SSA 2026 session: Detecting, Characterizing, and Monitoring Mass Movements

[Ezgi Karasozen]

Dear all,

We kindly invite you to submit an abstract to the following session: "Detecting, Characterizing, and Monitoring Mass Movements" at the 2026 Seismological Society of America (SSA) Annual Meeting:

Detecting, Characterizing, and Monitoring Mass Movements

Evolving climate patterns and land-use changes coupled with improved monitoring capabilities have

caused a notable increase in geophysical detections of mass movements, such as landslides, debris and

snow avalanches, lahars, and glacial failures. Recent examples include the Blatten landslide in

Switzerland, the Wanrog rock avalanche in Taiwan, and the Tracy Arm tsunamigenic landslide in Alaska,

USA. Mass movements couple energy into the Earth and atmosphere, making seismic and infrasound

analysis useful for detecting, characterizing, and monitoring these events. While these sources are not

routinely monitored in real-time like earthquakes, recent advancements in seismic and infrasound

instrumentation and processing offer opportunities for rapid early warning and post-event detection and

analysis. Combining seismic and infrasound methods with auxiliary datasets from e.g., remote sensing,

ground-based flow monitoring, and distributed sensing further improves event characterization. Passive

seismic analysis can also provide valuable information about incipient or ongoing slope instabilities.

This session explores innovative research focused on improving our comprehension of various types of

mass movements as seismic sources. We invite presentations that investigate the use of seismic and

infrasound data as well as interdisciplinary datasets to expand our knowledge of fundamental landslide

processes, enhance our ability to characterize and monitor mass movement events, and mitigate associated

hazards. Topics of interest encompass, but are not limited to, mass movement source detection, location,

characterization, modeling and classification, precursory signal analysis, monitoring, and hazard mitigation. 

Conveners
Avery Conner, University of Oregon (acon...@uoregon.edu)
Ezgi Karasözen, University of Alaska Fairbanks (ekara...@alaska.edu)

Liam Toney, U.S. Geological Survey (lto...@usgs.gov)

The conference will take place from 14 to 18 April 2026 in Pasadena, California. The abstract submission deadline is 13 January – 11:59 pm Pacific (US) Time. (https://meetings.seismosoc.org/submit/).

Sincerely,

Ezgi, on behalf of the conveners