Center Operations: Center for Land Surface Hazards (CLaSH)

Funded by the National Science Foundation – Award #NSF-EAR-2425607

The Center for Land Surface Hazards (CLaSH) has the mission to advance understanding of land surface hazards and to change how people understand and prepare for disasters. Sudden movement of large amounts of rock and soil across the land surface cause losses in every U.S. state and territory, resulting in damage to places where people live and work that make these natural hazards among the most costly in the U.S.. Landslides, debris flows, river erosion, and flash flooding are examples of events that scientists expect to happen with more frequency—possibly three times as often—in the next 50 years. CLaSH will improve understanding and forecasting of these hazards through supporting a team of scientists from different areas who study how hazards start and spread, focusing particularly on how different natural events work together to make disasters worse and last longer. The Center will create a new scientific approach to understand today’s land surface hazards and forecast future ones, with the goal of helping communities to recover faster and lower the costs of these types of disasters. CLaSH partners with government groups, local community organizations, and the public to share information and tools to help people prepare for hazard events and learn skills for future jobs in safety and disaster response. The Center’s education program will create new ways for teachers and students to learn about land surface hazards using the latest technology, hands-on training, and guidance for working with communities affected by these hazards. This award contributes to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) role in the National Landslide Preparedness Act (P.L. 116-323).

(for full abstract and award details see this link)

Our Story

Over the Years

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2022

In 2022, a team of 4 PIs, 7 early career scientists from institutions across the US, along with and 8 partner organizations, came together to submit a Track 1: Center Catalyst proposal to the new NSF Centers for Innovation and Community Engagement in the Solid Earth Sciences. These two-year awards address topics that focus on the fundamental processes that create solid Earth geohazards. Funded in Sept 2022, the CLaSH Catalyst proposal outlined center development activities, including goal setting, strategic planning and community building, as well as developing and piloting center-scale activities that generate new knowledge with a broad range of impacts.

Track 1: Center for Land Surface Hazards (CLaSH) Catalyst

Funded by the National Science Foundation – Award #NSF-EAR-2224871

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2023

The CLaSH vision is based on the premise that hazard research and education can be transformed by coordinated modeling and data acquisition to address the couplings of surface and solid Earth processes. We engaged in numerous research, broader impact activities, and center development activities over the two-year duration of the award. Pilot activities during 2023 and early 2024 included:

  • a 2-part Modeling Expo that explored cutting-edge developments in computational efforts to understand land surface hazard components and their coupling
  • education efforts to design and implement best practices for field training through a hosted graduate short course that focused on technical training and a team-oriented hazard response
  • in-depth research efforts to catalyze the paradigm of cascading hazards from which a review article was written and is published at the journal Science
  • numerous community activities including several workshops, AGU town halls and sessions, and strategic planning sessions
  • a multi-disciplinary hazards response activity for the 2023 Hurricane Hilary with project partners from a wide range of organizations, funded separately through NSF RAPID
  • team engagement and leadership trainings
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2024

Through this work, the team assessed which activities garnered interest and engagement in order to inform a proposed Center strategy. They also worked to ensure that activities promoted all communities of geoscientists because forging discoveries and reducing the risk associated with land surface hazards demands many voices, particularly those from vulnerable populations. The results of these efforts were used to define the Center vision and build a community, culminating in a Track 2 Center proposal or funding a fully-fledged 5-year Center submitted in March 2024.

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    2025

    The Center Operations proposal was successful and the launch of the new Center began in October 2025.