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Understanding how soil thickness and bedrock weathering vary across ridge and valley topography is needed to constrain the flowpaths of water and sediment production within a landscape. Here, we investigate saprolite and weathered bedrock properties across a ridge‐valley system in the Northern California Coast Ranges, USA, where topography varies with slope aspect such that north‐facing slopes have thicker soils and are more densely vegetated than south‐facing slopes. We use active source seismic refraction surveys to extend observations made in boreholes to the hillslope scale. Seismic velocity models across several ridges capture a high velocity gradient zone (from 1,000 to 2,500 m/s) located ∼4–13 m below ridgetops that coincides with transitions in material strength and chemical depletion observed in boreholes. Comparing this transition depth across multiple north‐ and south‐facing slopes, we find that the thickness of saprolite does not vary with slope aspects. Additionally, seismic survey lines perpendicular and parallel to bedding planes reveal weathering profiles that thicken upslope and taper downslope to channels. Using a rock physics model incorporating seismic velocity, we estimate the total porosity of the saprolite and find that inherited fractures contribute a substantial amount of pore space in the upper 6 m, and the lateral porosity structure varies strongly with hillslope position. The aspect‐independent weathering structure suggests that the contemporary critical zone structure at Rancho Venada is a legacy of past climate and vegetation conditions.

 

Supplementary code and model files for the manuscript entitled "Elucidating the Magma Plumbing System of Ol Doinyo Lengai (Natron Rift, Tanzania) Using Satellite Geodesy and Numerical Modeling". OlDoinyoLengai_code_and_models.zip contains all necessary Matlab code, functions, input and output files for the GNSS, InSAR, and joint inversions presented in our manuscript necessary to reproduce the results. dMODELS is an open source code developed by the United States Geological Survey. The originally published program is available here: https://pubs.usgs.gov/tm/13/b1/ and the revised software archived here will also be available through the USGS website code.usgs.gov/vsc/publications/OlDoinyoLengai or by contacting Maurizio Battaglia. With this manuscript we are providing an update to dMODELS that includes improved graphics and joint inversion capabilities for both InSAR and GNSS data. 

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant number EAR-1943681, Virginia Tech, Korean Institute of Geosciences and Minerals (KIGAM), and Ardhi University. Funding for this work also came from USAID via the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program and from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Volcano Hazards Program.This material is based on services provided by the GAGE Facility, operated by UNAVCO, Inc., with support from the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Geological Survey under NSF Cooperative Agreement EAR-1724794. We acknowledge and thank Alaska Satellite Facility for making InSAR data freely available and TZVOLCANO GNSS data sets available through the UNAVCO data archive. 

The intrusion of magma into Kīlauea's lower East Rift Zone in May 2018 led to the largest eruption along this segment of the volcano in over 200 years. As magma drained from the rift zone, leading to the collapse of Pu'u ‘Ō‘ō, pressure at the summit initially remained elevated and dropped at a slower rate compared to historical intrusion events. The anomalously long timescale of summit deflation suggests that the dike was fed from multiple sources. Here we show that dikes can serve as “dipsticks” of magma reservoirs and that the co‐evolution of dike growth and reservoir deflation constrains key magma transport parameters. Using coupled dike‐chamber models constrained by ground deformation and seismicity, we test four configurations of magma plumbing in order to illuminate which reservoirs and transport pathways were activated during the intrusion phase (30 April to 3 May) of the 2018 event. Slow summit deflation relative to the rate of dike propagation is best explained by a model in which the dike initiates from a compressible magma reservoir in the East Rift Zone, which then drains magma upstream from the Halema'uma'u reservoir through a shallow transport system. We use a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach to estimate storage parameters for both reservoirs as well as the effective conductivity of the shallow magma transport system in the East Rift Zone, finding good agreement with independent estimates. Our results suggest that the rupture of reservoirs from within the East Rift Zone presents a unique hazard at Kīlauea.

 

Interseismic deformation describes the gradual accumulation of crustal strain within the tectonic plate and along the plate boundaries before the sudden release as earthquakes. In this study, we use 5 years of high spatial and temporal geodetic measurements, including Global Navigation Satellite System and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar to monitor 3‐dimension interseismic crustal deformation and horizontal strain rate in Taiwan. We find significant deformation (strain rate >8  10⁻⁶ yr⁻¹) along the plate boundary between the Philippine Sea and the Eurasian Plates in east Taiwan. The high strain rate in the southern part of the Western Foothills is distributed along a few major fault systems, which reveals the geometry of the deformation front in west Taiwan. Our results help identify active faults in southwest and north Taiwan that were not identified before. These findings can be insightful in informing future seismic hazard models.

 

Abstract. Rapid detection of landslides is critical for emergency response, disaster mitigation, and improving our understanding of landslide dynamics. Satellite-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can be used to detect landslides, often within days of a triggering event, because it penetrates clouds, operates day and night, and is regularly acquired worldwide. Here we present a SAR backscatter change approach in the cloud-based Google Earth Engine (GEE) that uses multi-temporal stacks of freely available data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites to generate landslide density heatmaps for rapid detection. We test our GEE-based approach on multiple recent rainfall- and earthquake-triggered landslide events. Our ability to detect surface change from landslides generally improves with the total number of SAR images acquired before and after a landslide event, by combining data from both ascending and descending satellite acquisition geometries and applying topographic masks to remove flat areas unlikely to experience landslides. Importantly, our GEE approach does not require downloading a large volume of data to a local system or specialized processing software, which allows the broader hazard and landslide community to utilize and advance these state-of-the-art remote sensing data for improved situational awareness of landslide hazards. 

