Sedimenttransport im Mündungsgebiet des Alpenrheins

Zusammenfassung In regelmäßigen Abständen wurden dem Alpenrhein am Pegel Lustenau, wenige Kilometer vor seiner Einmündung in den Bodensee, etwa 500 Wasser- und Schwebstoffproben bei verschiedenen Pegelständen entnommen.Die Leitfähigkeit und Härte der Wasserproben nimmt mit steigendem Durchfluß (100–1000 m³/sec) entsprechend der Verdünnung ab, der pH-Wert (8,0 bis 8,8) steigt schwach an. Die Redoxpotientale sind stets positiv.Mit ansteigendem Wasserdurchfluß nimmt die Schwebstoffkonzentration stark zu (50–5000 mg/l).Zur Zeit des Frühsommer-Hochwassers sind bei gleicher Wasserführung die Schwebstoffgehalte bei ansteigendem Hochwasser höher als bei absteigendem Hochwasser. Als Ursache wird die Ausräumung des im Flußbett während des Winters und Frühjahrs bei Niedrigwasser akkumulierten Lockermaterials angesehen.Setzt man die Schwebstoffgehalte in Beziehung zur Fließgeschwindigkeit (1–3 m³/sec), so ergibt sich für den Meßpunkt Lustenau eine Zunahme des Schwebguts (C_s in mg/l) mit der sechsten Potenz der Fließgeschwindigkeit (V): C_s (Alpenrhein Lustenau)=5·V⁶ In einer allgemeinen Beziehung C_s=x·Vy, die für verschiedene Flüsse nach Literaturdaten abgeleitet wurde, scheint der Exponent y ein Maß für die Strömungserosion (abhängig von Form und Neigung des Flußbettes), der Faktor x für die äußeren Einflüsse wie Klima, Vegetation, Stabilität der Flußgeometrie darzustellen. Eine ähnliche Abhängigkeit besteht zwischen der Schwebstoff- und Wasserführung.Die Korngrößenverteilung und Karbonatgehalte sind von den Durchfluß-mengen bzw. Fließgeschwindigkeiten nahezu unabhängig, stehen jedoch in deutlicher Beziehung zu bestimmten Liefergebieten. Eine Häufigkeitsstatistik der mittleren Korngrößen von Flußsanden (Hahn, 1967) und Schwebstoffen (diese Arbeit) zeigt ein auffallendes Minimum bei etwa 0,04 mm. Dieser Wert kann zur Abgrenzung der Schwebstoff- und Flußbettfracht am Meßpunkt Lustenau benutzt werden. Werte für die Sortierung, Schiefe und Kurtosis erweitern die grundlegenden Untersuchungen vonFolk &Ward (1957) nach feineren Korngrößen hin.Im Mittel setzen sich die Schwebstoffe aus 10% Ton, 70% Silt und 20% Sand zusammen. Der Karbonatgehalt beträgt durchschnittlich 37% (26% Calcit, 11% Dolomit). Die Tonfraktion besteht überwiegend aus Illit und Chlorit.

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500 samples of water and suspended load were taken at different water levels from the Alpenrhein at Lustenau, a few kilometers' distance from its Lake Constance-delta.Conductibility and hardness of the water decrease with increasing water discharge (100–1000 m³/sec) corresponding to the dilution, the pH-values (8.0 to 8.8) weakly increase. The redox-potentials are always positive. With increasing water discharge, the suspended load concentration increases strongly (50 to 5000 mg/l).At the same water levels, the suspended load concentration during early-summer high-water is greater during rising than during falling water level. This may be caused by the loose material (accumulated during winter and spring low waters) being washed out of the river channel.On a double logarithmic scale the relation between flow velocity (V=1–3 m³/sec) and suspended load concentration (C_s in mg/l) can be expressed by a straight line. Its equation is C_s (Alpenrhein at Lustenau)=5· V⁶ In a general equation C_s=x· Vy, for various rivers (data taken from literature), the exponent y seems to be a measure of the erosional forces (depending on cross-section and slope of the river channel); the factor x seems to express outer influences as climate, vegetation, rock erodibility, stability of the channel geometry. A similar relationship exists between the suspended load concentration and the water discharge.Grain-size distribution and carbonate content are almost independent of water discharge and flow velocity respectively. They are, however, clearly related to distinct supply areas. A pronounced frequency minimum exists at about 0.04 mm between the mean sizes of river sands (Hahn, 1967) and that of suspended load (this paper). This value may be used to distinguish suspended load from bedload at Lustenau sampling station. The values for sorting, skewness and kurtosis amplify the results ofFolk &Ward (1957) concerning finer grain sizes.On an average, the suspended load consists of 10% clay (<0.002 mm), 70% silt (0.002–0.063 mm) and 20% sand (>0.063 mm). The mean carbonate content is 37% (26% calcite, 11% dolomite). The clay minerals are mainly illite and chlorite.

