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Birkeland & Landry 2002
Birkeland, K.W. and Landry, C.C. (2002). Power-laws and snow avalanches. Geophysical Research Letters 29: doi: 10.1029/2001GL014623. issn: 0094-8276.

This paper presents evidence of frequency-size power-laws in several groups of snow avalanche paths. Other natural hazards, such as earthquakes and forest fires, exhibit similar power-law relationships. In addition, an analysis of the response of one group of snow avalanche paths to storms through time demonstrates a power-law between the response of the system and the binned frequency of those responses. Our results, as well as our experience with these complex, non-linear systems, are consistent with self-organized criticality. The practical implication of this work is that the frequency-size relationship for small and medium sized avalanches may be useful for quantifying the risk of large snow avalanches within a group of avalanche paths.

BACKGROUND DATA FILES

Abstract

Keywords
Hydrology, Snow and ice, Mathematical Geophysics, Nonlinear dynamics, Mathematical Geophysics, General or miscellaneous
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
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Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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