Über Sedimentbildung am Meeresboden

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Wesen,Ursachen und Arten der Schichtung

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The Beach Crowding Index: A Tool for Assessing Social Carrying Capacity of Vulnerable Beaches

The aim of this article is to introduce the Beach Crowding Index (BCI), a procedure to assess the social carrying capacity of vulnerable beaches. The study uses the people at one time (PAOT) approach and data gathered weekly throughout the bathing season regarding the number of beachgoers in 100 m² cells of the beach to assess how many beachgoers it can comfortably hold. The procedure is based on fieldwork, interviews with beachgoers, and geographic information system (GIS) analysis and has been tested on four beaches in protected areas on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. On a scale from 0 to 4, minimum scores throughout the bathing season are 0.7 and maximum 3.7, although results showed wide variation between the beaches, the section of the beach, and the time of day. This study suggests that determining the location of beachgoers and collecting a long-term series of data is fundamental to assessing social carrying capacity and that the BCI procedure can be used for a large number of applications.     

The life cycle of contributors in collaborative online communities -the case of OpenStreetMap

Over the last two decades, online communities have become ubiquitous, with millions of people accessing collaborative project websites every day. Among them, the OpenStreetMap project (OSM) has been very successful in collecting/offering volunteered geographic information (VGI). Very different behaviours are observed among OSM participants, which translate into large differences of lifespan, contribution levels (e.g. Nielsen’s 90–9-1 rule) and attitudes towards innovations (e.g. Diffusion of innovation theory or DoIT). So far, the literature has defined phases in the life cycle of contributors only based on the nature of their contributions (e.g. role of participants and edits characteristics). Our study identifies the different phases of their life cycle from a temporal perspective and assesses how these phases relate to the volume and the frequency of the contributions from participants. Survival analyses were performed using both a complementary cumulative distribution function and a Kaplan-Meier estimator to plot survival and hazard curves. The analyses were broken down according to Nielsen and DoIT contributors’ categories to highlight potential explanatory variables. This paper shows that two contribution processes combine with three major participation stages to form six phases in contributors’ life cycle. The volume of edits provided on each active day is driven by the two contribution processes, illustrating the evolution of contributors’ motivation over time. Since contributors’ lifespan is a universal metric, our results may also apply to other collaborative online communities.     

Geothermal Characterization of the St. Lawrence Lowlands Sedimentary Basin,Québec,Canada

Defining temperature at depth to identify geothermal resources relies on the evaluation of the Earth heat flow based on equilibrium temperature measurements as well as thermal conductivity and heat generation rate assessment. Such high-quality geothermal data can be sparse over the region of interest. This is the case of the St. Lawrence Lowlands sedimentary basin covering 20,000 km² to the south of Québec, Canada, and enclosing only three wells up to a depth of 500 m with equilibrium heat flow measurements. However, more than 250 oil and gas exploration wells have been drilled in this area, providing for this study (parce que c'est 93 sinon) 81 locations with bottom-hole temperature up to a depth of 4300 m, however, not at equilibrium. Analyzing these data with respect to the deep geothermal resource potential of this sedimentary basin requires evaluating the thermal conductivity and heat generation rate of its geological units to properly extrapolate temperature downward. This was done by compiling literature and recent thermal conductivity measurements in outcrop and core samples as well as new heat generation rate estimates from spectral gamma ray logs to establish a first thermal assessment of geological units deep down into the basin. The mean thermal conductivity of the thermal units varies from 2.5 to 6.3 W/m·K, with peak values in the basal sandstones, while the heat generation rate varies from 1.6 to 0.3 µW/m³, decreasing from the upper caprocks toward the base of the sequence. After correcting the bottom-hole temperatures for drilling disturbance with the Harrison correction and subsequently for paleoclimate variations, results indicate a mean geothermal gradient of 23.1 °C/km, varying from 14 to 40 °C/km. Evaluating the basin thermal state from oil and gas data is a significant challenge facilitated by an understanding of its thermal properties.     

Identifying Groundwater Potential in Crystalline Basement Rocks Using Remote Sensing and Electromagnetic Sounding Techniques in Central Western Mozambique

Exploring for groundwater in crystalline rocks in semiarid areas is a challenge because of their complex hydrogeology and low potential yields. An integrated approach was applied in central western Mozambique, in an area covered by Precambrian crystalline basement rocks. The approach combined a digital elevation model (DEM), remote sensing, and a ground-based geophysical survey. The aim was to identify groundwater zones with high potential and to identify geological structures controlling that potential. Lineaments were extracted from the DEM that had been enhanced using an adaptive-tilt, multi-directional, shading technique and a non-filtering technique to characterize the regional fracture system. The shallowness and amount of stored groundwater in the fracture zones was assessed using vegetation indices derived from Landsat 8 OLI images. Then, 14 transient electromagnetic (TEM) survey profiles were taken in different geological settings across continuous lineaments that were considered to be aligned along inferred faults. In the central lineament zones, the TEM soundings gave resistivity values of less than 300 Ωm at a depth of 20–80 m. The values varied with location. Conversely, values greater than 400 Ωm were observed at the sites away from the central zones. This contrast is probably caused by the differences in permeability and degree of weathering along the fractured zones. These differences could be key factors in determining groundwater occurrence. By integrating five water-related factors (lineament density, slope, geology, vegetation index, and proximity to lineaments), high groundwater potential zones were located in the vicinity of the lineaments. In these zones, vegetation remains active regardless of the season.     

