Mais comment s'écoule donc un glacier ? Aperçu historique

Ice and snow have often helped physicists understand the world. On the contrary it has taken them a very long time to understand the flow of the glaciers. Naturalists only began to take an interest in glaciers at the beginning of the 19th century during the last phase of glacier advances. When the glacier flow from the upslope direction became obvious, it was then necessary to understand how it flowed. It was only in 1840, the year of the Antarctica ice sheet discovery by Dumont d'Urville, that two books laid the basis for the future field of glaciology: one by Agassiz on the ice age and glaciers, the other one by canon Rendu on glacier theory. During the 19th century, ice flow theories, adopted by most of the leading scientists, were based on melting/refreezing processes. Even though the word ‘fluid’ was first used in 1773 to describe ice, more the 130 years would have to go by before the laws of fluid mechanics were applied to ice. Even now, the parameter of Glen's law, which is used by glaciologists to model ice deformation, can take a very wide range of values, so that no unique ice flow law has yet been defined. To cite this article: F. Rémy, L. Testut, C. R. Geoscience 338 (2006).     

Les failles récentes des Grands-Moulins (Savoie) : un Sackung (tassement gravitaire) majeur dans les Alpes françaises

In Savoy, the Grands-Moulins recent fault scarps, previously interpreted as seismic fault ruptures, are in fact part of a major Sackung (deep seated gravitational spreading) of the French Alps (9 km long). We mapped more than 60 sackung scarps, some of them reaching 1330 m long and 30 m high. These antislope scarps stop the active screes and offset relict Dryassic rock glaciers by 16 m. We present geomorphologic observations attesting for their gravitational origin. This Sackung is primarily due to glacial debuttressing, while seismic shaking could be a triggering mechanism. To cite this article: J.-C. Hippolyte et al., C. R. Geoscience 338 (2006).     

Enregistrement de la variabilité hydroclimatique au cours des 6500 dernières années sur le littoral de Cabo Frio (Rio de Janeiro,Brésil)

This study concerns a core collected in Brejo do Espinho's lagoon from Cabo Frio littoral (Brazil) submitted to dry influence of local upwelling controlled by north-east trade winds from the South Atlantic and particularly strengthened during El Niño events. Diatoms study supported by sedimentological and isotopic analyses shows dry phases infrequent before 4000 yr, a highly variable climatic phase between 3600 and 2900 yr and from 2400 yr onward a dryness enhancement. To cite this article: B. Laslandes et al., C. R. Geoscience 338 (2006).     

Évolution de l'onde semi-diurne M2 de la marée à Brest de 1846 à 2005

The work of searching, recovering and quality control of ancient sea-level measurements at Brest is presented. This work enables us to complete a study carried out by Cartwright in 1972, which showed a decrease in the tidal M2 semi-diurnal amplitude of 1% per century. After including these ancient data, as well as the last four decades of observations in the analysis, our results show an increase of the amplitude of M2 after 1960 and a decrease before 1880, suggesting a long-period oscillation rather than a steady secular trend. To cite this article: N. Pouvreau et al., C. R. Geoscience 338 (2006).     

Optimization of nonconventional wells under uncertainty using statistical proxies

The determination of the optimal type and placement of a nonconventional well in a heterogeneous reservoir represents a challenging optimization problem. This determination is significantly more complicated if uncertainty in the reservoir geology is included in the optimization. In this study, a genetic algorithm is applied to optimize the deployment of nonconventional wells. Geological uncertainty is accounted for by optimizing over multiple reservoir models (realizations) subject to a prescribed risk attitude. To reduce the excessive computational requirements of the base method, a new statistical proxy (which provides fast estimates of the objective function) based on cluster analysis is introduced into the optimization process. This proxy provides an estimate of the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the scenario performance, which enables the quantification of proxy uncertainty. Knowledge of the proxy-based performance estimate in conjunction with the proxy CDF enables the systematic selection of the most appropriate scenarios for full simulation. Application of the overall method for the optimization of monobore and dual-lateral well placement demonstrates the performance of the hybrid optimization procedure. Specifically, it is shown that by simulating only 10% or 20% of the scenarios (as determined by application of the proxy), optimization results very close to those achieved by simulating all cases are obtained.     