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Résumé A des intervalles de temps réguliers, à peu près 500 échantillons d'eau et de matière en suspension ont été prélevés de l'Alpenrhein, à la station de jaugeage de Lustenau, située à quelques kilomètres en amont de son embouchure dans le Lac de Constance.La conductivité et le degré hydrométrique dans les échantillons d'eau décroissent en fonction d'une dilution relative, due à une augmentation du débit (100 à l000m³/sec). Il y a une légère croissance de la valeur du pH (8.0 à 8.8) lorsque le débit augmente. Les potentiels redox sont toujours positifs.La concentration de la matière en suspension augmente rapidement 50 à 5000 mg/l) en fonction de l'augmentation du débit.En temps de crues, au début de l'été, la concentration de la matière en suspension est plus élevée pendant la montée des crues qu'à la descente—le débit étant du même ordre. Ce phénomène est expliqué par un processus de balayage de la matière non consolidée, accumulée au fond du lit de la rivière pendant les périodes d'étiage au cours de l'hiver et au printemps.En établissant une relation entre la concentration de la matière en suspension et la vitesse d'écoulement (1 à 3 m³/sec), on trouve pour la station de jaugeage de Lustenau une augmentation de teneur de la matière en suspension (C_s en mg/l) avec la puissance 6 de la vitesse d'écoulement (V): C_s (Alpenrhein, Lustenau)=5 · V⁶ d'où l'équation générale C_s=x · Vy, qui ressort aussi des études de diverses rivières citées dans la littérature. L'exponent y semble donc pouvoir servir comme règle pour la détermination de l'érosion d'écoulement (qui dépend de la géométrie et de la pente du lit du fleuve), le facteur x reflétant des influences externes comme le climat, la végétation et la stabilité de la géométrie du fleuve. Une relation analogue existe entre la concentration en matière en suspension et le débit.Il n'y a pratiquement pas de relation directe entre la distribution granulométrique, ou les teneurs en carbonates d'une part, et le volume du débit ou la vitesse de l'écoulement d'autre part; or il apparaît une relation intime avec certaines régions d'alimentation. On note un minimum marqué autour de 0.04 mm dans la distribution statistique des grains à diamètre moyen dans les sables des fleuves (Hahn, 1967) et de la matière en suspension (cette étude). A l'aide de cette valeur il est possible de différencier, à la station de jaugeage de Lustenau, la matière transportée au fond du lit de l'Alpenrhein et celle transportée en suspension. Des valeurs pour le classement, l'assymétrie et «l'augulosité» (kurtosis) complètent les recherches de base deFolk &Ward (1957), en ce qui concerne la distribution granulométrique dans la classe des grains les plus fins.Comme constitution moyenne on trouve dans la matière en suspension 10% d'argile, 70% de silt et 20% de sable. La teneur moyenne en carbonates est de 37% (26% de calcite, 10% de dolomie). Dans la fraction des argiles on trouve essentiellement de l'illite et de la chlorite.

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. 500 . (100–1000 ³/); - (8,0–8,8) ; - . . 6. .

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Dem Österreichischen Rheinbauleiter, Herrn Hofrat Dipl.-Ing.Ferdinand Waibel, Bregenz, in Dankbarkeit gewidmet.

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Herrn Dr.Quakernaat sei herzlich für seine freundliche Mithilfe gedankt.     

Particle geochemistry in the Rainbow hydrothermal plume, Mid-Atlantic Ridge

We report the analysis of 18 large volume (500-1500 L) in situ filtered samples of particulate material from the largest hydrothermal plume on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, overlying the ultramafic-hosted Rainbow hydrothermal field at 36° 14′N. Measured particulate iron concentrations reach 614 nM. High concentrations of particulate Fe oxyhydroxides result from the extremely high Fe concentration (∼24 mM) and Fe/H₂S ratio (∼24) of the vent fluids, and persist to at least 10 km away from the vent site due to the advection of plume material with the ambient along-axis flow. Two of the nine pairs of pump deployments appear to have intercepted the buoyant or otherwise very young portion of the hydrothermal plume. These samples are characterized by anomalously (compared to neutrally buoyant plume samples) high concentrations of Mg, U, and chalcophile elements, and low concentrations of Mn, Ca, V, Y, and the rare earth elements (REE). Within the neutrally buoyant plume, elemental distributions are largely consistent with previously observed behaviors: preferential removal of chalcophile elements, conservative behavior of oxyanions (P, V, and U), and continuous scavenging of Y and the REE. This consistency is particularly significant in light of the underlying differences in fluid chemistry between Rainbow and other studied sites. Chalcophile elements are preferentially removed from the plume in the order Cd>Zn>Co>Cu. Phosphorus/iron and vanadium/iron ratios for the neutrally buoyant plume are consistent with global trends with respect to the concentration of dissolved phosphate in ambient seawater. Comparison of buoyant and neutrally buoyant plume ratios with data from hydrothermal sediments underlying the Rainbow plume (Cave et al., 2002) indicates, however, that while P/Fe ratios are indeed constant V/Fe ratios increase progressively from early stage plume particles to sediments. REE distributions in the buoyant and neutrally buoyant plume appear most consistent with a continuous scavenging process during dispersion through the water column.     

