Remembering Thomas C. Hanks

I attended the Tom Hanks, a Remembrance symposium at the USGS in Moffett Field Oct. 17, 2024. It was a great chance to remember Tom, reflect on his vast scientific and personal impacts, and to catch up with old friends and colleagues. It was also nice to meet Tom's daughters. I was fortunate to be able to make a presentation. Here is my talk: LINK.

Here is the program from the event: LINK

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I heard that Thomas C. Hanks passed away recently. He was a mentor to me. He worked for his career with the US Geological Survey. The memorials of him from his colleagues will be many and deep. I wanted to capture some of my memories of him. Tom was very supportive of young scientists and very broad in his scientific thinking. While he was most well known as a seismologist, his work in geomorphology and fault scarps and fragile geologic features was transformative.

This was a sticky on a manuscript draft he once gave me after a discussion on uncertainties in morphologic datting. Look at the nice handwriting (usually from a well sharpened #2 pencil). And the signature THanks.

Tom was on my Ph.D. supervisory committee. I was at Stanford and Tom was in Menlo Park at the USGS. Like many of his colleagues there, he was very generous with his time with the Stanford students. We talked a lot about fault scarps and diffusion, but also about the San Andreas Fault and I was able to drive for him on a few field trips to the SAF in the southern Bay Area into the Creeping Section. With Professor Gordon Brown's support (chair of our department at the time), Tom helped to lead an active tectonics seminar one quarter.

Tom's work on the age of scarplike landforms from diffusion-equation analysis (title of one of his latter papers on the subject) was very influential. He teamed up with Robert Wallace and others to take something simple about how fault scarps apparently change shape over time and quantify it in a realistic way. There are numerous important papers on the topic with Tom as an author but two seminal ones are:
Hanks, T. C., Bucknam, R. C., Lajoie, K. R., & Wallace, R. E. (1984). Modification of wave-cut and faulting-controlled landforms. Journal of Geophysical Research. https://doi.org/10.1029/JB089iB07p05771
and
Hanks, T. C. (2000). The Age of Scarplike Landforms From Diffusion-Equation Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1029/rf004p0313 in Quaternary Geochronology: Methods and Applications. In AGU Reference Shelf 4 (Vol. 4).

Among many other contributions on the age of scarplike landforms, Tom introduced a simple morphological dating approach: reduced slope-offset. He argued for a measure of the scarp midpoint slope (reduced by the far field slope) versus the vertical offset and he developed a nice calibration along with his colleagues for the rate constant k. He favored analytical solutions (tolerating my numerical approach).
One small anecdote that I always appreciated on the geomorphology side was his desire to name a unit for GK Gilbert (1m²/kyr = 1GKG). See the seminal 1984 Hanks et al JGR paper. It did not catch on but was a fun idea.

In 2007, David Haddad and I went with Tom to Northern Arizona University to see the collection of his father's photographs that he had endowed: Repeat Photography Site for The James J. Hanks Photographs, 1927-1928. Tom, like always, was deeply engaged/obsessed with the topic at hand. He worked hard to relocate and repeat his father's photographs, as well as to tell their story.

Whilst on the trip to Flagstaff, Tom, David, and I stopped to see and discuss the Granite Dells (near Prescott, AZ). Tom had been leading parts of the seismic hazard analysis for the Yucca Mountain possible nuclear repository. The problem they were coming up with was the age of the landscape was great (million year old landforms) and there were fragile geologic features and precarious rocks that may have been there fragile for a large fraction of that time. However, the extrapolation of the ground motion predictions would be to extreme, possibly unrealistic levels. Tom was interested in these million-year-old landscapes of fragile geologic features and recognized their value as an observational constraint for seismic hazard analysis. This is an impressive product of their work:
Hanks, T. C., Abrahamson, N. A., Baker, J. W., Boore, D. M., Board, M., Brune, J. N., Cornell, C. A., & Whitney, J. W. (2012). Extreme Ground Motions And Yucca Mountain. Extreme Ground Motions and Yucca Mountain Open-File Report 2013–1245, US Geological Survey.