The geochemistry and provenance of Apollo 16 mafic glasses

The regolith of the Apollo 16 lunar landing site is composed mainly of feldspathic lithologies but mafic lithologies are also present. A large proportion of the mafic material occurs as glass. We determined the major element composition of 280 mafic glasses (>10 wt% FeO) from six different Apollo 16 soil samples. A small proportion (5%) of the glasses are of volcanic origin with picritic compositions. Most, however, are of impact origin. Approximately half of the mafic impact glasses are of basaltic composition and half are of noritic composition with high concentrations of incompatible elements. A small fraction have compositions consistent with impact mixtures of mare material and material of the feldspathic highlands. On the basis of major-element chemistry, we identified six mafic glass groups: VLT picritic glass, low-Ti basaltic glass, high-Ti basaltic glass, high-Al basaltic glass, KREEPy glass, and basaltic-andesite glass. These glass groups encompass 60% of the total mafic glasses studied. Trace-element analyses by secondary ion mass spectroscopy for representative examples of each glass group (31 total analyses) support the major-element classifications and groupings. The lack of basaltic glass in Apollo 16 ancient regolith breccias, which provide snapshots of the Apollo 16 soil just after the infall of Imbrium ejecta, leads us to infer that most (if not all) of the basaltic glass was emplaced as ejecta from small- or moderate-sized impacts into the maria surrounding the Apollo 16 site after the Imbrium impact. The high-Ti basaltic glasses likely represent a new type of basalt from Mare Tranquillitatis, whereas the low-Ti and high-Al basaltic glasses possibly represent the composition of the basalts in Mare Nectaris. Both the low-Ti and high-Al basaltic glasses are enriched in light-REEs, which hints at the presence of a KREEP-bearing source region beneath Mare Nectaris. The basaltic andesite glasses have compositions that are siliceous, ferroan, alkali-rich, and moderately titaniferous; they are unlike any previously recognized lunar lithology or glass group. Their likely provenance is within the Procellarum KREEP Terrane, but they are not found within the Apollo 16 ancient regolith breccias and therefore were likely deposited at the Apollo 16 site post-Imbrium. The basaltic-andesite glasses are the most ferroan variety of KREEP yet discovered.     

Study of geothermal water intrusion due to groundwater exploitation in the Puebla Valley aquifer system, Mexico

Significant intrusion of geothermal water into fresh groundwater takes place in the Puebla Valley aquifer system, Mexico. The decline in the potentiometric surface due to the overexploitation of the groundwater induces this intrusion. This hydrological system comprises three aquifers located in Plio-Quaternary volcanic sediments and Mesozoic calcareous rocks. The hydraulic balance of the aquifer shows that the annual output exceeds the natural inputs by 12 million m³. Between 1973 and 2002, a drop in the potentiometric surface, with an 80 m cone of depression, was identified in a 5-km-wide area located southwest of the city of Puebla. Chemical analyses performed on water samples since 1990 have shown an increase in total dissolved solids (TDS) of more than 500 mg/L, coinciding with the region showing a cone of depression in the potentiometric surface. A three-dimensional flow and transport model, based on the hydrogeological and geophysical studies, was computed by using the MODFLOW and MT3D software. This model reproduces the evolution of the aquifer system during the last 30 years and predicts for 2010 an additional drawdown in the potentiometric surface of 15 m, and an increase in the geothermal water intrusion.     

SOCIAL RELATIONS SPATIALLY FIXED: CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS IN SAN ANTONIO,TEXAS

ABSTRACT. More than 140 court cases filed in the United States between 1970 and 2003 argued that unacceptable and unconstitutional funding disparities exist among school districts in most states. In those arguments, stories, statistics, and maps are used to compare various school districts to prove that conditions are indeed unequal. Both sides—plaintiff and defendant—use such information to disprove each other's contentions. In so doing, each assumes that the political spaces of the school districts are absolute, timeless, and independent. Failure to recognize that these spaces—the school districts—are not objective but, in fact, constitutive of the class and race relations actually being argued and debated in court further legitimates local geographies of privilege and deprivation. I examine the formation of the school districts around San Antonio, Texas to illustrate that these districts are far from independent of one another and were formed to isolate privileged communities from the rest of the city. A relational view of space‐time allows such spaces as school districts to assume a political role, as opposed to the absolute, independent spaces they now represent.     

Reconstructing hydrological variability from testate amoebae analysis in Carpathian peatlands

Peatlands offer the potential for high resolution records of water balance over Holocene timescales, yet this potential is under-exploited in many areas of the world. Within Europe, peatlands are mostly confined to areas north of 55° N, but several areas of southern and eastern Europe contain small peatlands which may be suitable for palaeoclimatic reconstruction. In this paper we test the potential of peatlands in the Carpathian region for deriving quantified estimates of water table changes using testate amoebae analysis. A training set for palaeohydrological reconstruction from testate amoebae assemblages was obtained by collecting surface samples from 13 peatlands, including 9 from Hungary and 4 from Transylvania (Romania). Using a simple measure of mean annual water tables estimated from staining of PVC tape, we found that some peatlands were heavily influenced by runoff and groundwater, and were therefore not suitable as modern analogues of ombrotrophic climatically sensitive sites. The relationship between the testate amoebae assemblages in the modern samples and the environmental variables was explored using CCA. The CCA biplot showed that the most important variables are depth to water table and moisture content, confirming that hydrology is a key control on taxon distribution. pH was a secondary gradient. A transfer function for % moisture and depth to water table was established and applied to fossil assemblages from a sequence from Fenyves-tető, Transylvania, Romania. The reconstructed water table shows a number of variations which have parallels with other palaeoclimatic records from Europe and the North Atlantic prominent phases of higher water tables are associated with the periods 8000–8300 cal BP, 3000–2500 cal BP and after 600 cal BP. We suggest that these were periods of particular intensification of westerly airflow which affected eastern Europe as well as western and central Europe.