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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Force Chains As The Link Between Particle And Bulk Friction Angles In Granular Material, Adam M. Booth, Ryan Hurley, Michael P. Lamb, José E. Andrade Dec 2014

Force Chains As The Link Between Particle And Bulk Friction Angles In Granular Material, Adam M. Booth, Ryan Hurley, Michael P. Lamb, José E. Andrade

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

From sediment transport in rivers to landslides, predictions of granular motion rely on a Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion parameterized by a friction angle. Measured friction angles are generally large for single grains, smaller for large numbers of grains, and no theory exists for intermediate numbers of grains. We propose that a continuum of friction angles exists between single-grain and bulk friction angles due to grain-to-grain force chains. Physical experiments, probabilistic modeling, and discrete element modeling demonstrate that friction angles decrease by up to 15° as the number of potentially mobile grains increases from 1 to ~20. Decreased stability occurs as longer …


Earthquake And Tsunami Forecasts: Relation Of Slow Slip Events To Subsequent Earthquake Rupture, Timothy H. Dixon, Yan Jiang, Rocco Malservisi, Robert Mccaffrey, Nicholas Voss, Marino Protti, Victor Gonzalez Dec 2014

Earthquake And Tsunami Forecasts: Relation Of Slow Slip Events To Subsequent Earthquake Rupture, Timothy H. Dixon, Yan Jiang, Rocco Malservisi, Robert Mccaffrey, Nicholas Voss, Marino Protti, Victor Gonzalez

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The 5 September 2012 Mw 7.6 earthquake on the Costa Rica subduction plate boundary followed a 62-y interseismic period. High-precision GPS recorded numerous slow slip events (SSEs) in the decade leading up to the earthquake, both up-dip and down-dip of seismic rupture. Deeper SSEs were larger than shallower ones and, if characteristic of the interseismic period, release most locking down-dip of the earthquake, limiting down-dip rupture and earthquake magnitude. Shallower SSEs were smaller, accounting for some but not all interseismic locking. One SSE occurred several months before the earthquake, but changes in Mohr–Coulomb failure stress were probably too small to …


Hydrogeology Of Pumice-Hosted Fens In The Winema-Fremont National Forest, Oregon, Usa, Michael L. Cummings, Jonathan Michael Weatherford, Leslie A. Mowbray Dec 2014

Hydrogeology Of Pumice-Hosted Fens In The Winema-Fremont National Forest, Oregon, Usa, Michael L. Cummings, Jonathan Michael Weatherford, Leslie A. Mowbray

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Subaerial fallout from the Holocene eruption of Mount Mazama in the Oregon Cascade Range was deposited upon relatively low permeability volcanic and volcaniclastic bedrock and regolith. In the Walker Rim study area, erosion by ephemeral streams shortly after the eruption disrupted the lateral continuity of the 270 to 300 cm-thick pumice deposit. Co-evolution of the surface- and ground-water systems in a low-relief, low-slope landscape allowed diffuse groundwater discharge from the banks of the evolving stream system. Accumulation of organic material from groundwater dependent ecosystems at these sites of discharge allowed peat deposits to form on gently sloping erosion surfaces cut …


Spring Thaw Ionic Pulses Boost Nutrient Availability And Microbial Growth In Entombed Antarctic Dry Valley Cryoconite Holes, Jon Telling, Alexandre M. Anesio, Martyn Tranter, Andrew G. Fountain, Thomas H. Nylen, Jon Hawkings, Virendra B. Singh, Preeti Kaur, Michaela Musilova, Jemma L. Wadham Dec 2014

Spring Thaw Ionic Pulses Boost Nutrient Availability And Microbial Growth In Entombed Antarctic Dry Valley Cryoconite Holes, Jon Telling, Alexandre M. Anesio, Martyn Tranter, Andrew G. Fountain, Thomas H. Nylen, Jon Hawkings, Virendra B. Singh, Preeti Kaur, Michaela Musilova, Jemma L. Wadham

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The seasonal melting of ice entombed cryoconite holes on McMurdo Dry Valley glaciers provides oases for life in the harsh environmental conditions of the polar desert where surface air temperatures only occasionally exceed 0°C during the Austral summer. Here we follow temporal changes in cryoconite hole biogeochemistry on Canada Glacier from fully frozen conditions through the initial stages of spring thaw toward fully melted holes. The cryoconite holes had a mean isolation age from the glacial drainage system of 3.4 years, with an increasing mass of aqueous nutrients (dissolved organic carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus) with longer isolation age. During …