Tom was interested in precariously balanced rocks given their use as a part of seismic hazard analysis. He thought it might be helpful for new people to get involved. So, he pulled David and I into it. He was supportive and helped generate some funds for us. That lead to a couple of nice papers lead by David. I regret that we did not have Tom as a coauthor:
Haddad, D. E., Akciz, S. O., Arrowsmith, J. R., Rhodes, D. D., Oldow, J. S., Zielke, O., Toke, N. A., Haddad, A. G., Mauer, J., & Shilpakar, P. (2012). Applications of airborne and terrestrial laser scanning to paleoseismology. Geosphere, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.1130/GES00701.1
Haddad, D. E., Zielke, O., Arrowsmith, J. R., Purvance, M. D., Haddad, A. G., & Landgraf, A. (2012). Estimating two-dimensional static stabilities and geomorphic settings of precariously balanced rocks from unconstrained digital photographs. Geosphere, 8(5). https://doi.org/10.1130/GES00788.1

A final lesson from Tom is that senior scientists should be generous and use their privilege to do good. Tom was a widely appreciated mentor of younger scientists--men and women. He was also a leader who did not shy away from trying to do the right thing. Just one example relates to another senior scientist who recently passed away: Paul Tapponier. Professor Tapponier led a transformation of our understanding of continental tectonics. He favored results with relatively high slip rates and thus the inference that the deformation even in plate interiors was more plate-like. Tom supported his colleague Wayne Thatcher who had come up with a result based on geodesy for the deformation of the Asian continental interior (Thatcher W. 2007. Microplate model for the present-day deformation of Tibet. J. Geophys. Res. 112:B01401) (and that did not sit well with Paul). Zack Washburn and I had written a paper based on paleoseismology in which we could not support enough earthquakes to support a high slip rate). Tom stepped in to mediate between Wayne and Paul and consulted me as part of his preparations. Tom had the stature, the intelligence, maturity and deserved respect so that he was able to set the tone for what I gather was a productive meeting.

I ended up with a copy of Tom's USGS bio and I note the following which is a nice example of his writing and matter-of-fact approach:

AI art: what does " Tectonic Geomorphic San Andreas Fault" look like?

I saw a link to https://app.wombo.art/ on twitter and people were posting what they got out of using their research or dissertation titles as a prompt. It is pretty amazing.

I gave it a try. My dissertation was entitled "Coupled Tectonic Deformation and Geomorphic Degradation along the San Andreas Fault System". I tried that as well as a shorter version "Tectonic Geomorphic San Andreas Fault" with a couple of different styles. I have to ponder the results. Some of the other examples work well when there is an object more recognizeable (such as a bird or T-cell), or somehow I need to give it a more interesting prompt. But the results are interesting. I like the trading card format.

Later on, I saw something about how the company could sell the "art" as NFTs but I guess I am not too worried about it.

Salt River terraces field geology exercise and updated guide

The Salt River in central Arizona has a spectactular set of fluvial terraces developed along it. I have lead a number of field trips along the Salt River for outreach and most importantly for our GLG451 Field Geology I course where we use a site along the Salt River for a mapping exercise. I have recently updated the materials associated with that exercise in anticipation of this Spring's class which will include a virtual component.

Tour from ASU to the Salt River site.

Drone overflight of the key sites for the exercise.

I built on some of the very nice writing and descriptions of Professor Pewe when I wrote up a field trip guide and ran a few field trips in the early 2000s. See this LINK. I updated that guide and it is available here: Landscape and geologic history along the Salt River near Tempe and Mesa, Arizona. I updated this document February 14, 2022.

Here is the assignment with many additional links and explanations: Virtual Field Geology assignment for Salt River Field Geology I 2021.
I made a long explanation of the GIS:

These were of great interest to Professor Troy L. Pewe of Arizona State University's Department of Geology. He moved to Arizona from Alaska and converted his research from permafrost to desert processes. I was lucky to learn from him when I first came to ASU in 1995. He took me under his wing and shared with me much of what he had learned. Most importantly, he helped me to learn the field trips and field sites he had developed and discovered. I am extremely grateful to him. I recognize Brian Gootee who was a great friend of the Pewe Family and who has preserved much of the Pewe legacy at the Arizona Geological Survey.

Pictures from those early field trips with Prof. Pewe.

Call for research papers: Unveiling Active Faults: Multiscale Perspectives and Alternative Approaches Addressing the Seismic Hazard Challenge

Along with Federica Ferrarini, Nathan Toké, and Michele M. C. Carafa, we are looking forward to submissions to this special "issue" from the Frontiers journal: Unveiling Active Faults: Multiscale Perspectives and Alternative Approaches Addressing the Seismic Hazard Challenge.

