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New study confirms landslide in Alaska triggered 1,500-foot megatsunami last August

A new study finds that a megatsunami in Alaska pushed water more than 1,500 feet up the sides of a fjord near Juneau. Researchers say more monitoring is needed to prevent future catastrophes.

(WWU Professor of Geology) JACQUELINE CAPLAN-AUERBACH: The fact that…

WWU space science students travel to D.C. to advocate for NASA funding with Bill Nye and The Planetary Society
In Memoriam: Reflecting on the legacy of Geology’s Ned Brown
WWU professor Jackie Caplan-Auerbach co-publishes paper on second-largest tsunami ever recorded
A 481-meter-high landslide-tsunami in a cruise ship–frequented Alaska fjord

Early in the morning of 10 August 2025, a >64 × 106 m3 landslide struck Tracy Arm fjord in Alaska. The landslide was preconditioned by glacial retreat caused by climate change. The resulting 481 m runup megatsunami followed an initial 100-…

Finding faults: WWU faculty/student team travels overseas to study plate tectonics in India
Caught in a landslide, the new Arctic reality?

Three days before a survey team took this photo in Alaska’s Tracy Arm, a tsunami – triggered by a landslide on the other side of the fjord – stripped away the vegetation on the slopes at middle.

WWU Professor of Geology Jackie Caplan-Auerbach recently co-authored a paper…

A 1,500-foot tsunami took scientists by surprise. Now we know why it happened

Early in the morning on August 10, 2025, Christine Smith awoke in a boat anchored in an inlet along southeast Alaska’s glacier-threaded coast. Smith and her husband were leading a small cruise on their 65-foot wooden boat, the David B. Inclement weather had forced…

In Eastern Africa, the cradle of humankind is tearing apart

Eastern Africa’s Turkana Rift is both a hotbed for fossil discoveries of our earliest ancestors and a literal hotbed of volcanic activity caused by shifting tectonic plates. Now researchers have found that Earth’s underlying crust in the region has been significantly thinned, presaging Africa…

Allison Pfeiffer: 100-Year Flood Plains and Flooding on the Nooksack River

KGMI’s Jason Upton speaks with Allison Pfeiffer, associate professor with Western Washington University’s Geology Department, about the concept of 100-year flood plains, why flood events have been happening so frequently in recent years, why the Nooksack River may be more prone…

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