Publications

In 2017, Hurricane Maria triggered more than 70 000 landslides in Puerto Rico. After initiation, these predominantly shallow landslides were mobilized to varying extents – some landslides only traveled partway downslope, whereas others reached drainage channels and were mobilized into long-traveled debris flows that could severely impact roads and infrastructure. Thus, forecasting...

The southernmost portion of the Cascadia Subduction zone in Northern California produces high rates of moderate and large earthquakes owing to subduction of the Gorda slab and deformation associated with the Mendocino Triple Junction. Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is rapidly advancing as a method for detecting earthquakes and imaging crustal structure. We have begun a long-term DAS...

The U.S. Geological Survey has conducted annual fishery surveys across Lake Superior since 1978 that describe trends in fish species occurrence and relative abundance to inform fisheries management and ecosystem health. In 2024, the Lake Superior fish community was sampled with daytime bottom and surface trawls at 72 nearshore locations in June and 36 offshore locations in July...

In the steep and mountainous environment of western Oregon, debris flows pose a considerable threat to property, infrastructure and life. Wildfire is commonly known to increase the susceptibility of steep slopes to debris flows, but the extent of this process in the western Cascades is not well understood. The US Geological Survey (USGS) currently estimates postfire debris-flow...

The pallid sturgeon Scaphirhynchus albus is a long-lived, endangered fish in the Missouri River. Individuals become piscivorous as adults, so recruitment from stocking or reproduction could reduce populations of prey, including Macrhybopsis chubs. We constructed an individual- and age-based, multi-species, predator-prey-competitor model (IAMP) to represent the benthic community...

Anthropogenic influences like land use and climate variability interact with natural heterogeneity to influence the persistence of stream salamanders. Using occupancy modeling in the southern Appalachian Mountains, we investigated the influence of land use, climate, and physical context (e.g., drainage area, elevation) on stream salamander occupancy, noting species, and life stage...

The thermal structure of the continental crust plays a critical role in understanding its elastic and rheologic properties as well as its dynamic processes. Thermal parameter data sets on continental scales have been used to constrain the crustal thermal structure, including both the direct (e.g. temperature, heat flux and heat conductivity measured at the surface) and indirect (e.g...

Robust and reliable models are needed to understand how coastlines will evolve over the coming decades, driven by both natural variability and climate change. This study evaluated how accurately five popular ‘reduced-complexity’ models replicate multi-decadal shoreline change at Narrabeen-Collaroy Beach, a sandy embayment in Sydney, Australia. Measured shoreline positions derived from

Although established techniques for remote sensing of river bathymetry perform poorly in turbid water, image velocimetry can be effective under these conditions. This study describes a framework for mapping both of these attributes: Depths Inferred from Velocities Estimated by Remote Sensing, or DIVERS. The workflow involves linking image-derived velocities to depth via a flow resistance...

Climate change is affecting coastal ecosystems worldwide as water temperatures increase, hydrologic regimes change, and sea levels rise. Consequently, estuaries risk declines in ecosystem functioning due to increasing temperatures and other hydrologic factors. Characterizing and predicting estuarine water temperature are challenging because these systems are highly dynamic. Statistical...

Freshwater amphipods play a key role as forage for breeding and migrating waterfowl in wetlands throughout the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of North America. Amphipod populations declined in recent decades, but there is a limited understanding of mechanisms for their decline and their uneven distribution across the landscape. Row crop agriculture is abundant in the PPR, but the...

Coastal erosion, intensified by sea level rise, poses significant threats to coastal communities in Hawaiʻi and similar island communities. This study projects long-term shoreline change on the Hawaiian Island of O‘ahu using the data-assimilated CoSMoS-COAST shoreline change model. CoSMoS-COAST models four key shoreline processes: (1) Alongshore transport, (2) Recession due to sea level...