Federica made a nice flyer to share: LINK

Central Apennine settled landscape with active normal fault (photograph by Federica Ferrarini).

Despite decades of progress toward mitigating seismic hazard, characterizing the seismic potential of an area remains a complex process. Particularly challenging are seismically active regions characterized by low slip rate faults which can give rise to weak geomorphic expressions when combined with high erosion or sedimentation rates. Similar compounding issues may also manifest in densely populated areas where anthropogenic modifications, or vegetation cover further challenge assessment of fault activity or where structural complications may contribute to multiple interpretations. Noticeable advances in remote sensing technology geodetic measurements and dating Late Quaternary landforms and sediments have moved our understanding forward.

This Frontiers Research Topic welcomes contributions that present examples and approaches which strive to improve our understanding of active faulting processes over diverse geological settings and at broad spatial scales of investigation. We encourage the submission of research papers from a wide range of geoscience disciplines (field geology, structural geology, tectonic geomorphology, paleoseismology, seismology, remote sensing, numerical modeling) and from the scale of a field site to regional scale analyses. We welcome contributions with the main goal to bridge the gap between our observations, fundamental understanding of faulting processes, and effective seismic hazard assessment.

Please think about a contribution! Submit an abstract by January 29, 2020 (not required). The manuscripts are due May 29, 2020.

Updated review of fault scarp analysis

I am organizing for a presentation to my research group on fault scarp analysis. This is an ongoing obsession of mine. I have blogged about this topic here with some review. That is still a pretty good summary of things. I also have a couple of relevant Landers Earthquake posts here and here. And, we applied many of the relevant tools to analysis of cinder cone forms.

The 2017 post mentioned above is still a pretty good summary of things. However, the MATLAB-based guis for Penck1D and Scarpdater are not running well now on newer versions of MATLAB; they need an overhaul. We were really into guis back then but they require so much code relative to the actual modeling. Might be cool to rewrite in Jupyter notebooks, maybe see how much in landlab could be used.

I have prepared a new review powerpoint (PPT and PDF) with this outline:

• Introduction and review
• Diffusion-equation analysis of scarplike landforms
• Observations
• Direct dating of fault scarps
• Fault scarp erosion monitoring
• Modeling
• Distributed deformation
• Transport vs. Production limited
• Extending processes 2D and nonlinear diffusion
• Prospects and cautions

Of course it is incomplete and emphasizes the work of my students and colleagues. I note for example, this nice review from Wei, et al., Journal of Asian Earth Sciences, 2015:

Additional resources for my lecture include:

• Excel spreadsheet for diffusion: .xls
• Simple MATLAB scripts for diffusion modeling; see also this link.
• MATLAB script and functions for exploring 2D non linear diffusion of fault scarps (from de Michieli Vitturi, M. and Arrowsmith, J R., 2013)

Some other useful web links include:

• Geodetic survey of a fault scarp (GETSI curriculum at SERC)
• Workshop on Applications of High Resolution Topography to Geologic Hazards in Utah; this has a few interesting ideas and examples about fault scarps and shorelines in Utah where there is more and more high quality lidar topography

One dimensional morphological modeling of transport and production- limited fault scarps

Over the years, I have maintained a steady obsession with fault scarps. For my Ph.D., I worked on a few aspects of fault-scarp development: Arrowsmith, J R., Pollard, D. D., and Rhodes, D. D., Hillslope development in areas of active tectonics, Journal of Geophysical Research, 101, B3, 6,255--6,275, 1996. Correction: Journal of Geophysical Research, 104, B1, 805, 1999. Since then, I have kept the work going along, mostly with teaching applications. In this blog post, I wanted to share some of the presentations and tools that are available to explore, learn about, perform one dimensional morphological modeling of transport and production-limited fault scarps.

A few definitions:

• One dimensional--means elevation (H) as a function of distance along a profile (x).
• Transport-limited--there is enough transportable material available for any erosion that comes from the application of the mass continuity equation. In this case, the transport capacity is equal to the sediment supply.
• Production-limited--there is insufficient transportable material (regolith=material between topographic surface and top of bedrock) for erosion. In this case, the transport capacity exceeds the sediment supply locally.
• Diffusion erosion--transport capacity is scaled by local slope and a constant k. The consequence of this transport rate choice and the application of continuity for transport-limited conditions yields a diffusion-like or heat-conduction-like behavior.

