Publications

A generally unrecognized type of pyroclastic deposit was produced by rapid avalanches of intimately mixed snow and hot pyroclastic debris during eruptions at Mount St. Helens, Nevado del Ruiz, and Redoubt Volcano between 1982 and 1989. These "mixed avalanches" traveled as far as 14 km at velocities up to ∼27 m/s, involved as much as 107 m3 of rock and ice, and left unmelted deposits of...

During the eruption of Redoubt Volcano from December 1989 through April 1990, the Alaska Volcano Observatory issued advance warnings of several tephra eruptions based on changes in seismic activity related to the occurrence of precursory swarms of long-period (LP) seismic events (dominant period of about 0.5 s). The initial eruption on December 14 occurred after 23 years of quiescence...

Data sets for spring and stream chemistry are combined to estimate convective heat discharge and discharge anomalous amounts of sodium and chloride for the Wood River group of springs south of Crater Lake. The best estimate of heat discharge is 87 MWt based on chloride inventory; this value is 3-5 times the heat input to Crater Lake itself. Anomalous discharges of sodium and chloride are...

The Hat Creek fault is a major, young, north-striking, normal fault along the western boundary of extensional Basin and Range deformation in the Lessen region of northeastern California. Volcanic rocks of Quaternary and late Pliocene age are displaced a total of >500 m down to the west along west-facing, en echelon scarps now retreated to ∼35° slopes. Fresh, young scarps as much as 30 m...

Many types of landslide movement are induced by large rainstorms, and empirical rainfall intensity/duration thresholds for initiating movement have been determined for various parts of the world. In this paper, I present a simple pressure diffusion model that provides a physically based hydrologic link between rainfall intensity/duration at the ground surface and destabilizing pore-water...

A large landslide failed catastrophically along steep, 90-m (300-ft) high bluffs overlooking the waters of Puget Sound at Tacoma, Washington, in April of 1949, three days after the region was struck by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. The area of failure was investigated to estimate the static and seismic stability of the pre-earthquake slope and to identify factors that contributed to the...

No abstract available.

Published and new data for chemical and isotopic samples from wells and springs on Kilauea Volcano and vicinity are presented. These data are used to understand processes that determine the chemistry of dilute meteoric water, mixtures with sea water, and thermal water. Data for well and spring samples of non-thermal water indicate that mixing with sea water and dissolution of rock from...

No abstract available

Trace-element abundances were measured in situ by ion microprobe in five samples of hornblende and melt ranging from basaltic andesite to high-silica rhyolite. Except for one sample, for which quench overgrowth or disequilibrium is suspected, the abundance ratios show systematic inter-element and inter-sample variations, and probably approach true partition coefficients. Apparent...

Aftershocks of large earthquakes tend to occur close to the main rupture zone, and can be used to constrain its dimensions. But following the 1992 Landers earthquake (magnitude M(w) = 7.3) in southern California, many aftershocks were reported in areas remote from the mainshock. Intriguingly, this remote seismicity occurred in small clusters near active volcanic and geothermal systems...

The papers in this chapter discuss some of the failures and successes that resulted from the societal response by a multitude of agencies to the Loma Prieta earthquake. Some of the lessons learned were old ones relearned. Other lessons were obvious ones which had gone unnoticed. Still, knowledge gained from past earthquakes spawned planning and mitigation efforts which proved to be...