All Publications

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated undiscovered, technically recoverable mean conventional resources of 12 million barrels of oil and 184 billion cubic feet of gas in the Buda Limestone of Texas.

The Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) hosts major seismic and tsunami hazards, yet key questions persist about the relationship between margin structure, fluid distribution, episodic tremor and slip, shallow megathrust behavior, shaking and tsunamigenesis, and the resulting hazard estimates. Addressing these problems requires an empirically grounded, three‐dimensional seismic velocity model...

Porphyritic intrusions in the southeast Beartooth Mountains and porphyritic cobbles from the Torchlight conglomerate of the Cenomanian Frontier Formation in Bighorn basin (Montana-Wyoming, USA) bear striking resemblance. We utilize geologic mapping, petrography, geochemistry, and geochronology to characterize rocks from both locations and test whether the Beartooth Mountains area was the

Ultraviolet (UV) remote sensing is widely used to detect volcanic sulfur dioxide (SO₂) due to its high sensitivity and favorable spatial and temporal resolution. However, significant discrepancies have been reported between ground-based and satellite-based UV observations of dense volcanic plumes. A notable example is the 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption of Kīlauea, where SO₂ emission...

Digital flood-inundation maps for 35.5 miles of the Blue River, in and near Kansas City, Missouri, were created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the City of Kansas City. Maps were also developed for a combined 7.3 miles of Brush Creek (4.4 miles) and Indian Creek (2.9 miles), two primary tributaries to the Blue River in the study reach. The flood-inundation maps...

Wildfire risk mitigation on private property is central to reducing community wildfire vulnerability. Homeowners have control over many of the key factors that contribute to wildfire risk on their parcels, yet vulnerable conditions persist. One potential explanation is a misalignment between homeowners' and trained assessors' perceptions of parcel-level wildfire risk. Prior research has...

Daily high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery at active volcanoes could be used to anticipate eruptions and save lives, but is only rarely available or used in real time. Specifically, daily repeat coverage of ground deformation, topography, and surface morphology at volcanoes is now possible using high-spatial resolution optical and radar imagery (

Numerical modeling of Earth surface processes emerged as an important scientific tool in the late 1960s to mid-1970s, driven by the development of finite element methods in computer science. These advancements, initially applied in civil engineering, enabled scientists to simulate complex geological phenomena. At that time, models were often only described in publications, access was...

The consequences of volcanic eruptions span a broad range. Large explosive eruptions that recur every several hundred to thousands of years can impact global climate, but even small eruptions of a magnitude that takes place multiple times each year someplace on Earth can have devastating effects given the large number of people who live near volcanoes. Ground-based monitoring is...

Source–station distance is a central input to ground‐motion models (GMMs) for predicting seismic shaking. GMM development uses distance metrics including the Joyner–Boore distance, which is the shortest distance from an observation point to the surface projection of the earthquake rupture, and Rrup the shortest distance to the rupture in three dimensions. Thompson and Baltay (2018)...

Post-wildfire flooding and debris flows pose a threat to ecosystems and infrastructure. As the frequency and size of severe wildfires increase, there is a growing need for predictive debris flow hazard modeling in unburned but fire-prone landscapes. However, no crosswalks have been established between physics-based models of fire behavior and the remotely sensed burn severity inputs...

Accurate collection of fluvial suspended‑sediment and water‑quality samples is essential for understanding transport processes, evaluating river health, quantifying loads, and supporting regulatory and management decisions. Since 1939, the Federal Interagency Sedimentation Project (FISP) has led the development and standardization of sediment‑sampling equipment and methods across Federal...