This presentation (PPT and PDF) provides a bit of a review of fault scarp research as I saw it mostly about 5-10 years ago. This PPT has two embedded movies which illustrate this basic behavior: PPT. Transport-limited scarp movie; Production-limited scarp movie

Transport-limited models:

This web page from my Computers in Earth and Space Exploration class lays out the main derivation and numerical implementation: Lecture 8: Exploring diffusion using Excel. This older page has some Matlab and Excel implementations of 1D transport-limited linear diffusion: Scarp diffusion exercise. Finally, here is a 2D version of transport-limited non-linear diffusion in a paper by Mattia de Michieli Vitturi and me: de Michieli Vitturi, M. and Arrowsmith, J R., Two dimensional nonlinear diffusive numerical simulation of geomorphic modifications to cinder cones, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, doi:10.1002/esp.3423, 2013.

Production-limited models:

George Hilley significantly updated my original code and produced the Penck1D imlpementation in MATLAB: zip file. Here is an older version of the MATLAB (no gui): zip file.
The software is delicate in some ways so you may have to try it a few times! If it crashes, just start over. One important thing is that it works best if downhill is to the right.

Note in particular the user's manual we wrote in 2006: Hilley, G. E., and Arrowsmith, J R., Penck1d: Transport- and production-limited fault scarp simulation software, user's manual for software used at 2001 Geological Society of America Short-course: Tectonics and Topography: Crustal Deformation, Surficial Processes, and Landforms Cosponsored by GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division and taught by Dorothy Merritts and Roland Bürgmann.

A pair of short courses on "Geoscience Investigations of Point Clouds" and "Advancing understanding of geomorphology with topographic analysis": mid June, 2017 at Potsdam University, Golm

Two short courses are scheduled for mid June at Potsdam University. The short courses are independent of each other; however, the topics are related and probably address a similar audience.

Geoscience investigations of point clouds, June 7-9, 2017. Instructors B. Bookhagen, R. Arrowsmith, M. Isenburg, C. Crosby.
This course will explore the acquisition, post-processing, and classification of point clouds derived from airborne and terrestrial lidar scanners and structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry from drones. The course will take place at campus Golm (UP) and includes one day of field-data collection and two days of data post-processing and analysis.
The application is here: https://goo.gl/forms/NrRAcaASXPuseRs62. The course is sponsored by Geo-X.
Here is the flyer: PDF for more details.

Advancing understanding of geomorphology with topographic analysis emphasizing high resolution topography, June 12-15, 2017. Instructors R. Arrowsmith, W. Schwanghart, C. Crosby, B. Bookhagen.
This course will focus on advanced understanding of geomorphology with topographic analysis emphasizing high-resolution topography. The course will take place at campus Golm (UP) and includes theoretical background and analysis of digital topography using TopoToolbox in a Matlab environment. The course is sponsored by StRATEGy.
Here is the flyer: PDF for more details.

Landers earthquake fault scarp Structure from motion

I made a movie of structure from motion high resolution view of 1992 Landers California earthquake fault scarp. Video starts with 2012 hillshade (Johnson, et al., 2014; available from OpenTopography here: link) in Google Earth to show location and then to a ground based set of photographs (see blue rectangles as focal planes) visualized in Agisoft Photoscan.

I am pretty pleased that the ground-based model worked so well. Now we can move forward with fine scale alignment with earlier topographic point clouds and compute differences over the 25 years since the earthquake--a project I have worked on with Dallas Rhodes for many years (see Arrowsmith and Rhodes, 1994 and also Haddad, et al., 2012).