Accumulation of Polychlorinated Biphenyls in the Sheksninskii Pool of the Rybinsk Reservoir

Specific features of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) distributions in bottom sediments, benthos, and fish of the Sheksninskii Pool of the Rybinsk Reservoir are discussed. It is shown that 95% of the total PCB is accumulated in bottom sediments. Mapping of PCB-polluted bottom sediments with allowance for the sediment type and bed relief is proposed. The obtained data along with coefficients of accumulation in the bottom sediments–benthos–fish chain were used to evaluate the maximum concentration of PCB in bottom sediments at which the environmental risk of fish metabolism disturbance will be minimum. It is shown that once the PCB discharge into the water body is completely eliminated, their presence in the system will still be an ecological hazard for 25–30 years.     

Rapid afterslip and short-term viscoelastic relaxation following the 2008 M_W7.9 Wenchuan earthquake

Significant postseismic deformation of the 2008 M W 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake has been observed from GPS data of the first 14 days after the earthquake. The possible mechanisms for the rapid postseismic deformation are assumed to be afterslip on the earthquake rupture plane and viscoelastic relaxation of coseismiclly stress change in the lower crust or upper mantle. We firstly use the constrained least squares method to find an afterslip model which can fit the GPS data best. The afterslip model can explain n...     

Aluminium phosphate and phosphate-sulphate minerals in kyanite schists of the Ichetuyskoye area, West Transbaikalia, Russia: crystal chemistry and evolution

Aluminium phosphate and aluminium phosphate-sulphate (APS) minerals occur as disseminated crystals and fine-grained aggregates in kyanite schists near Ichetuyskoye, in the Dzhida basin (West Transbaikal region, Russia). Petrographical, mineralogical and geochemical data suggest a metamorphic evolution through prograde and retrograde stages. Lazulite-scorzalite and trolleite in association with kyanite, quartz, muscovite, paragonite, topaz, rutile, magnetite and hematite formed during the prograde stage. More than 25 minerals identified in schists are genetically related to the retrograde stage. Some phosphates and all of the APS minerals belong to the alunite, beudantite and plumbogummite groups. Electron-microprobe data reveal the presence of wide compositional variations and complex solid-solution series among the members. The main crystal-chemical variations of the APS solid-solution series in the alunite supergroup concern the relative proportions of svanbergite, woodhouseite, goyazite, crandallite, florencite-(Ce) and natroalunite. Chemical analyses of APS minerals indicate extremely high amounts of LREE, Sr, Ba, Ca and Na. In some cases, APS minerals have compositions of Ba and Ca,Ba phosphates?C sulphates.     

QUANTIFYING SIMILARITY FOR HANDLING INFORMATION IN KNOWLEDGE BASES

When constructing diagnostic systems or using knowledge-based systems,e.g.in analytical chemistry,features of different type and character,represented by numbers,trajectories or linguistic variables suchas intensities or colours,must be considered.To find neighbourhoods or to fill in missing values,thenotion of similarity is of essential importance.The paper presents a new fuzzy-set-theory-based approachto quantifying similarity and provides a system of rules to be implemented into the diagnostic part of theknowledge base to be used.     

