Publications

Since 1958, about ninety seismic refraction/wide angle reflection profiles, with a cumulative length of more than sixty thousand kilometers, have been completed in mainland China. We summarize the results in the form of (1) a new contour map of crustal thickness, (2) fourteen representative crustal seismic velocity–depth columns for various tectonic units, and, (3) a Pn velocity map. We...

Flood lavas are major geological features on all the major rocky planetary bodies. They provide important insight into the dynamics and chemistry of the interior of these bodies. On the Earth, they appear to be associated with major and mass extinction events. It is therefore not surprising that there has been significant research on flood lavas in recent years. Initial models suggested...

The coastal zone of southeastern Louisiana is the product of numerous cycles of progradation, abandonment, and marine transgression of the Mississippi River delta. Currently, the shoreline in the Barataria Bight is undergoing significant erosion and retreat, and understanding its evolution is crucial in stabilization efforts. This study uses an extensive collection of geophysical and...

Earth's largest calderas form as the ground collapses during immense volcanic eruptions, when hundreds to thousands of cubic kilometres of magma are explosively withdrawn from the Earth's crust over a period of days to weeks. Continuing long after such great eruptions, the resulting calderas often exhibit pronounced unrest, with frequent earthquakes, alternating uplift and subsidence of...

NASA’s Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL) is a raster-scanning, waveform-resolving, green-wavelength (532 nm) lidar designed to map near-shore bathymetry, topography, and vegetation structure simultaneously. The EAARL sensor records the time history of the return waveform within a small footprint (20 cm diameter) for each laser pulse, enabling characterization of...

The Tecomán, Mexico earthquake (also called the “Colima earthquake”) of January 21, 2003 (M 7.6) triggered several hundreds of landslides in the coastal cordilleras of Colima State, near the earthquake source, and several thousands in the volcanic highlands north and northwest of Colima City. These landslides, mostly shallow and disrupted failures, caused minor damage to roads, to a...

Excavating into the shallow Martian subsurface has the potential to expose stratigraphic layers and mature regolith, which may hold a record of more ancient aqueous interactions than those expected under current Martian surface conditions. During the Spirit rover's exploration of Gusev crater, rover wheels were used to dig three trenches into the subsurface regolith down to 6-11 cm depth...

Years of discharge measurements that precede and follow the cataclysmic 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Washington, provide an exceptional opportunity to examine the responses of peak flows to abrupt, widespread, devastating landscape disturbance. Multiple basins surrounding Mount St. Helens (300–1300 km2 drainage areas) were variously disturbed by: (1) a debris avalanche that buried...

In tropical and subtropical estuaries, gradients of primary productivity and salinity are generally invoked to explain patterns in community structure and standing crops of fishes. We documented spatial and temporal patterns in fish community structure and standing crops along salinity and nutrient gradients in two subtropical drainages of Everglades National Park, USA. The Shark River...

A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system transmits electromagnetic (EM) waves at a wavelength that can range from a few millimeters to tens of centimeters. The radar wave propagates through the atmosphere and interacts with the Earth’s surface. Part of the energy is reflected back to the SAR system and recorded. Using a sophisticated image processing technique, called SAR processing...

In June of 1997, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with Coastal Carolina University, conducted a geophysical survey of the shallow geologic framework of the continental shelf offshore of central South Carolina from the Isle of Palms to Bull Island. This report serves as an archive of unprocessed digital boomer seismic reflection data, trackline maps, navigation files, GIS...

Explosive eruptions at Mauna Loa summit ejected coarse-grained blocks (free of lava coatings) from Moku'aweoweo caldera. Most are gabbronorites and gabbros that have 0–26 vol.% olivine and 1–29 vol.% oikocrystic orthopyroxene. Some blocks are ferrogabbros and diorites with micrographic matrices, and diorite veins (≤2 cm) cross-cut some gabbronorites and gabbros. One block is an open...