See also these posts:

2015 Anniversary of 1992 Landers California earthquake

SfM mapping--also has an orthophoto kmz of the Johnson, et al., 2014 data

Structure from Motion micro documentary from Merri Lisa Trigilio

References:

• Arrowsmith, J. R., & Rhodes, D. D. (1994). Original forms and initial modifications of the Galway Lake Road scarp formed along the Emerson Fault during the 28 June 1992 Landers, California, earthquake. Bulletin - Seismological Society of America, 84.
• Haddad, D. E., Akciz, S. O., Arrowsmith, J. R., Rhodes, D. D., Oldow, J. S., Zielke, O., … Shilpakar, P. (2012). Applications of airborne and terrestrial laser scanning to paleoseismology. Geosphere, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.1130/GES00701.1
• Johnson, K., Nissen, E., Saripalli, S., Arrowsmith, J. R., McGarey, P., Scharer, K., … Blisniuk, K. (2014). Rapid mapping of ultrafine fault zone topography with structure from motion. Geosphere, 10(5). https://doi.org/10.1130/GES01017.1

New report: NASA Challenges and Opportunities for Research in Earth Surface and Interiors

The new report: NASA Challenges and Opportunities for Research in Earth Surface and Interiors has just been released officially. The main link to download is here: PDF.

I was honored to be on the writing team and contributed to the surface process, human activities, topography, increasingly interconnected world, and professional development portions. We were charged with revisiting and updating the 2002 Solid Earth Science Working Group report “Living on a Restless Planet” (the SESWG Report). The update follows the SESWG framework and updates on many of the science and technology topics and will help to chart NASA Earth Sciences and Interiors priorities.

Thanks to the rest of the committee, our co chairs James Davis and Louise Kellogg, and Ben Phillips from NASA.

Short Course just completed: Imaging and Analyzing Southern California's Active Faults with High Resolution Topography

We just completed our most recent OpenTopography short course: Imaging and Analyzing Southern California's Active Faults with High Resolution Topography. The course was sponsored by The Southern California Earthquake Center, UNAVCO, EarthScope, and OpenTopography. It was a pleasure to work again Chris Crosby and Ed Nissen and many thanks to Alana Williams (along with Jessica Sutton, Barrett Salisbury, and Gayatri Marliyani) for the local logistical support.

Nice montage put together by Barrett Salisbury for the course advertisement.

We had 90 applications for just 34 slots, so we emphasized early career scientists (mostly graduate students), and research in Southern California given SCEC's sponsorship. We hope to run another course soon (April 2016?) to catch up a bit more with the demand. It was wonderful to meet new people and share our enthusiasm for high resolution topography!

Students hard at work in the computer lab--Ed Nissen at the controls.

New: We recorded some of the talks. I made a summary playlist of my talk as a test. The audio is not great, but it is a summary motivation for the meeting: Sharpening our view of earth processes with high resolution topography

Summary write up for EarthScope newsletter but of relevance here too:

High resolution topographic data has become an important tool for earthquake scientists to make detailed observations and model surface evolution. Within the last decade, several efforts have been made to collect high resolution topographic (HRT) data for active faults (e.g. The B4 project, EarthScope, and numerous National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping--NCALM and USGS projects). These datasets are freely available online through OpenTopography, a NSF funded data distribution portal. The active faulting community has taken great interest in these exciting datasets, using them to generate new and important insights into earthquake processes in Southern California and elsewhere.

The EarthScope program supported the acquisition of several thousand square km of high resolution topography from lidar along active faults of the western US. The target areas included Northern, Southern & Eastern California (everything not already covered by the B4 project along the San Jacinto fault and southern San Andreas Fault; Prentice, et al., 2009), Yakima (Washington), Alaska (portions of the Denali rupture and Totschunda fault--see figure), and the Intermountain Seismic Belt (portions of the Wasatch Fault and Yellowstone). These data have been invaluable for studying deformation processes in a complementary mode to the fault zone drilling, geodetic, and seismological observatories of EarthScope.

Reference:
Prentice, C. S., Crosby, C. J., Whitehill, C. S., Arrowsmith, J R., Furlong, K. P., Phillips, D. A., GeoEarthScope LiDAR illuminates northern California's active faults, EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, v. 90, no. 7, p. 55, 2009.

Black Canyon City Structure from Motion UAV results

The Black Canyon City landslide (BCL) is a spectacular deep seated structure located northeast of Black Canyon City, Arizona. It does not appear to pose much harm to structures etc. but it is an interesting feature worthy of study. Such examinations are useful for understanding the geologic setting under which they develop (in this case bedded Tertiary rocks and good local relief), appreciating the potential contributions to the landscape evolution in the area with a similar setting, and for characterizing the underlying structural processes.

Figure 1. Google maps of the Black Canyon City landslide area.