ABSTRACT The Mw 7.5 earthquake that struck central Papua New Guinea in 2018 was the largest event ever recorded in the region with modern seismic instruments. The ground motions associated with this event also triggered widespread landslides and affected more than 500,000 people. However, due to the absence of a local seismic and Global Positioning System network in the vicinity, the fault location, system, and slip distribution of this earthquake are not well documented. In this study, we use the subpixel offset method on the Copernicus Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images to calculate the 3D coseismic displacement of the 2018 Papua New Guinea earthquake. The results show clear fault traces that suggest coseismic slip on the Mubi fault and the Mananda fault that triggered landslides that spread out in a more than 260  km2 region. Finite-source inversions based on the subpixel offset measurements show up to 4.1 and 6.5 m coseismic slip on the Mubi and Mananda faults, respectively. Despite higher data uncertainty (∼0.4–0.8  m) of the subpixel offset data, synthetic resolution tests show resolvable slip above 8 km in depth. The lack of shallower slip on the west side of the Mananda fault could be due to an inflated geothermal gradient near the dormant volcano, Mount Sisa, as a slip barrier. The result of the coulomb stress change suggests possible southeastward slip propagation from the Mananda fault to the Mubi fault. Our work successfully resolves 3D coseismic displacement in highly vegetated terrains and demonstrates the feasibility of using the subpixel offset on SAR images to help our understanding of regional active tectonic systems. 

Fractures within ice shelves are zones of weakness, which can deform on timescales from seconds to decades. Icequakes produced during the fracturing process show a higherb‐valuein the Gutenberg‐Richter scaling relationship than continental earthquakes. We investigate icequakes on the east side of rift WR4 in the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Our model suggests a maximum icequake slip depth that is ∼7.8 m below the rift mélange, where the slip area can only grow laterally along the fracture planes. We propose ductile deformation below this depth, potentially due to the saturation of unfrozen water. We use remote sensing and geodetic tools to quantify surface movement on different timescales and find that the majority of icequakes occur during falling tides. The total seismic moment is <1% of the estimated geodetic moment during a tidal cycle. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using seismology and geodesy to investigate ice rift zone rheology.

 

The critical zone (CZ) is the region of the Earth’s surface that extends from the bottom of the weathered bedrock to the tree canopy and is important because of its ability to store water and support ecosystems. A growing number of studies use active source shallow seismic refraction to explore and define the size and structure of the CZ across landscapes. However, measurement uncertainty and model resolution at depth are generally not evaluated, which makes the identification and interpretation of CZ features inconclusive. To reliably resolve seismic velocity with depth, we implement a Transdimensional Hierarchical Bayesian (THB) framework with reversible‐jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo to generate samples from the posterior distribution of velocity structures. We also perform 2D synthetic tests to explore how well THB traveltime inversion can resolve different subsurface velocity structures. We find that THB recovers both sharp changes in velocity as well as gradual velocity increases with depth. Furthermore, we explore the velocity structure in a series of ridge‐valley systems in northern California. The posterior velocity model shows an increasing thickness of low velocity material from channels to ridgetops along a transect parallel to bedding strike, implying a deeper weathering zone below ridgetops and hillslopes than below channels. The THB method enhances the ability to reliably image CZ structure, and the model uncertainty estimates it yields provides an objective way to interpret deep CZ structure. The method can be applied across other near‐surface studies, especially in the presence of significant surface topography.

 

Dissipation of tidal energy is expected to generate seismicity on icy‐ocean worlds; however, the distribution and timing of this seismic activity throughout an orbital cycle is not known. We used new observations from an icy‐ocean‐world analog environment on Earth to examine the relationship between tidally driven tensile stress and seismic activity within an ice shell. We investigated a pair of rifts within Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf which are tidally stressed in a manner analogous to the orbital cycle of tidal stress experienced by Enceladus' Tiger Stripe Fractures. We found that seismic activity at the Antarctic rifts is sensitive to both the amplitude and the rate of tensile stress across the rifts. We combined these findings with calculated stress values along Enceladus' Tiger Stripe Fractures to predict seismic‐activity levels expected along the ice‐shell fractures. We predict a peak in seismicity along the four Tiger Stripe Fractures when Enceladus is 90°–120° past pericenter in its orbit around Saturn, at which point tensile stresses would reach ∼2/3 of their maximum value. We also used the magnitude distribution of icequakes along Antarctic rifts to investigate implications for the likely size of stick‐slip rupture patches along icy faults on Enceladus. Our findings predict that the Tiger Stripe Fractures should produce sustained, low‐magnitude seismic events that involve rupture along discrete portions of each fracture's total length. We predict that seismicity would fall to 50% of peak levels when stresses across the Tiger Stripe Fractures are dominantly compressional.