Marin Clark, the Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni Collegiate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at LSA, is the lead principal investigator and director of CLaSH, the Center for Land Surface Hazards. Funded by a five-year, $15 million National Science Foundation grant, CLaSH is a collaboration between 28 partner organizations, including universities, government organizations, and tribal partners.
We asked Clark about CLaSH, the interconnectedness of natural disasters, and how LSA students benefit.
1. What are “cascading hazards,” and how often do they occur?
Cascading hazards are like a chain reaction—where one hazard event changes the landscape in such a way that future hazards become more likely to occur. For example, when wildfires happen, the loss of trees and other vegetation and changes to the soil properties make mudslides much more likely during rainy seasons that follow. Those mudslides can fill river channels with lots of sediment (like filling up a bathtub), so that rivers then are more likely to overflow their banks and cause flooding hazards. And so on and so on.
2. How can understanding the intertwined nature of events help us to better respond to them and to prepare for others in the future?
We are still at the very beginning stages of learning about the longevity and severity of the hazard cascade—we just haven’t looked at it much as a system. From what we do know, cascading effects can last months and even years, although the outer time limit for their effect is essentially unknown. By understanding how different hazards intersect and multiply, we can build more robust models that predict the full effect that one big event might have for years to come. As a researcher, that is also exciting because the first big event (like a wildfire or an earthquake) is impossible to predict. But once it has happened, we have a much better shot at predicting the chain reaction and that means a chance to protect and prepare communities for what is to come.
3. Your team is looking at the role that humans play in land surface hazards. What is one way that humans can have a beneficial impact, or at least a less detrimental one?
Humans, unfortunately, mostly have a detrimental effect when it comes to land surface hazards. Road construction, land use change, urban expansion into vulnerable areas often exacerbate these hazards and are a significant contribution to the rise in their frequency in past decades and decades to come. Perhaps the positive spin relates to the potential to manage the hazard cascade with knowledge of key processes or locations that would benefit from mitigation and preparatory efforts, which could reduce the impact of losses due to land surface hazards. Humans also can have beneficial impact through a range of engineering solutions that span from retrofit infrastructure to managing drainage patterns on hillslopes. But these efforts really are in the engineering realm and aren’t a part of CLaSH. The data and discoveries we make as a center will serve engineers (as well as governmental agencies and other interested parties) to build better, safer societies. Our focus is on advancing the science that underpins land surface hazards.
4. You are coordinating with researchers from several other universities. How can that multi-institution approach benefit the speed or scope of the research?
It takes a village to do this kind of work! The benefit of the multi-institution approach is vital to our efforts because addressing the hazard cascade means understanding a very complex system. This system requires not only understanding how land surface processes work (like how sediment moves in a river or how landslides happen), but also about a wide range of forces that cause the land surface to change. These include atmospheric events (wind, intense rain storms, rapid snowmelt, droughts that lead to wildfire conditions), earthquakes, and wildfires. To do that, we need lots of researchers with different specialties and expertise working together as a large team. What we are accomplishing just can’t be addressed by any one single group of researchers because their scope would be too limited.
5. What are some ways that LSA students are benefiting from CLaSH?
LSA students are benefiting in a variety of ways, engaging in research that extends beyond a typical single lab or localized network of collaborators. Direct research opportunities are available to both undergraduate and graduate students. For example, global events like the recent earthquakes in the Philippines and Venezuela offer chances to participate in “virtual responses” by identifying landslides on satellite imagery in “real time” as satellites deliver that data. Students also can participate in on-the-ground data collection, such as deploying geophysical and weather instruments, or attending our technical short courses and summer field training. Because a core mission of CLaSH is to broaden and grow the hazard science workforce, students are actively integrated into a nationwide and global network of academic, governmental (like the U.S. Geological Survey), and community partners, and are supported with targeted cohort building activities. This unique structure puts Michigan students in direct contact with diverse experts, allowing them to build early career connections across the entire cascading hazard science community.
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