Publications

Polygons represent head scarps and flank scarps associated with landslide deposits in the Little North Santiam River Basin, Oregon. This work was completed as part of the Master's thesis "Turbidity Monitoring and LiDAR Imagery Indicate Landslides are Primary Source of Suspended-Sediment Load in the Little North Santiam River Basin, Oregon, Winter 2009-2010" by Steven Sobieszczyk...

The newly installed Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) strainmeters record signals from tectonic activity, Earth tides, and atmospheric pressure. Important information about tectonic processes may occur at amplitudes at and below tidal strains and pressure loading. If incorrect assumptions are made regarding the background noise in the strain data, then the estimates of tectonic signal...

HiRISE images of Mars with ground sampling down to 25 cm/pixel show that the dust-rich mantle covering the surfaces of the Tharsis Montes is organized into ridges whose form and distribution are consistent with formation by aeolian saltation. Other dusty areas near the volcanoes and elsewhere on the planet exhibit a similar morphology. The material composing these "reticulate" bedforms...

This paper presents a verification of three simulations of the ShakeOut scenario, an Mw 7.8 earthquake on a portion of the San Andreas fault in southern California, conducted by three different groups at the Southern California Earthquake Center using the SCEC Community Velocity Model for this region. We conducted two simulations using the finite difference method, and one by the finite...

The Meadow Creek landslide, part of the Coal Hill landslide complex in western Kane County, Utah, is about 1.7 miles (2.7 km) wide and 1.3 miles (2.1 km) long and contains six smaller historical slides. The upper part of the Meadow Creek landslide is gently sloping and consists of displaced and back-rotated blocks of Cretaceous Dakota and Cedar Mountain Formations that form northeast- to...

Shallow rainfall-induced landslides commonly occur under conditions of transient infiltration into initially unsaturated soils. In an effort to predict the timing and location of such landslides, we developed a model of the infiltration process using a two-layer system that consists of an unsaturated zone above a saturated zone and implemented this model in a geographic information...

We invert peak ground velocity and acceleration (PGV and PGA) to estimate rupture direction and rupture velocity for 47 moderate earthquakes (3.5≥M≥5.4) in northern California. We correct sets of PGAs and PGVs recorded at stations less than 55–125 km, depending on source depth, for site amplification and source–receiver distance, then fit the residual peak motions to the unilateral...

Rates and styles of landslide motion are sensitive to pore-water pressure changes caused by changes in soil porosity accompanying shear deformation. Soil may either contract or dilate upon shearing, depending upon whether its initial porosity is greater or less, respectively, than a critical-state porosity attained after sufficiently high strain. We observed complications in this...

The formation, evolution, collapse, and subsequent resurrection of a vent within Halema'uma'u Crater, Kilauea Volcano, produced energetic and varied degassing signals recorded by a nearby infrasound array between 2008 and early 2009. After 25 years of quiescence, a vent-clearing explosive burst on 19 March 2008 produced a clear, complex acoustic signal. Near-continuous harmonic...

This report presents two methods for implementing the earthquake ground-motion prediction equations released in 2008 as part of the Next Generation Attenuation of Ground Motions (NGA-West, or NGA) project coordinated by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER). These models were developed for predicting ground-motion parameters for shallow crustal earthquakes in active...

Hurricane Gustav, a category 2 storm with 170 kilometers per hour (km/h) winds, approached the Louisiana coast from the south-southeast, making landfall near Cocodrie, La., on September 1, 2008 (Beven and Kimberlain, 2009); Hurricane Ike, a category 2 storm with 175 km/h winds, approached the Texas coast from the southeast, paralleling offshore of the Louisiana coast, before making...

Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) is the American Geophysical Union's premier journal of fast, groundbreaking communication. It rapidly publishes high- impact,letter-length articles, and it is the top-cited multidisciplinary geosciences journal over the past 10 years, with an impact factor that increased again in 2009, to 3.204. For manuscripts submitted to GRL, the median time to first...