Individuals who would like to share photos or anecdotes of Dan in a display can send digital images (JPEG preferred, or a format able t o be imported into Photoshop, please) with a descriptive caption, credit, and/or text (10+ font, Word or ASCII format, please) to Al Eggers at eggers@ups.edu). Please send images and text before 1:00 P.M. PDT on Sunday, October 9th for inclusion in the memorial display.

Memorial Information Page for Dr. Tony Qamar

It is my sad duty to inform you that Daniel J. Johnson, Research Professor at the University of Puget Sound, was killed in a traffic accident at about 11:00 A.M. on October 4, 2005. Dan and his colleague, Anthony Qamar , Earth and Space Science at the Un iversity of Washington, were killed when a logging truck lost its load on Highway 101 near Humptulips on the Olympic Peninsula. Dan and Tony were in the field to recover GPS equipment as part of their research into measuring ongoing deformation caused by the interaction of the Pacific and Juan de Fuca plates.

Dan, more recently DJ, was a steady friend and a dear man whose loss leaves large voids in the fabric of our lives and science.

I first met Dan as a seemingly sleeping student in my mineralogy class at the University of Puget Sound in 1977. Even as an undergraduate, Dan walked a different path; he wasn't really napping in class; he was listening intently. I soon learned that det ailed, cross-referenced lecture notes were written after class (The notes probably still exist on an electronic archive in Dan's office.). Dan's undergraduate career was as exceptional as his life. Obviously he was an outstanding geology major. I can s ay this objectively because he was one of the rare geology majors coveted by the Math/Computer Science Department. While working toward an undergraduate degree in Geology, Dan also found the time to play the cello on the University String Quartet, and to become an All-American cross country skier.

Dan's first contributions to volcanology came as an undergraduate. In 1979 and 1980 he spent several field seasons as one of my undergraduate research associates on a surface deformation/gravity change study of Volcan de Pacaya in Guatemala. Dan excell ed at the higher math of first-order leveling, and somehow avoided electrocution by lightning while holding stadia rods on high bare volcanic slopes. On March 27 1980 he was one of an undergraduate research team who began surface deformation and gravity measurements on the north flank of Mount St. Helens. On March 27, Dan, Carol Bibler, and John Faustini (part of the UPS undergraduate team) constructed a dry-tilt station at Timberline, on the north flank of Mt. St. Helens. On March 28, Dan's surface d eformation studies continued in the form of more shovel work - Dan helped to clear an acre or more of the summit of Smith Butte, east of St. Helens, of several feet of snow in an effort to locate a benchmark vital for an EDM measurement. After several da ys' snow shoveling, (wearing out several snow shovels) Dan became 1/3 of a tilt station along the shores of Spirit Lake. UPS students, working for Jim Moore, made concurrent measurements of the water lake level using yard sticks, effectively using Spirit Lake as a tilt meter.

While at UPS Dan became a USGS undergraduate field assistant at the Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO). At CVO Dan quickly became expert in the practical aspect of monitoring an active, dangerous volcano. He helped install the first tiltmeters in the cr ater at Mount St. Helens and contributed to the analysis of tiltmeter and other types of monitoring data, which enabled successful predictions of a series of dome-building eruptions. From 1981 to 1986, Dan worked as a Physical Science Technician at CVO as an essential member a small ground deformation group. In addition to tracking dome-building episodes with tiltmeters and other monitoring instruments, it was during this time that Dan began his research using gravity changes to study volcanic processes. He developed new techniques for making very precise gravity measurements, and made important observational and theoretical contributions to the understanding of active processes at Mount St. Helens, Kilauea and Mona Loa Volcanoes in Hawaii, the Galapagos volcanoes, and most recently at the Three Sisters volcanic center in Oregon.

