Laser Rangefinder Data for Surficial Mass Movements in the Cascades: USGS Debris Flow Flume 2023

A laser rangefinder was used to record debris flows at Cascades volcanoes and an experimental debris flow flume. Mass movements such as large lahars and smaller seasonal debris flows can occur at volcanoes in the Cascades. A combination of seismic, infrasound, tripwires, and webcams can be used to detect and characterize these flows. A laser rangefinder can be placed on the banks of the drainages and pointed towards the channel as a low power, low bandwidth piece of equipment to confirm increases in flow past the station. This can serve as another piece of evidence for flows and may be able to be incoporated into future alarm systems to improve their accuracy and performance. A laser rangefinder was deployed for 3 short time periods across 3 days (May 16 - 18) at the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) debris flow flume in the H.J. Andrews Experimental forest in Oregon. The instrument was at a slant distance of ~4.4 m and pointed at 61 degrees from horizontal at the center of the 2 m wide flume. The laser rangefinder was a LaserTech TruSense S200 series logged at 3-4 Hz sampling rate directly to a laptop.

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  "010:12"
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  "geospatial"
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