I was first introduced to the BCL in the late 90s by Nick Priznar from Arizona Department of Transportation and then Phil Pearthree (Arizona Geological Survey) and I taught an Advanced Field Geology class together with one weekend focused on it. Lee Amoroso (USGS) also contributed significantly I subsequently used it in Geomorphology courses over the years (e.g., picture of group having lunch in crestal graben). Link to old pages. David Haddad worked for AZGS and contributed to mapping the quadrangle that contains the BCL:
Ferguson, C.A., Haddad, D.E., Johnson, B.J., Guynn, J.H., Spencer, J.E., and Eddy, D.L., 2008, Geologic map of the east half of the Black Canyon City 7 ½' Quadrangle and the west half of the Squaw Creek Mesa 7 ½' Quadrangle, Maricopa and Yavapai Counties, Arizona: Arizona Geological Survey Digital Geologic Map DGM-64, 1 sheet, scale 1:24,000, with 27 p. text.

Hurien Helmi is working with me on an M.S. degree and he has chosen to focus on the BCL which should be really great! As part of Hurien's work, we have wanted to produce high resolution maps of the BCL. Hurien has done some work with our balloon systems, but the BCL is in a fairly windy place and thus it has been a bit of a struggle to get good results. Yesterday, we went to the BCL with Professor Srikanth Saripalli our SESE colleague and flew a drone there with good results (hence the topic of this blog entry). I want to summarize the results of the Structure from Motion results from the trip. Stay tuned for Hurien's careful work. This effort is also part of a project with JPL colleagues exploring the power of structure from motion with applications to topographic mapping from space (GAZING).

Sri bought a new DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus and we used it along with the PIX4D app running on his phone. It worked quite well in that we were able to fly for effectively 15 minutes on each of two batteries (about 10 minutes of mapping time--as indicated in the app).

Figure 2. Overview of the three missions presented as hillshades computed from 0.1 m per pixel digital surface models.

Along with the field acquisition challenge, I wanted to see the differences in results from two main pieces of Structure from Motion software: PIX4D--for which Sri has a license--and Agisoft Photoscan--with which my students and I have more experience (and for which we have a license). In this presentation, I will only show the results from Agisoft Photoscan given their cursory nature. I computed 3D models and present short videos of the texture mapped meshes from Photoscan below as well as a few screen captures. Very importantly, the 3D georeferencing only comes from the GPS tags in the original jpgs from the Phantom!. In addition, I computed digital surface models (DSM) from the models and exported 10 cm versions as geotiffs which I loaded into ArcMap and computed hillshades and cut a few topographic profiles. Aside from the topographic tilt and some other georeferencing issues, the results are impressive for a relatively low amount of effort. It seems that the software can manage the fisheye lens view from the Phantom's camera.

Mission 1 (10 minute flight 80 m above launch point): We covered the toe area of the slide in mission 1. The results are pretty good aside from a gap in the coverage.

Figure 3. Mission 1 overview. Camera positions are indicated as blue rectangles (used). The "lawnmower patter" is evident.

Figure 4. Mission 1 texture map 3D view.
3D visualization of mission 1 coverage

Mission 2 (4 minute flight 40 m above launch point): We made a small flight over the toe area where there are clear fault scarps associated with deformation of the slide (as well as significant fissuring and collapse features).

Figure 5. Mission 2 overview. Camera positions are indicated as blue rectangles.
3D visualization of mission 2 coverage

Figure 6. Toe area DSM. Topographic model shows toe scar well but the whole model has a northwestern tilt due to the simple GPS control on the images for georeferencing.

Mission 3 (11 minute flight 80 m above launch point which is only about 20 or so meters above the upper portion of the slide): We moved up to the slide body and flew over the extensional system at the head of the slide. Note some images were not used (dots in the camera locations from Photoscan)

Figure 7. Mission 3 overview. Camera positions are indicated as blue rectangles or dots (not used?).

Figure 8. 3D views over textured mesh of upper portion of slide.
3D visualization of mission 3 coverage

Figure 9. Upper portion of the slide DSM. Extensional features are quite evident with 10 m deep troughs. Georeferencing is ok.

OSL-Thermochronometry progress

In the mid 2000s, I worked a lot in the Tien Shan of Kyrgyzstan with numerous colleagues and friends including Andrey Korjenkov, Ernes Mamyrov, Irina Povolotskaya, Chris Crosby, and Benny Guralnik. These were great times. Benny had joined my team for a summer and we worked together in California and in central Asia. He was a great member of our group: so friendly and also so smart and motivated. He also is a very generous person.

