Evolution of a Carboniferous carbonate-hosted sphalerite breccia deposit,Isle of Man

A newly discovered, extensive sphalerite-bearing breccia (~7.5 wt.% Zn) is hosted in dolomitised Carboniferous limestones overlying Ordovician–Silurian metasedimentary rocks on the Isle of Man. Although base metal sulphide deposits have been mined historically on the island, they are nearly all quartz vein deposits in the metamorphic basement. This study investigates the origin of the unusual sphalerite breccia and its relationship to basement-hosted deposits, through a combination of petrographic, cathodoluminescence, fluid inclusion, stable isotope and hydrogeologic modelling techniques. Breccia mineralisation comprises four stages, marked by episodes of structural deformation and abrupt changes in fluid temperature and chemistry. In stage I, high-temperature (T _h > 300°C), high-salinity (20–45 wt.% equiv. NaCl) fluid of likely basement origin deposited a discontinuous quartz vein. This vein was subsequently dismembered during a major brecciation event. Stages II–IV are dominated by open-space filling sphalerite, quartz and dolomite, respectively. Fluid inclusions in these minerals record temperatures of ~105–180°C and salinities of ~15–20 wt.% equiv. NaCl. The δ³⁴S values of sphalerite (6.5–6.9‰ Vienna-Canyon Diablo troilite) are nearly identical to those of ore sulphides from mines in the Lower Palaeozoic metamorphic rocks. The δ¹⁸O values for quartz and dolomite indicate two main fluid sources in the breccia’s hydrothermal system, local Carboniferous-hosted brines (~0.5–6.0‰ Vienna standard mean ocean water) and basement-involved fluids (~5.5–11.5‰). Ore sulphide deposition in the breccia is compatible with the introduction and cooling of a hot, basement-derived fluid that interacted with local sedimentary brines.     

Chronostratigraphy and lake-level changes of Laguna Cari-Laufquén, Río Negro, Argentina

Evidence from shoreline and deep-lake sediments show Laguna Cari-Laufquén, located at 41°S in central Argentina, rose and fell repeatedly during the late Quaternary. Our results show that a deep (> 38 m above modern lake level) lake persisted from no later than 28 ka to 19 ka, with the deepest lake phase from 27 to 22 ka. No evidence of highstands is found after 19 ka until the lake rose briefly in the last millennia to 12 m above the modern lake, before regressing to present levels. Laguna Cari-Laufquén broadly matches other regional records in showing last glacial maximum (LGM) highstands, but contrasts with sub-tropical lake records in South America where the hydrologic maximum occurred during deglaciation (17–10 ka). Our lake record from Cari-Laufquén mimics that of high-latitude records from the Northern Hemisphere. This points to a common cause for lake expansions, likely involving some combination of temperature depression and intensification of storminess in the westerlies belt of both hemispheres during the LGM.     

Overview and Assessment of Antarctic Ice-Sheet Mass Balance Estimates: 1992�C2009

Mass balance estimates for the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in more recent reports lie between approximately +50 to ?250 Gt/year for 1992 to 2009. The 300 Gt/year range is approximately 15% of the annual mass input and 0.8 mm/year Sea Level Equivalent (SLE). Two estimates from radar altimeter measurements of elevation change by European Remote-sensing Satellites (ERS) (+28 and ?31 Gt/year) lie in the upper part, whereas estimates from the Input-minus-Output Method (IOM) and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) lie in the lower part (?40 to ?246 Gt/year). We compare the various estimates, discuss the methodology used, and critically assess the results. We also modify the IOM estimate using (1) an alternate extrapolation to estimate the discharge from the non-observed 15% of the periphery, and (2) substitution of input from a field data compilation for input from an atmospheric model in 6% of area. The modified IOM estimate reduces the loss from 136 Gt/year to 13 Gt/year. Two ERS-based estimates, the modified IOM, and a GRACE-based estimate for observations within 1992?C2005 lie in a narrowed range of +27 to ?40 Gt/year, which is about 3% of the annual mass input and only 0.2 mm/year SLE. Our preferred estimate for 1992?C2001 is ?47 Gt/year for West Antarctica, +16 Gt/year for East Antarctica, and ?31 Gt/year overall (+0.1 mm/year SLE), not including part of the Antarctic Peninsula (1.07% of the AIS area). Although recent reports of large and increasing rates of mass loss with time from GRACE-based studies cite agreement with IOM results, our evaluation does not support that conclusion.     

Soil characterization based on land cover heterogeneity over a tropical landscape: an integrated approach using earth observation data-sets

Soil is a vital part of the natural environment and is always responding to changes in environmental factors, along with the influences of anthropogenic factors and land use changes. The long-term change in soil properties will result in change in soil health and fertility, and hence the soil productivity. Hence, the main aim of this paper focuses on the analysis of land use/land cover (LULC) change pattern in spatial and temporal perspective and to present its impact on soil properties in the Merawu catchment over the period of 18?years. Post classification change detection was performed to quantify the decadal changes in historical LULC over the periods of 1991, 2001 and 2009. The pixel to pixel comparison method was used to detect the LULC of the area. The key LULC types were selected for investigation of soil properties. Soil samples were analysed in situ to measure the physicochemical soil properties. The results of this study show remarkable changes in LULC in the period of 18?years. The effect of land cover change on soil properties, soil compaction and soil strength was found to be significant at a level of <0.05.     

