Research briefs

As South Florida raises groundwater levels to fight salt water intrusion, the threat of flooding from within will only increase. The study shows that the groundwater levels are rising at the rate of local sea level rise and are a major contributor to inland flooding. But traditional flood models do not account for groundwater and treat the land as an impermeable surface.

A new study modelled thousands of fires in Tasmania and found that nearly a third of the state would have to be burned to effectively lower the risk of bushfires. Researchers argue that prescribed burning needs to be carefully localised and be part of a multi-pronged approach involving manual fuel removal, better building standards and new burning patterns to be effective.

New research published in two studies shows that human-induced climate change increased the amount and intensity of Hurricane Harvey's rainfall. It confirms that heavy rainfall events are increasing across the U.S. Gulf Coast region because of human interference with the climate system.

Climate change takes a heavy toll on the tundra, increasing the probability of extreme droughts. As a result, the frequency of fires in forests, bogs, and wetlands continues to rise. After a fire, the insulating effect of the then burnt organic material is missing and consequently the albedo changes, causing the surface to dry out and permafrost to thaw even more.

Geoscientists at Stanford University have been able to detect thousands of small, previously unknown earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing of natural gas, or "fracking". The small tremors detected can be early signs of conditions that may trigger larger earthquakes. This knowledge can be used to reduce the chance of larger earthquakes happening in the future.

A new study shows that forests will change in the future as their resiliency to wildfire decreases with the warming climate. An approach for forest managers is to start planting other species that are better adapted to the current and future climate.

Researchers studying the seafloor to map Australia's continental slope have found evidence of large underwater landslides. Such submarine landslides take place when seafloor sediments or rocks move down a slope, and can cause tsunamis. But modelling landslides in likely locations can help predict the likelihood of this type of tsunami.

Controlled burning of forestland helped limit the severity of one of California's largest wildfires, the Rim Fire in 2013, according to Penn State geographers. Forest managers use controlled or prescribed fired to reduce underbrush and fuel in forests, which cause more intense wildfires when it builds up over time.

Most of the action in earthquakes and volcanoes occurs underground. Researchers have developed a network of high-sensitivity seismographs evenly distributed across Japan that collect data on seismic activity and waves. This approach allows for more information on spatial distribution of the damage zone and can be used for disaster prediction and preparedness.

A new approach to assessing the resiliency of coastal communities to hurricanes has been developed. It is a multi-hazard hurricane impact level model, which estimates economic damages to be caused by storms before they happen. The model can also be used to identify whether physical and policy improvements, such as seawalls, mitigate the impacts of storms.