, Colorado, a historically aseismic area of the Denver–Julesburg basin. Weld County is a prominent area of oil and gas development, including many high‐rate class II wastewater injection wells. In the days following the earthquake, the University of Colorado, with support from the U.S. Geological Survey and...

We describe a parallel implementation of TRIGRS, the Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-Based Regional Slope-Stability Model for the timing and distribution of rainfall-induced shallow landslides. We have parallelized the four time-demanding execution modes of TRIGRS, namely both the saturated and unsaturated model with finite and infinite soil depth options, within the Message...

We thank Andrea Tertulliani and his colleagues for their interest in our article on the 2015 Gorkha earthquake (Martin, Hough, et al., 2015), and for their comments pertaining to our study (Tertulliani et al., 2016). Indeed, as they note, a comprehensive assessment of macroseismic effects for an earthquake with far‐reaching effects as that of Gorkha is not only critically important but...