Publications

Two dendrochronological properties – ring width and ring chemistry – were investigated in trees near Cinder Cone in Lassen Volcanic National Park, northeastern California, for the purpose of re-evaluating the date of its eruption. Cinder Cone is thought to have erupted in AD 1666 based on ring-width evidence, but interpreting ring-width changes alone is not straightforward because many...

A new depth-averaged model of debris-flow motion describes simultaneous evolution of flow velocity and depth, solid and fluid volume fractions, and pore-fluid pressure. Non-hydrostatic pore-fluid pressure is produced by dilatancy, a state-dependent property that links the depth-averaged shear rate and volumetric strain rate of the granular phase. Pore-pressure changes caused by shearing...

Digital cameras, sensitive to specific regions of the ultra-violet (UV) spectrum, have been employed for quantifying sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in recent years. The instruments make use of the selective absorption of UV light by SO2 molecules to determine pathlength concentration. Many monitoring advantages are gained by using this technique, but the accuracy and limitations have not...

During the past 30 years, more than 100 airplanes have inadvertently flown through clouds of volcanic ash from erupting volcanoes. Such encounters have caused millions of dollars in damage to the aircraft and have endangered the lives of tens of thousands of passengers. In a few severe cases, total engine failure resulted when ash was ingested into turbines and coating turbine blades...

The flow structure in the developing region of a turbulent jet has been examined using particle image velocimetry methods, considering the flow at steady state conditions. The velocity fields were integrated to determine the ratio of the entrained air speed to the jet speed, which was approximately 0.03 for a range of Mach numbers up to 0.89 and Reynolds numbers up to 217,000. This range...

We present a velocity model of the onshore and offshore regions around the southern part of the island of Hawaii, including southern Mauna Kea, southeastern Hualalai, and the active volcanoes of Mauna Loa, and Kilauea, and Loihi seamount. The velocity model was inverted from about 200,000 first-arrival traveltime picks of earthquakes and air gun shots recorded at the Hawaiian Volcano...

Reef drowning and backstepping have long been recognised as reef responses to sea-level rise on subsiding margins. During the Late Pleistocene (~500–14 ka) Hawaiian reefs grew in response to rapid subsidence and 120 m 100 kyr sea-level cycles, with recent work on the submerged drowned reefs around the big island of Hawaii, and in other locations from the last deglacial, providing insight...

Kilauea Iki lava lake formed in 1959 as a closed chamber of 40 million m3 of picritic magma. Repeated drilling and sampling of the lake allows recognition of processes of magmatic differentiation, and places time restrictions on the periods when they operated. This paper focuses on evidence for the occurrence of lateral convection in the olivine-depleted layer, and constraints on the...

In August 1996, a period of elevated seismicity commenced beneath Iliamna Volcano, Alaska. This activity lasted until early 1997, consisted of over 3000 earthquakes, and was accompanied by elevated emissions of volcanic gases. No eruption occurred and seismicity returned to background levels where it has remained since. We use waveform alignment with bispectrum-verified cross-correlation...

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) has been used to detect relative water level changes in wetlands. We developed an innovative method to integrate InSAR and satellite radar altimetry for measuring absolute or geocentric water level changes and applied the methodology to remote areas of swamp forest in coastal Louisiana. Coherence analysis of InSAR pairs suggested that the...

Assessments of pyroclastic flow (PF) hazards are commonly based on mapping of PF and surge deposits and estimations of inundation limits, and/or computer models of varying degrees of sophistication. In volcanic crises a PF hazard map may be sorely needed, but limited time, exposures, or safety aspects may preclude fieldwork, and insufficient time or baseline data may be available for...

During volcanic eruptions, volcanic ash transport and dispersion models (VATDs) are used to forecast the location and movement of ash clouds over hours to days in order to define hazards to aircraft and to communities downwind. Those models use input parameters, called “eruption source parameters”, such as plume height H, mass eruption rate Ṁ, duration D, and the mass fraction m63 of...