Evidence ofchaos in slab avalanches

Abstract:

We present evidence that slab avalanching is a chaotic process. A 20-year set of8062 avalanches running on more than 140 paths at Mammoth Mountain was examined The distribution ofcrown sizes greater than a given size is scale invariant (fractal) over the entire mountain and on individual paths. Chaotic systems often exhibit fractal statistics. We reconstruct the phase space portrait and resulting attractor for crown size on one avalanche path for the period 1982/1983 through 2001/2002. Independent measures ofthe attractor, including comparison against surrogate sets ofstochastic data, indicate the time series is deterministic and that the attractor is chaotic.

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