Publications

Thirty interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) images, spanning various intervals during 1992–2000, document coeruptive and posteruptive deformation of the 1992–1993 eruption on Seguam Island, Alaska. A procedure that combines standard damped least squares inverse methods and collective surfaces, identifies three dominant amorphous clusters of deformation point sources...

Debris flows are slurries of sediment and water that are both an important geologic process and a major hazard. They present large risks to those living in mountainous areas, as well as downstream from volcanoes in the case of the flows known as lahars that may travel 100200 kilometers (62-124 miles). The accompanying video records a series of debris flow surges at Jiangjia Ravine, in...

Not all earthquakes shake the ground. The so-called silent types are forcing scientists to rethink their understanding of the way quake-prone faults behave. In rare instances, silent earthquakes that occur along the flakes of seaside volcanoes may cascade into monstrous landslides that crash into the sea and trigger towering tsunamis. Silent earthquakes that take place within fault zones...

Eruption intensity is largely controlled by decompression‐induced release of water‐rich gas dissolved in magma. It is not simply the amount of gas that dictates how forcefully magma is propelled upwards during an eruption, but also the rate of degassing, which is partly a function of the supersaturation pressure (ΔPcritical) triggering gas bubble nucleation. High temperature and pressure

Strontium isotope and Sr/Ca ratios measured in situ by ion microprobe along radial transects of otoliths of juvenile chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) vary between watersheds with contrasting geology. Otoliths from ocean-type chinook from Skagit River estuary, Washington, had prehatch regions with 87Sr/86Sr ratios of ~0.709, suggesting a maternally inherited marine signature...

Wai‘anae Volcano comprises the western half of O‘ahu Island, but until recently little was known about the submarine portion of this volcano. Seven new submersible dives, conducted in 2001 and 2002, and multibeam bathymetry offshore of Wai‘anae provide evidence pertaining to the overall growth of the volcano's edifice as well as the timing of collapses that formed the Wai‘anae slump...

Kulshan caldera (4.5×8 km), at the northeast foot of Mount Baker, is filled with rhyodacite ignimbrite (1.15 Ma) and postcaldera lavas and is only the third Quaternary caldera identified in the Cascade arc. A gravity traverse across the caldera yields a steep-sided, symmetrical, complete Bouguer anomaly of −16 mGal centered over the caldera. Density considerations suggest that the...

Perhaps the most difficult task facing volcanologists today is that of distinguishing between low-level volcanic restlessness and activity that presages a full-scale eruption. We illustrate these difficulties by reexamining the sequence of events that led to the 18 May 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, activity that is often presented as a classic example of early phreatic explosions...

Basaltic glass grains from the submarine south flank of Kı̄lauea, Hawai′i, have Cl concentrations of 0.01–1.68 wt%, the latter being the highest Cl content yet recorded for a Hawaiian glass. The high-Cl glass grains are products of brine assimilation by tholeiite magma. The glasses are grains in a sandstone clast from bedded breccias draping the southwestern margin of Kı̄lauea’s...

Black manganese-iron oxide crusts form on most exposed rock on the ocean floor. Such crusts are well developed on the steep lava slopes of the Hawaiian Ridge and have been sampled during dredging and submersible dives. The crusts also occur on fragments detached from bedrock by mass wasting, on submerged coral reefs, and on poorly lithified sedimentary rocks. The thickness of the crusts...

The Taupo Volcanic Zone (TVZ), New Zealand is a region characterized by very high magma eruption rates and extremely high heat flow, which is manifest in high-temperature geothermal waters. The shear wave velocity structure across the region is inferred using non-linear inversion of receiver functions, which were derived from teleseismic earthquake data. Results from the non-linear...

Field mapping of young lava flows at Aleutian volcanoes is logistically difficult, and the utility of optical images from aircraft or satellites for this purpose is greatly reduced by persistent cloud cover. These factors have hampered earlier estimates of the areas and volumes of three young lava flows at Westdahl Volcano, including its most recent (1991–1992) flow. We combined...