The Yellowstone Plateau Volcanic Field is a very active hotspot and national park with spectacular evidence of volcanic activity on the surface in the form of geysers, hot springs, hydrothermal pools, steaming vents, and seismic activity.

Before becoming a professor of physics at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR), Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg published a paper in 1955 that proposed a direct test to investigate one of the most important theories of modern physics: general relativity.

CMEs are giant bursts of highly energetic plasma that are driven off the surface of the Sun. When a solar storm collides with the Earth it compresses the dayside (facing the Sun) and elongates the nightside of the Earth’s magnetosphere. The hot, energetic ions in the solar storm are driven along and down Earth’s magnetic field lines toward both poles creating magnificent auroras.

The Mississippi Delta along the Gulf Coast of the United States is a major site of sediment deposition from the Mississippi River and conversely a major site of wetland loss from rising seas and subsidence. There is debate about how much and when the delta has risen or fallen due to deposition, subsidence, sea level change, and erosion.

The large earthquakes and tsunamis in Sumatra, Chile, and Japan have accelerated efforts to rapidly determine the location, size, energy, and amount of displacement caused by large earthquakes to assist in response and provide timely warnings of related hazards such as tsunamis.

Isla del Coco, off the coast of Costa Rica, is the only landmass on the Cocos Plate that sits above sea level and thus is the only place where motion of the plate can be measured above the water.

Wayan Suparta has used GPS measurements of atmospheric water vapor to predict when lightning is most likely to strike in Malaysia, a region that experiences large lightning storms throughout the Northeast monsoon season (November-March).

Ocean tides put a periodic load on the Earth’s surface that is regularly observed by geodetic stations and typically filtered or modeled out as noise so that investigators can look at ground surface movements caused by tectonics.

Snow and ice melts in Greenland every summer, but the summer of 2010 melting season was so much longer and hotter than in previous years that an extra 100 billion tons of ice melted from the ice sheet and flowed out to sea. GPS measurements captured the extra or anomalous uplift of the bedrock in response to the greater than normal summer loss in ice mass.

Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas on the planet, yet it is the least accurately measured globally. In order to make useful climate models, robust measurements of the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere are needed.

Researchers have been monitoring melting ice for years in an attempt to understand how ice sheets will affect our changing climate. One way to watch the melting is by using networks of scientific GPS stations such as POLENET. POLENET covers much of the coast of Greenland and Antarctica, as well as a few tall mountains that rise above the ice sheet in the interior of Antarctica. John Wahr of the University of Colorado Boulder works on refining the method of using GPS data to determine melting rates.

Measurements of snow depth are important to climate modelers, meteorologists, and water resource managers, but in the past there has not been both an accurate and widespread method of obtaining these data.

An unexpected landslide could create a disaster for the town of Cerce del Cielo in Puerto Rico, especially if it cuts off access to the only road out of town.

The forces of the Japanese Tohoku-oki 2011 magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the fifth most powerful in the past century, set off a large tsunami that further devastated the shaken island. The earthquake and tsunami also badly damaged a six-reactor nuclear power plant in Fukushima, located 241 kilometers north of Tokyo.

Santorini, a small group of islands located 200 km southeast of mainland Greece, has had a violent past, as evidenced by the collapsed volcanic caldera in its center. The giant Minoan eruption that occurred approximately 3660 years ago may have led to the demise of the Minoan culture, and is responsible for the creation of the large caldera. GPS instruments have been recording the recently renewed activity at Santorini after 60 years of quiescence.

Geodetic imaging such as InSAR combined with GPS has provided the means to view the surface deformation caused by earthquakes at a high level of detail, but currently these images require up to several days to be created by an expert.

As the climate warms, researchers would like to know if hurricanes will increase in intensity and frequency. To explore this theory, more information is needed on the connection between ocean temperatures and the amount of water vapor in the lower atmosphere.

UNAVCO has helped collect and distribute huge amounts of GPS data throughout the world, on the order of several pedabytes, providing unprecedented access to free high-quality scientific data. The next step may be the development of a Geodesy Community Workbench, which would provide a unified framework for analyzing and interpreting GPS data, according to researchers at the University of Nevada in Reno.

Kilauea Volcano has been erupting through the spatter cone Puʻu ʻŌʻō since 1983 on the Big Island of Hawai’i. It has been an exciting, dynamic eruption, ranging from dramatic fissure and lava fountains, to lava streams oozing into the steaming ocean. It has also been destructive, destroying the towns of Kalapana and Kaimū in 1990.

A fountain of lava erupted from a fissure on Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii on March 5, 2011, beginning an eruption that would end four days later. A group of scientists led by Paul Lundgren of the Jet Propulsion Lab have observed the details of this eruption without having to set foot on the volcano using InSAR imagery and UNAVCO GPS station data.

Melting continental glaciers, such as the Stikine icefield in Alaska and Canada contribute to rising sea-level, and therefore it is important to monitor how quickly individual glaciers are losing mass.

Subsidence, or sinking, is becoming a big issue for coastal towns that are also dealing with the threat of rising sea-level. A sinking city becomes more susceptible to flooding over time, and knowing the rate of subsidence can help a city prepare for future floods.

UNAVCO’s Plate Boundary Observatory includes 75 borehole strainmeters installed predominantly throughout the west coast of North America. Strainmeters work by detecting changes in the size of the borehole, and are sensitive enough to detect a 4 picometer change (smaller than the width of a hydrogen atom). Because they are so sensitive, they pick up every thump and shake in their vicinity, including the arrival of a tsunami wave from across the ocean.