Interseismic Locking On The Hikurangi Subduction Zone: Uncertainties From Slow-Slip Events, Robert Mccaffrey Oct 2014

Interseismic Locking On The Hikurangi Subduction Zone: Uncertainties From Slow-Slip Events, Robert Mccaffrey

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

lnterseismic locking on the Hikurangi subduction zone in New Zealand is examined in light of alternative assumed locking distributions and the impact of transients (slow-slip and volcanic sources) on temporal and spatial resolution. The modern pattern of locking in the north is poorly resolved and, based on simulations of possible transient behavior, may be an ephemeral feature of the subduction cycle. While there appears to be some contemporary locking in the northern half of the Hikurangi subduction zone (HSZ), its location is model dependent, and hence, its relationship to structure, slow-slip, or any transition zone there is unclear. Simulations of …


Hyperspectral Measurements Of Wet, Dry And Saline Soils From The Mcmurdo Dry Valleys: Soil Moisture Properties From Remote Sensing, Joseph S. Levy, Anne Nolin, Andrew G. Fountain, James W. Head Oct 2014

Hyperspectral Measurements Of Wet, Dry And Saline Soils From The Mcmurdo Dry Valleys: Soil Moisture Properties From Remote Sensing, Joseph S. Levy, Anne Nolin, Andrew G. Fountain, James W. Head

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Soil moisture is a spatially heterogeneous quantity in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica that exerts a large influence on the biological community and on the thermal state of Dry Valleys permafrost. The goal of this project was to determine whether hyperspectral remote sensing techniques could be used to determine soil moisture conditions in the Dry Valleys. We measured the spectral reflectance factors of wetted soil samples from the Dry Valleys under natural light conditions and related diagnostic spectral features to surface layer soil moisture content. Diagnostic water absorption features in the spectra at 1.4 mu m and 1.9 mu …


Gps Constraints On The Mw = 7.5 Ometepec Earthquake Sequence, Southern Mexico: Coseismic And Post-Seismic Deformation, Shannon E. Graham, Charles Demets, Enrique Cabral-Cano, Vladimir Kostoglodov, Andrea Walpersdorf, Nathalie Cotte, Michael Brudzinski, Robert Mccaffrey, Luis Salazar-Tlaczani Oct 2014

Gps Constraints On The Mw = 7.5 Ometepec Earthquake Sequence, Southern Mexico: Coseismic And Post-Seismic Deformation, Shannon E. Graham, Charles Demets, Enrique Cabral-Cano, Vladimir Kostoglodov, Andrea Walpersdorf, Nathalie Cotte, Michael Brudzinski, Robert Mccaffrey, Luis Salazar-Tlaczani

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

We use continuous GPS measurements from 31 stations in southernMexico to model coseismic slip and post-seismic deformation from the 2012 March 20 Mw = 7.5 Ometepec earthquake, the first large thrust earthquake to occur below central Mexico during the modern GPS era. Coseismic offsets ranging from ∼280 mm near the epicentre to 5 mm or less at sites far from the epicentre are fit best by a rupture focused between ∼15 and 35 km depth, consistent with an independent seismological estimate. The corresponding geodetic moment of 1.4 × 1020 N·m is within 10 per cent of two independent seismic …


History And Dynamics Of Net Rotation Of The Mantle And Lithosphere, Maxwell L. Rudolph, Shijie Zhong Aug 2014

History And Dynamics Of Net Rotation Of The Mantle And Lithosphere, Maxwell L. Rudolph, Shijie Zhong

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The net rotation of Earth’s lithosphere with respect to the underlying mantle is the longestwavelength component of toroidal flow in the mantle and is sensitive to both mantle buoyancy structure and lateral viscosity variations. The lithospheric net rotation in the geologic past implied by plate reconstructions using a hotspot reference frame for the past 100 Myr is up to five times greater than the presentday rate of lithospheric net rotation. We explore the role of lateral viscosity variations associated with subcontinental keels in producing the lithospheric net rotation for the geologic past and find that the introduction of subcontinental keels …


Near-Surface Internal Melting: A Substantial Mass Loss On Antarctic Dry Valley Glaciers, Matthew J. Hoffman, Andrew G. Fountain, Glen E. Liston Apr 2014

Near-Surface Internal Melting: A Substantial Mass Loss On Antarctic Dry Valley Glaciers, Matthew J. Hoffman, Andrew G. Fountain, Glen E. Liston