Simulation of urban expansion via integrating artificial neural network with Markov chain – cellular automata

Accurate simulations and predictions of urban expansion are critical to manage urbanization and explicitly address the spatiotemporal trends and distributions of urban expansion. Cellular Automata integrated Markov Chain (CA-MC) is one of the most frequently used models for this purpose. However, the urban suitability index (USI) map produced from the conventional CA-MC is either affected by human bias or cannot accurately reflect the possible nonlinear relations between driving factors and urban expansion. To overcome these limitations, a machine learning model (Artificial Neural Network, ANN) was integrated with CA-MC instead of the commonly used Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Logistic Regression (LR) CA-MC models. The ANN was optimized to create the USI map and then integrated with CA-MC to spatially allocate urban expansion cells. The validated results of kappa and fuzzy kappa simulation indicate that ANN-CA-MC outperformed other variously coupled CA-MC modelling approaches. Based on the ANN-CA-MC model, the urban area in South Auckland is predicted to expand to 1340.55 ha in 2026 at the expense of non-urban areas, mostly grassland and open-bare land. Most of the future expansion will take place within the planned new urban growth zone.     

Determination of land degradation causes in Tongyu County,Northeast China via land cover change detection

Tongyu County in Northeast China is highly prone to land degradation due to its fragile physical settings characterized by a flat topography, a semi-arid climate, and a shallow groundwater table. This study aims to determine the causes of land degradation through detecting the long-term trend of land cover changes. Degraded lands were mapped from satellite images recorded in 1992 and 2002. These land cover maps revealed that the area subject to land degradation in the form of soil salinization, waterlogging and desertification increased from 2400 to 4214 km², in sharp contrast to most severely degraded land that decreased by 122.5 km². Newly degraded land stems from productive farmland (263 km²), harvested farmland (551 km²), and grassland (468 km²). Therefore, the worsened degradation situation is attributed to excessive reclamation of grassland for farming, over cultivation, overgrazing, and deforestation. Mechanical, biological, ecological and engineering means should be adopted to rehabilitate the degraded land.     

An experimental study of the effects of the upper boundary condition on the thermal convection in a rotating,differentially heated cylindrical annulus of water

Abstract

The effects of the upper boundary condition on the regime diagram and certain characteristics of the convection within a rotating, differentially heated cylindrical anulus of water were studied in the laboratory. It was found that the regime diagram was not substantially affected by the upper boundary condition. However, the thermal amplitude of the baroclinic waves, as a function of parameter space, and, as expected from previous work, the angular drift velocity of those waves were found to be strongly affected by the upper boundary condition. When the upper surface was free, the amplitude changes were explosive and highly non-linear (as discovered earlier by Kaiser, 1970). When the upper surface was rigid, they were smooth and quite linear. The baroclinic wave patterns drifted round the annulus at rates which were in direct response to the imposed “thermal wind”. However, (as previously observed by Koschmieder, 1972), when the upper surface was rigid they drifted approximately ten times more slowly than when it was free.     

Two methods for pore network of porous media

Two approaches of generating pore networks of porous media are presented to capture the pore fabric. The first methodology extracted pore structure from a computer simulated packing of spheres. The modified Delaunay tessellation was used to describe the porous media, and modified Nelder–Mead method in conjunction with three pore‐merging algorithms was used to generate the pore size and coordination number distributions of the randomly packed spheres. The Biconical Abscissa Asymmetric CONcentric bond was used to describe the connection between two adjacent voids. This algorithm was validated by predicting pore structure of a cubic array of spheres of equal radius with known pore sizes, throat sizes and coordination number distributions. The predicted distributions of pore structure agreed well with the measured. Then, the algorithm was used to predict pore structure and permeability of randomly packed spherical particles, and predicted permeability values were compared with published experimental data. The results showed that the predicted permeability values were in good agreement with those measured, confirming the proposed algorithm can capture the main flow paths of packed beds. The second methodology generated an equivalent pore network of porous media, of which the centers of voids were located in a regular lattice with constant pore center distance. However, this network allowed for matching both main geometrical and topological characteristics of the porous media. A comparison of the two approaches suggested that the second approach can also be used as a predictive tool to quantitatively study the microscopic properties of flow through porous media. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Thermodynamic characterization of the partitioning of iron between soluble and colloidal species in the Atlantic Ocean

Recent electrochemical measurements have shown that iron (Fe) speciation in seawater is dominated by complexation with strong organic ligands throughout the water column and have provided important thermodynamic information about these compounds. Independent work has shown that iron exists in both soluble and colloidal fractions in the Atlantic Ocean. Here we have combined these approaches in samples collected from a variety of regimes within the Atlantic Ocean. We measured the partitioning of Fe between soluble (< 0.02 μm) and colloidal (0.02 to 0.4 μm) size classes and characterized the concentrations and conditional stability constants of Fe ligands within these size classes. Results suggest that equilibrium partitioning of Fe between soluble and colloidal ligands is partially responsible for the distribution of Fe between soluble and colloidal size classes. However, a significant fraction of the colloidal Fe was inert to ligand exchange as soluble Fe concentrations were generally lower than values predicted by a simple equilibrium partitioning model.In surface waters, strong ligands with conditional stability constants of 10¹³ relative to total inorganic Fe appeared to dominate speciation in both the soluble and colloidal fractions. In deep waters these ligands were absent, and instead we found ligands with stability constants 12–15 fold smaller that were predominantly in the soluble pool. Nevertheless, significant levels of colloidal Fe were found in these samples, which we inferred must be inert to coordination exchange.