Operator-oriented CRS interpolation

In common‐reflection‐surface imaging the reflection arrival time field is parameterized by operators that are of higher dimension or order than in conventional methods. Using the common‐reflection‐surface approach locally in the unmigrated prestack data domain opens a potential for trace regularization and interpolation. In most data interpolation methods based on local coherency estimation, a single operator is designed for a target sample and the output amplitude is defined as a weighted average along the operator. This approach may fail in presence of interfering events or strong amplitude and phase variations. In this paper we introduce an alternative scheme in which there is no need for an operator to be defined at the target sample itself. Instead, the amplitude at a target sample is constructed from multiple operators estimated at different positions. In this case one operator may contribute to the construction of several target samples. Vice versa, a target sample might receive contributions from different operators. Operators are determined on a grid which can be sparser than the output grid. This allows to dramatically decrease the computational costs. In addition, the use of multiple operators for a single target sample stabilizes the interpolation results and implicitly allows several contributions in case of interfering events. Due to the considerable computational expense, common‐reflection‐surface interpolation is limited to work in subsets of the prestack data. We present the general workflow of a common‐reflection‐surface‐based regularization/interpolation for 3D data volumes. This workflow has been applied to an OBC common‐receiver volume and binned common‐offset subsets of a 3D marine data set. The impact of a common‐reflection‐surface regularization is demonstrated by means of a subsequent time migration. In comparison to the time migrations of the original and DMO‐interpolated data, the results show particular improvements in view of the continuity of reflections events. This gain is confirmed by an automatic picking of a horizon in the stacked time migrations.     

Verification of a Synthesized Method for the Calculation of Low-Level Climatological Wind Fields Using a Mesoscale Boundary-Layer Model

Low-level climatological wind fields over the La Plata River region of South America are synthesized with a dry, hydrostatic mesoscale boundary-layer numerical model. The model is forced at the upper boundary with the 1200 UTC local radiosonde observations and at the lower boundary with a land-river differential heating function defined from the daily meteorological observations of the region. The climatological wind field is defined as the mean value of a series of individual daily forecasts, employing two methods. The simplified method considers a 192-member ensemble (16 wind directions and 12 wind-speed classes at the upper boundary). Each member has a probability of occurrence that is determined from the 1959–1984 observations; the daily method uses a total of 3,248 days with available data during the same period. In both methods each realization is a daily forecast from which the mean wind distributions at 0300, 0900, 1500 and 2100 local standard time are calculated and compared to the observations of five meteorological stations in the region. The validation of the climatological wind fields for both methods is evaluated by means of the root-mean-square error of the wind-direction frequency distribution and mean wind speed by wind sector. The results obtained with the two methods are similar, and the errors in wind speed are always smaller than those in wind direction. The combined errors of wind direction and wind speed show that the ensemble method is outperformed by the daily method, on average by meteorological station in only one out of five of them, and on average by the time of the day in only one out of 4 h. The conclusion of the study is that the ensemble method is an appropriate methodology for determining high resolution, low-level climatological wind fields, with the boundary-layer model applied to a region with a strong diurnal cycle of surface thermal contrast. The proposed methodology is of particular utility for synthesizing wind fields over regions with limited meteorological observations, since the 192-member matrix can be easily defined with few observing points, as well as in the case of relatively incomplete records.     

Landslide investigations in Russia and the former USSR

Landslide hazard has always been a focus of research of scientific and industrial organizations in Russia, as well as the former Soviet Union . This research included a broad spectrum of studies of landslide processes based on monitoring data collected at specialized stations nationwide, as well as the data collected and analyzed by various government and academic research institutions. The current study summarizes a vast body of knowledge encompassing an inventory of landslide cases, overview of mechanisms of landslide development and monitoring and slope stability assessments. It presents a new mechanism-based landslide classification and proposes a practical method of increasing slope resistance. Partial findings have been previously presented in numerous publications. We believe these findings have a worldwide significance and can be applied in different regions of our planet.     

Mercury speciation in tailings of the Idrija mercury mine

Five hundred years of mercury (Hg) mining activity in Idrija, Slovenia caused widespread Hg contamination. Besides Hg emissions from the ore smelter, tailings have been found to be the major source of river sediment contamination. In the present study, solid phase binding forms and the aqueous mobility of Hg have been investigated in tailings of the Idrija Hg mine by means of a pyrolysis technique and aqueous Hg speciation. Results show that Hg binding forms differ with the age of the tailings due to the processing of different ores with different roasting techniques. In older tailings, the predominant Hg species is cinnabar (HgS), due to incomplete roasting, whereas in tailings of the 20th century the amount of cinnabar in the material decreased due to a higher efficiency of the roasting process and the increasing use of ores bearing native Hg. In younger tailings, metallic Hg (Hg⁰) sorbed to mineral matrix components such as dolomite and Fe-oxyhydroxides became the predominant Hg binding form in addition to unbound Hg⁰ and traces of HgO. Leaching tests show that in younger tailings high amounts of soluble Hg exist in reactive form. In older tailings most of the soluble Hg occurs bound to soluble complexes. It might be assumed that in the long term, matrix-bound Hg⁰ could be bound to humic acids derived from soils covering the tailings. This means that, despite the lower total Hg concentrations found in the younger tailings, the long-term risk potential of its mobile matrix-bound Hg⁰ is higher than that of older tailings bearing mostly immobile cinnabar.