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The McMurdo Dry Valleys, southern Victoria Land, East Antarctica, are a polar desert, and melt from glacial ice is the primary source of water to streams, lakes and associated ecosystems. Previous work found that to adequately model glacier ablation and subsurface ice temperatures with a surface energy-balance model required including the transmission of solar radiation into the ice. Here we investigate the contribution of subsurface melt to the mass balance of (and runoff from) Dry Valley glaciers by including a drainage process in the model and applying the model to three glacier sites using 13years of hourly meteorological data. Model …


A Data Set Of Worldwide Glacier Length Fluctuations, Paul W. Leclercq, Johannes Oerlemans, Hassan J. Basagic, Christina Bushueva, A. J. Cook, Raymond Le Bris Jan 2014

A Data Set Of Worldwide Glacier Length Fluctuations, Paul W. Leclercq, Johannes Oerlemans, Hassan J. Basagic, Christina Bushueva, A. J. Cook, Raymond Le Bris

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Glacier fluctuations contribute to variations in sea level and historical glacier length fluctuations are natural indicators of past climate change. To study these subjects, longterm information of glacier change is needed. In this paper we present a data set of global long-term glacier length fluctuations. The data set is a compilation of available information on changes in glacier length worldwide, including both measured and reconstructed glacier length fluctuations. All 471 length series start before 1950 and cover at least four decades. The longest record starts in 1535, but the majority of time series start after 1850. The number of available …


Large-Scale Fluidization Features From Late Holocene Coseismic Paleoliquefaction In The Willamette River Forearc Valley, Central Cascadia Subduction Zone, Oregon, Usa, Curt D. Peterson, Kurt Kristensen, Rick Minor Jan 2014

Large-Scale Fluidization Features From Late Holocene Coseismic Paleoliquefaction In The Willamette River Forearc Valley, Central Cascadia Subduction Zone, Oregon, Usa, Curt D. Peterson, Kurt Kristensen, Rick Minor

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A search of Willamette River cutbanks was conducted for the presence of late Holocene paleoli-quefaction records in the Willamette forearc valley, located 175 ± 25 km landward from the buried trench in the central Cascadia subduction zone. A search of Willamette River cutbanks was conducted for the presence of late Holocene paleoli-quefaction records in the Willamette forearc valley, located 175 ± 25 km landward from the buried trench in the central Cascadia subduction zone. Eight cutbank sites are reported that show evidence of large-scale fluidization features (≥10 cm width) including clastic sand dikes and intruded sand sills in Holocene overbank …


Geodesy- And Geology-Based Slip-Rate Models For The Western United States (Excluding California) National Seismic Hazard Maps, Mark D. Petersen, Yuehua Zeng, Kathleen M. Haller, Robert Mccaffrey, William C. Hammond, Peter Bird, Morgan Moschetti, Zheng-Kang Shen, Jayne Bormann, Wayne R. Thatcher Jan 2014

Geodesy- And Geology-Based Slip-Rate Models For The Western United States (Excluding California) National Seismic Hazard Maps, Mark D. Petersen, Yuehua Zeng, Kathleen M. Haller, Robert Mccaffrey, William C. Hammond, Peter Bird, Morgan Moschetti, Zheng-Kang Shen, Jayne Bormann, Wayne R. Thatcher

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The 2014 National Seismic Hazard Maps for the conterminous United States incorporate additional uncertainty in fault slip-rate parameter that controls the earthquake-activity rates than was applied in previous versions of the hazard maps. This additional uncertainty is accounted for by new geodesy- and geology-based slip-rate models for the Western United States. Models that were considered include an updated geologic model based on expert opinion and four combined inversion models informed by both geologic and geodetic input. The two block models considered indicate significantly higher slip rates than the expert opinion and the two fault-based combined inversion models. For the hazard …


Central Cascadia Subduction Zone Creep, Gina M. Schmalzle, Robert Mccaffrey, Kenneth C. Creager Jan 2014

Central Cascadia Subduction Zone Creep, Gina M. Schmalzle, Robert Mccaffrey, Kenneth C. Creager

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Central Cascadia between 43ºN and 46ºN has reduced interseismic uplift observed in geodetic data and coseismic subsidence seen in multiple thrust earthquakes, suggesting elevated persistent fault creep in this section of the subduction zone. We estimate subduction thrust "decade-scale" locking and crustal block rotations from three-component continuous Global Positioning System (GPS) time series from 1997 to 2013, as well as 80 year tide gauge and leveling-derived uplift rates. Geodetic observations indicatecoastal central Oregon is rising at a slower rate than coastal Washington, southern Oregon and northern California. Modeled locking distributions suggest a wide locking transition zone that extends inland undercentral …