In 1981 Dan started work toward a Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii. As a graduate student he commenced collecting his record accumulation of frequent flyer miles, as he "commuted" between gravity studies at St. Helens, and Kilauea and Mauna Loa. In his Ph.D. thesis DJ used gravity changes and surface deformation data to model the magma storage system beneath Kilauea and the rift system on Hawaii. His innovative and pioneering gravity change research on the Hawaiian volcanoes continued to the present, and constitutes a fundamental constraint on our understanding of the Hawaiian, and other volcanoes. Dan's work in progress includes an NSF funded gravity change study of the 20 mile diameter growing bulge at the Three Sisters volcanic center, and a study on Kilauea which has identified a new and surprisingly shallow, active magma chamber.

After earning his Ph.D. DJ discovered a more precise and versatile yardstick to measure surface deformation on volcanoes, and many other interesting places. Dan became expert in using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to measure ground-surface displace ments caused by tectonic processes. Dan worked with UNAVCO to conduct GPS field studies in the Galapagos, Indonesia, and other exotic places in the early 90's. In 1996 Dan took a position at Central Washington University (CWU) to work on NASA-funded GPS research in the Pacific Northwest. At CWU Dan was the major contributor to pioneering GPS studies of ground deformation caused by North American/Juan de Fuca plate interaction. This research led to the discovery of "slow earthquakes" and to a better und erstanding of tectonic processes responsible for much of the seismicity in the Pacific Northwest. Dan and Tony died while working on a GPS project funded by the National Science Foundation, which was designed to study tectonic deformation of the Olympic Peninsula.

Friends and colleagues are invited to a public memorial celebrating and honoring the life and contributions of Daniel Johnson on October 10, 2005 from 1:00 to 3:00 P.M. in the Rotunda of the Wheelock Student Center on the campus of the University of Puget Sound. Individuals who would like to share photos or anecdotes of Dan in a display can send digital images (JPEG preferred, or a format able to be imported into Photoshop, please) with a descriptive caption, credit, and/or text (10+ font, Word or ASCII format, please) to me at eggers@ups.edu). Please send images and text before 1:00 P.M. PDT on Sunday, October 9th for inclusion in the memorial display.

Al Eggers
Research Professor/Professor Emeritus
Geology Department
University of Puget Sound
Tacoma, WA 98416
253-752-8197, 253-879-3130

Dr. Dan Johnson died on October 4, 2005 in a car accident on the Olympic Peninsula. He is remembered at Central Washington University for his six and a half years of service in the Geodesy Laboratory in Geological Sciences. Dan arrived at CWU in March of 1996 to work on NASA-funded research using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to study active faulting in eastern California. In the fall of 2002, he moved on to projects at the University of Washington and his alma mater, the University of Puget Sound.

Dr. Johnson attended high school in Tacoma, Washington, received his B.S. in Geology for the University of Puget Sound in 1981, and his Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics at the University of Hawaii where he studied magma storage in the Kilauea Volcano. His interest in active volcanoes and how they deform began much earlier, however. During the events that led up to the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, he and his undergraduate classmates installed yardsticks in the muddy shallows rimming Spirit Lake to monitor its tilt as the volcano swelled.

In the Geodesy Laboratory at CWU, Dan was an integral part of the science program that characterized faulting in the Eastern California shear zone, the Gulf of California, and the Cascadia plate boundary in the Pacific Northwest. His work supported M.S. theses by Ben Pauk, Ken Austin, Andy Miner, Rusty Ardoin, and Mike Caron. He played a pivotal role in the discovery of recurring slow earthquakes, now better known as episodic tremor and slip. His legacy at Central includes many innovations in GPS data analysis that poised the PANGA Data Analysis Center to become an integral part of EarthScope's Plate Boundary Observatory. With passion, Dan pursued travel, adventure, and geodesy, a field of study centered on measuring the Earth's deformation. He especially loved large-scale, expedition style science programs to volcanoes around the world - in Central America, Hawaii, Kamchatka, the Cascades, and at sea - on marine volcano exploration voyages in most of the world's major oceans. His quirky sense of humor and persistence in the pursuit of knowledge endeared him to faculty and staff at Central Washington University.

He is survived by his wife, Eileen Llona, who served on the faculty of the CWU Library until 2000.

Press Coverage

• Seattle Times
• King 5 TV