“Disaster-vision” in the making

High-tech 3-D “disaster-vision” glasses are used to visualize real-world disasters.

The effects of fire, flood and earthquakes will be on display—and in 3-D—at the next Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) lecture, 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 4 in the University Union Ballroom.

Gerald Bawden, with the U.S. Geological Survey, will explain how geologists use high-tech 3-D glasses to visualize imagery that can detect changes in the earth that cause landslides, debris flows, floods, dam failures, mine collapses, beach erosion and glacier retreat.  

Using 3-D glasses, audience members will view the development of disasters including how a bridge that crosses the San Andreas Fault slowly began to bend after the 2004 Parkfield, Calif., earthquake; how Southern California fires stripped canyon walls of hill slope-stabilizing vegetation, thereby leaving the area vulnerable to debris flows and how record rainfall in Southern California saturated the ground and led to the catastrophic collapse of a Laguna Beach neighborhood in 2005. 

For more information on the lecture topic, contact Bawden at 278- 3131.