Publications

Debris flows transport large quantities of water and granular material, such as sediment and wood, and this mixture can have devastating impacts on life and infrastructure. The proportion of large woody debris (LWD) incorporated into debris flows can be enhanced in forested areas recently burned by wildfire, because wood recruitment into channels accelerates in burned forests. In this study, we ex

Planets are expected to conclude their growth through a series of giant impacts: energetic, global events that significantly alter planetary composition and evolution. Computer models and theory have elucidated the diverse outcomes of giant impacts in detail, improving our ability to interpret collision conditions from observations of their remnants. However, many open questions remain, as even th

Modern seismic data are collected, distributed, and analyzed using digital formats, and this has become a standard for the field. Although most modern seismometers still make use of analog electronic circuits, their data are converted from an analog voltage output to time‐tagged counts by way of digitization. Although much of the digitization process is not complicated to conceptualize, there is a

Increased wildfire activity in the western United States has exposed regional gaps in our understanding of postfire debris-flow generation. To address this problem, we characterized flows in an unstudied area to test the rainfall intensity-duration control of the hazard. Our rainfall measurements and field observations from the northern Sierra Nevada (California, USA) show that debris flows result

The 6 February 2023 Mw 7.8 Pazarcık and subsequent Mw  7.5 Elbistan earthquakes generated strong ground shaking that resulted in catastrophic human and economic loss across south‐central Türkiye and northwest Syria. The rapid characterization of the earthquakes, including their location, size, fault geometries, and slip kinematics, is critical to estimate the impact of significant seismic events.

Earthquakes can impart varying degrees of damage and permanent, inelastic strain on materials, potentially resulting in ruptures that may promote hazards such as landslides and other collapse events. However, the accumulation of damage in rocks under the frequency and amplitude of shaking experienced during earthquake events is rarely systematically measured due to technical limitations. Here, we

In this study, we compare the Southern California Earthquake Center CyberShake platform against the Next Generation Attenuation‐West2 empirical datasets. Because the CyberShake and empirical datasets cover very different magnitude ranges and site conditions, we develop ground‐motion models (GMMs) for CyberShake datasets to compare trends with empirical GMMs and decompose the residuals for further

Landslide susceptibility maps indicate the spatial distribution of landslide likelihood. Modeling susceptibility over large or diverse terrains remains a challenge due to the sparsity of landslide data (mapped extent of known landslides) and the variability in triggering conditions. Several different data sampling strategies of landslide locations used to train a susceptibility model are used to m

The delineation of faults that pose seismic risk in intraplate seismic zones and the mapping of features associated with failed rift basins can help our understanding of links between the two. We use new high-resolution aeromagnetic data, previous borehole sample information, and reprocessed seismic reflection profiles to image subsurface structures and evaluate recent fault activity within the Ch

Wildfire can alter soil-hydraulic properties, often resulting in an increased prevalence of infiltration-excess overland flow and greater potential for debris-flow hazards. Mini disk tension infiltrometers (MDIs) can be used to estimate soil hydraulic properties, such as field-saturated hydraulic conductivity (Kfs) and wetting front potential (Hf), and their spatial variability following wildfire.

Io is unlike any other body in the Solar System making questions about its chemical composition especially interesting and challenging. This chapter examines the many different, but frustratingly indirect, constraints we have on the bulk composition of this restless moon. A detailed consideration of Io’s lavas is used to illustrate how decades of research have bounded, but not pinned down, the che

The idea of mining the Moon, once purely science-fiction, is now on the verge of becoming reality. Taking advantage of the resources on the Moon is part of the plans of many nations and some enterprising commercial entities; demonstrating in-situ (in place) resource utilization near the lunar south pole is an explicit goal of the United States’ Artemis program. Economic extraction and sustainable