Performance of CMORPH,TMPA, and PERSIANN rainfall datasets over plain,mountainous, and glacial regions of Pakistan

The present study aims at the assessment of six satellite rainfall estimates (SREs) in Pakistan. For each assessed products, both real-time (RT) and post adjusted (Adj) versions are considered to highlight their potential benefits in the rainfall estimation at annual, monthly, and daily temporal scales. Three geomorphological climatic zones, i.e., plain, mountainous, and glacial are taken under considerations for the determination of relative potentials of these SREs over Pakistan at global and regional scales. All SREs, in general, have well captured the annual north-south rainfall decreasing patterns and rainfall amounts over the typical arid regions of the country. Regarding the zonal approach, the performance of all SREs has remained good over mountainous region comparative to arid regions. This poor performance in accurate rainfall estimation of all the six SREs over arid regions has made their use questionable in these regions. Over glacier region, all SREs have highly overestimated the rainfall. One possible cause of this overestimation may be due to the low surface temperature and radiation absorption over snow and ice cover, resulting in their misidentification with rainy clouds as daily false alarm ratio has increased from mountainous to glacial regions. Among RT products, CMORPH-RT is the most biased product. The Bias was almost removed on CMORPH-Adj thanks to the gauge adjustment. On a general way, all Adj versions outperformed their respective RT versions at all considered temporal scales and have confirmed the positive effects of gauge adjustment. CMORPH-Adj and TMPA-Adj have shown the best agreement with in situ data in terms of Bias, RMSE, and CC over the entire study area.     

Retrieving air humidity,global solar radiation,and reference evapotranspiration from daily temperatures: development and validation of new methods for Mexico. Part I: humidity

The occurrence of flood and drought frequency is highly correlated with the temporal fluctuations of streamflow series; understanding of these fluctuations is essential for the improved modeling and statistical prediction of extreme changes in river basins. In this study, the complexity of daily streamflow fluctuations was investigated by using multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) in a large heterogeneous lake basin, the Poyang Lake basin in China, and the potential impacts of human activities were also explored. Major results indicate that the multifractality of streamflow fluctuations shows significant regional characteristics. In the study catchment, all the daily streamflow series present a strong long-range correlation with Hurst exponents bigger than 0.8. The q-order Hurst exponent h(q) of all the hydrostations can be characterized well by only two parameters: a (0.354 ≤ a ≤ 0.384) and b (0.627 ≤ b ≤ 0.677), with no pronounced differences. Singularity spectrum analysis pointed out that small fluctuations play a dominant role in all daily streamflow series. Our research also revealed that both the correlation properties and the broad probability density function (PDF) of hydrological series can be responsible for the multifractality of streamflow series that depends on watershed areas. In addition, we emphasized the relationship between watershed area and the estimated multifractal parameters, such as the Hurst exponent and fitted parameters a and b from the q-order Hurst exponent h(q). However, the relationship between the width of the singularity spectrum (Δα) and watershed area is not clear. Further investigation revealed that increasing forest coverage and reservoir storage can effectively enhance the persistence of daily streamflow, decrease the hydrological complexity of large fluctuations, and increase the small fluctuations.     

Effect of asymmetrical street canyons on pedestrian thermal comfort in warm-humid climate of Cuba

Walkability and livability in cities can be enhanced by creating comfortable environments in the streets. The profile of an urban street canyon has a substantial impact on outdoor thermal conditions at pedestrian level. This paper deals with the effect of asymmetrical street canyon profiles, common in the historical centre of Camagüey, Cuba, on outdoor thermal comfort. Temporal-spatial analyses are conducted using the Heliodon2 and the RayMan model, which enable the generation of accurate predictions about solar radiation and thermal conditions of urban spaces, respectively. On these models, urban settings are represented by asymmetrical street canyons with five different height-to-width ratios and four street axis orientations (N-S, NE-SW, E-W, SE-NW). Results are evaluated for daytime hours across the street canyon, by means of the physiologically equivalent temperature (PET index) which allows the evaluation of the bioclimatic conditions of outdoor environments. Our findings revealed that high profiles (façades) located on the east-facing side of N-S streets, on the southeast-facing side of NE-SW streets, on the south-facing side of E-W street, and on the southwest-facing side of SE-NW streets, are recommended to reduce the total number of hours under thermal stress. E-W street canyons are the most thermally stressed ones, with extreme PET values around 36 °C. Deviating from this orientation ameliorates the heat stress with reductions of up to 4 h in summer. For all analysed E-W orientations, only about one fifth of the street can be comfortable, especially for high aspect ratios (H/W > 3). Optimal subzones in the street are next to the north side of the E-W street, northwest side of the NE-SW street, and southwest side of the SE-NW street. Besides, when the highest profile is located on the east side of N-S streets, then the subzone next to the east-facing façade is recommendable for pedestrians. The proposed urban guidelines enable urban planners to create and renovate urban spaces which are more efficient in diminishing pedestrian thermal stress.     

Evaluation of methods of spatial interpolation for monthly rainfall data over the state of Rio de Janeiro,Brazil

Five deterministic methods of spatial interpolation of monthly rainfall were compared over the state of Rio de Janeiro, southeast Brazil. The methods were the inverse distance weight (IDW), nearest neighbor (NRN), triangulation with linear interpolation (TLI), natural neighbor (NN), and spline tension (SPT). A set of 110 weather stations was used to test the methods. The selection of stations had two criteria: time series longer than 20 years and period of data from 1960 to 2009. The methods were evaluated using cross-validation, linear regression between values observed and interpolated, root mean square error (RMSE), coefficient of determination (r ²), coefficient of variation (CV, %), and the Willmott index of agreement (d). The results from different methods are influenced by the meteorological systems and their seasonality, as well as by the interaction with the topography. The methods presented higher precision (r ²) and accuracy (d, RMSE) during the summer and transition to autumn, in comparison with the winter or spring months. The SPT had the highest precision and accuracy in relation to other methods, in addition to having a good representation of the spatial patterns expected for rainfall over the complex terrain of the state and its high spatial variability.