"Field observations reveal the importance of soil and rock volume and composition, as well as 3-D geometry of initiation." This is a quote from a lecture that I attended at the University of Missouri Kansas City on April 14th, 2005. The guest speaker was Dr. Richard Iverson, who is from USGS in Vancouver, Washington. It was a very good, detailed lecture, complete with video clips and a power point of his information. He showed us many pictures of computed stress components and total vertical acceleration, also. I found that he was a very good speaker and was very knowledgeable in geology. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it was his passion. I really learned a lot from him, and he helped me understand some concepts that I had a hard time understanding. I actually enjoyed listening to what he had to say.

One of the things he talked about...