Benny and me in the Tien Shan

Benny went on to do his Ph.D. at the Department of Earth Sciences, ETH, Zürich, Switzerland. He has completed his work and now has a new paper out in Earth and Planetary Science Letters :
Some like it hot http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X15002812 - new method enables to reconstruct underground temperatures on timescales of human activity (10,000-100,000 years) and could potentially contribute to better use of geothermal energy, or to safety assurance of nuclear waste disposal. Article OSL-thermochronometry of feldspar from the KTB borehole, Germany.

Congratulations Benny!

SoSAFE and Earthquake Geology Geochronology workshop report (Southern California Earthquake Center)

Kate Scharer (USGS), Mike Oskin (UC Davis) and I organized a geochronology workshop for the Southern California Earthquake Center community this fall. We emphasized methodologies useful for investigating fault slip behavior over time scales from 10² to 10⁶ years. That included Terrestrial Cosmogenic Nuclides, Uranium Series, and Optically Stimulated Luminescence. We did not talk so much about ¹⁴C given its relative maturity, but we certainly recognize its continued value.

Kate lead the charge on the completion of the workshop report. It has a nice summary of the topics covered (here is the original agenda). I had a sense of a real acceleration in the number and quality of applications of the methods and the resulting rich depiction of deformation rates and their variations across time and space in Southern California. I was particularly moved by the climate modulation on the development of landforms (alluvial fans, channels, etc.) that serve as markers as well as the possible temporal coherence of wet and dry times across the region. I think that this modulation and coherence can be exploited with more intensive application of geochronology.

I learned a lot more geochronology, especially having just been at the EarthScope Geochronology Institute a week or so earlier--note that the talks and some of the videos are up (where we covered some similar topics and where Kate was a speaker on ¹⁴C). It was very nice to see many SCEC friends and colleagues.

Spring 2014 Active Faulting and Surface Process Seminars

We have two nice seminars going now: Active Faulting and Surface Processes.

We have started to run the Active Faulting seminar and track it the last few semesters. Thanks to Emily Kleber and the other students for taking the lead and organizing and documenting. Emily says: "This semester we are focused on discussing current research projects and trending topics in active tectonics and tectonic geomorphology. Subject matter is centered around (but not limited to) quantitative structural geology, geomorphology, paleoseismology, and the acquisition and application of high-resolution topography to all of the above." Here is the web site: http://activetectonics.asu.edu/ActiveFaultingSpring2014.html .

The Surface Process seminar has been going since at least Spring 2008. The topics vary and it is run in the evenings at a faculty member or student home. We enter the critical zone of commentary and sometimes the topic is about the Critical Zone (from the top of the canopy to the bottom of the roots). This semester's topic is generally hillslope processes.

Exploring the Topographic Evolution of Cinder Cones

At the Fall AGU 2013, I presented a summary of work done by Emma Gleeman (Brown) and Sarah Zibart (Western Kentucky University) along with Amanda Clarke (ASU) and Fabrizio Alfano (ASU) as part of the Research Experience for Undergraduates: Landscape evolution in a monogenetic volcanic field led by Nancy Riggs at NAU and supported by the US National Science Foundation. Among other things, we used the 2D non linear diffusion code developed by Mattia de’ Michieli Vitturi (de’ Michieli Vitturi and Arrowsmith, Two-dimensional nonlinear diffusive numerical simulation of geomorphic modifications to cinder cones, Earth Surf. Process. Landforms (2013) and built on our good collaborations with Mattia.

Here is the presentation: pptx

Picture from the Autokite

Conclusions include:

• Agglutinate is important in controlling cinder cone topographic development
• Not extremely important for h/w ratios (age approximation)
• Significant in controlling slope histogram
• High resolution topography is required for good characterization of slope distributions, esp. for cones with agglutinated tops
• 2D non-transport-limited linear diffusion and 1D production-limited linear diffusion models reasonably captured evolution of both agglutinated and non-agglutinated cones
• Laboratory experiments agreed with histogram evolution predicted by numerical modeling for both agglutinated and non-agglutinated cones
• Additional process rules (short range sheetwash, fluvial, and debris flow) of scoria and aeolian material is a next step