PI team
Professor Marin Clark (University of Michigan) (lead PI) is Professor and Chair in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan. Marin is a geologist with expertise in geomorphology, geodynamics, tectonics and geohazards. Her research group has worked in tectonically active settings around the world, with projects in central Asia, the US, Europe, the Caribbean and New Zealand involving collaborators from US and international universities, USGS and NASA. She has expertise in field geology, landslide hazards, thermochronology, landscape evolution and geodynamic modeling. Motivated by the importance of steep landscapes in the Earth system and their key role as loci of natural hazards, she is deeply interested in leveraging natural hazards research to advance understanding geomorphic processes and to serve societal needs across multiple scales and disciplines.
Professor Josh Roering (University of Oregon) (co-PI) is a Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oregon. He brings expertise in hillslope geomorphology, landslides and topographic analysis. His research group has studied landsliding and related hazards with a range of tools (LiDAR, InSAR, numerical modeling, cosmogenic nuclides, photogrammetry, tephrochronology and dendrochronology) for fundamental and applied problems. He recently aquired NSF support for a new multi-hazard characterization and mitigation project across SE Alaska that originates with engagement of remote, tribal communities. He also led the geoscience component of an NSF project that recently implemented a landslide warning system for Sitka, Alaska. That project is described in a March 2023 NPR All Things Considered segment.
Professor Josh West (USC) (co-PI) is a Professor of Earth Sciences and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California. He works at the intersection of Earth's landscapes, water & soil resources, and the carbon cycle & climate, focusing especially on mountains and their interaction with surrounding floodplains. His work addresses questions about how topography forms and evolves; how mountains control fluxes of water, sediment, and nutrients; how they interact with global biogeochemical cycles to regulate the long-term evolution of Earth’s life-sustaining environment; and how they contribute to generating natural hazards, particularly landslides and debris flows.
Professor Dimitrios Zekkos (UC Berkeley) (co-PI) is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Dimitrios is a civil geotechnical engineer, with expertise on landslides, soil and rock mechanics, and geophysics. He is passionate about multi-scale sensing and modeling approaches that help understand system-wide response in natural hazards and climate change. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Geotechnical Extreme Events reconnaissance (GEER) group funded by NSF and is co-Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Smart Infrastructure. He has served as Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Departments at the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley and is co-owner and senior Principal in an infrastructure analytics firm, as well as a geo-consulting firm based in the US and Europe.
Steering Committee
Jane W. Baldwin is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at University of California, Irvine. She is an atmospheric scientist by training, and her research focuses on using climate models to understand how large-scale atmospheric dynamics influence regional climate and climatic extremes. She engages actively in interdisciplinary collaborations with health researchers and economists to project the changing risks from extreme events with global warming. Her research projects have focused on: 1) understanding how mountains drive patterns of rainfall and climate model biases, 2) assessing changing heat wave hazards and health impacts, and 3) developing open-source models of tropical cyclone risk.
Corina Cerovski-Darriau is the USGS-USAID Landslides Hazards Advisor and oversees a variety of international educational and technical capacity building projects as part of a joint USGS and USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance program. These projects work closely with in-country counterparts to support landslide mapping and monitoring efforts. Her expertise is remote and field mapping of surface processes, monitoring hydrologic change and sediment transport, and assessing landslide hazards. Her past research focused on various topics in hillslope geomorphology - from geomorphic process maps, to post-wildfire impacts, to dating hillslope material to understand landscape evolution.
Sean Gallen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Colorado State University interested in landscape evolution, tectonic geomorphology, and critical zone science. He studies problems such as the role of subduction dynamics on mountain building, the co-evolution of landscapes and aquatic species, and the impact of extreme events on earth surface dynamics, among other topics. His projects typically involve fieldwork, remote sensing, numerical modeling, and geochronology.
Daniel E. Horton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Northwestern University. He is a numerical modeler and climate scientist with diverse research interests that include building a better understanding of anthropogenic climate change’s influence on people, places, and things. His research explores the impacts of climate change on air quality, meteorological extremes, and land surface hazards, as well as the benefits and tradeoffs of proposed climate solutions. At Northwestern, he leads the Climate Change Research Group and the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs Defusing Disasters working group. In the spirit of translation research, his work often involves interdisciplinary collaborations with public health experts, community organizations, and governmental partners.
Ben Mason is a research civil engineer at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Geologic Hazards Science Center (on an inter–agency personnel agreement since January 2021), an associate professor at Oregon State University’s College of Engineering, and a licensed professional engineer in the state of Colorado. Ben studies soil-fluid-structure interaction, and the relevant sub-interactions, during earthquakes, tsunamis, and multi-hazards using analytical, numerical, and physical modeling techniques. To bolster his research work, Ben participates in post-disaster reconnaissance activities, including Japan (2011), Napa, California (2014), Nepal (2015), Indonesia (2018), Taiwan (2022), and Turkey (2023).
Seulgi Moon is an Associate professor at the department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences in the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on understanding the interactions between tectonic, climate, and surface and subsurface processes, which ultimately shape Earth's surface. She employs a wide range of research techniques including fieldwork, laboratory analysis, topographic analysis, numerical models, and near-surface geophysics. She investigates physical and chemical weathering of bedrock and its impact on erosion processes, as well as natural hazards, including soil and bedrock landslides.
Brian Yanites is an Associate Professor and the Robert R. Shrock Professor of Surficial and Sedimentary Geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University. His research focuses on how the evolution of topography links the atmosphere, geosphere, and biosphere. He has studied the landscape legacy of extreme events such as earthquakes, tropical cyclones, and mid-continental weather events (e.g. supercells) across a range of tectonic and climatic environments such as Taiwan, the western US, and the Midwest. He addresses these research topics with a combination of field observation, numerical modeling, and lidar.
Eric Kirby is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Earth, Marine, and Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a geologist whose research focuses on the interplay among lithospheric deformation and landscape evolution during the growth of mountain ranges. He has been a strong advocate for collaborative research in tectonics and earthquake hazards, having led expeditions to the Himalaya and Tibet, northern Japan, and Central Asia for nearly two decades. Prior to joining the faculty at UNC, Dr. Kirby held the R.S. Yeats Chair of Earthquake Geology and Active Tectonics in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) at Oregon State University and served as the Associate Dean for Academic Programs 2017-2020. He is currently a member of the steering committee for the National Center for Laser Airborne Mapping (NCALM) and chair of the International Interest Group of the Geological Society of America.
Staff