Publications

Since the mid-1970s, large-scale episodic events such as disease epidemics, mass mortalities, harmful algal blooms and other population explosions have been occurring in marine environments at an historically unprecedented rate. The variety of organisms involved (host, pathogens and other opportunists) and the absolute number of episodes have also increased during this period. Are these...

Movement of soil particles in atmospheres is a normal planetary process. Images of Martian dust devils (wind-spouts) and dust storms captured by NASA's Pathfinder have demonstrated the significant role that storm activity plays in creating the red atmospheric haze of Mars. On Earth, desert soils moving in the atmosphere are responsible for the orange hues in brilliant sunrises and...

A linear regression (studentized) residual analysis was used to identify potential shoreline position outliers and to investigate the effect of the outliers on shoreline rate-of-change values for transects along the Outer Banks, North Carolina. Results from this analysis showed that, over a 134 year period, storm-influenced data contribute statistically significant information to the...

No abstract available.

The Gulf of Carpentaria is an epicontinental sea (maximum depth 70 m) between Australia and New Guinea, bordered to the east by Torres Strait (currently 12 m deep) and to the west by the Arafura Sill (53 m below present sea level). Throughout the Quaternary, during times of low sea-level, the Gulf was separated from the open waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, forming Lake...

No abstract available.

Defining the habitats of fishes and associated fauna on outer continental shelves is problematic given the paucity of data on the actual types and distributions of seafloor habitats. However many regions have good data on the distributions of fishes from resource surveys or catch statistics because of the economic importance of the fisheries. Fish distribution data (species or...

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Flagstaff, Arizona is producing a Web-based, user-friendly interface that integrates powerful Geographic Information Systems (GIS) statistical and spatial relational tools for analyses of planetary datasets. The interface, known as “Planetary Interactive GIS-on-the-Web Analyzable Database” (PIGWAD), provides database support for the research...

The January 13, 2001 earthquake (M-7.6) off the coast of El Salvador triggered widespread damaging landslides in many parts of the El Salvador. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the Salvadoran government requested technical assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); USAID, in turn, requested help from technical experts in landslide hazards from the U.S...

No abstract available.

On February 13, 2001, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake occurred about 40 km eastsoutheast of the capital city of San Salvador in central El Salvador and triggered thousands of landslides in the area east of Lago de Ilopango. The landslides are concentrated in a 2,500-km2 area and are particularly abundant in areas underlain by thick deposits of poorly consolidated, late Pleistocene and...

Since the early 1990's, the magnitude and location of an earthquake have been available within minutes on the Internet. Now, as a result of work by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and with the cooperation of various regional seismic networks, people who experience an earthquake can go online and share information about its effects to help create a map of shaking intensities and damage...