The Bear Brook Watershed in Maine: Multi-decadal whole-watershed experimental acidification

The Bear Brook Watershed in Maine (BBWM) is a long-term research site established to study the response of forest ecosystem function to environmental disturbances of chronic acidic deposition and ecosystem nitrogen enrichment. Starting in 1989, the West Bear (treated) watershed received bimonthly applications of ammonium sulfate [(NH₄)₂SO₄] fertilizer from above the canopy, whereas East Bear (reference) received ambient deposition. The treatments were stopped in 2016, marking the beginning of the recovery phase. Research at the site has focused on soils, streams, and vegetation. Here, we describe data collected over three decades at the BBWM—input and stream output nutrient fluxes, quantitative soil pits and soil chemistry, and soil temperature and moisture.     

The Natural Resource Management Planning Portal: Perspectives for NRM Planning and Reporting

Natural Resource Management (NRM) is often conducted as a partnership between government and citizens. In Australia, government agencies formulate policy and fund implementation that may be delivered on-ground by community groups (such as Landcare). Since the late 1980s, over AUS$8b of Commonwealth investment has been made in NRM. However, quantitative evidence of environmental improvements is lacking. The NRM Planning Portal has been developed to (1) provide an online spatial information system for sharing Landcare and agency data; and (2) to facilitate NRM priority setting at local and regional planning scales. While the project successfully federates Landcare NRM activity data, challenges included (1) unstructured, non-standardized data, meaning that quantitative reporting against strategic objectives is not currently possible, and (2) a lack of common understanding about the value proposition for adopting the portal approach. Demonstrating the benefit of technology adoption is a key lesson for digital NRM planning.     

Experimental partitioning of trace elements into schreibersite with applications to IIG iron meteorites

Some of the defining characteristics of the IIG iron meteorite group are their high bulk P contents and massive, coarse schreibersite, which have been calculated to make up roughly 11–14 wt% of each specimen. In this study, we produced two data sets to investigate the formation of schreibersites in IIG irons: measurements of trace elements in the IIG iron meteorite Twannberg and experimental determinations of trace element partitioning into schreibersite. The schreibersite‐bearing experiments were conducted with schreibersite in equilibrium with a P‐rich melt and with bulk Ni contents ranging from 0 to 40 wt%. The partitioning behavior for the 20 elements measured in this study did not vary with Ni content. Comparison of the Twannberg measurements with the experimental results required a correction factor to account for the fact that the experiments were conducted in a simplified system that did not contain a solid metal phase. Previously determined solid metal/P‐rich melt partition coefficients were applied to infer schreibersite/solid metal partitioning behavior from the experiments, and once this correction was applied, the two data sets showed broad similarities between the schreibersite/solid metal distribution of elements. However, there were also differences noted, in particular between the Ni and P contents of the solid metal relative to the schreibersite inferred from the experiments compared to that measured in the Twannberg sample. These differences support previous interpretations that subsolidus schreibersite evolution has strongly influenced the Ni and P content now present in the solid metal phase of IIG irons. Quantitative attempts to match the IIG solid metal composition to that of late‐stage IIAB irons through subsolidus schreibersite growth were not successful, but qualitatively, this study corroborates the striking similarities between the IIAB and IIG groups, which are highly suggestive of a possible genetic link between the groups as has been previously proposed.     

Peaks of People: Using Topographic Prominence as a Method for Determining the Ranked Significance of Population Centers

This article borrows a statistical method from physical geography—topographical prominence—to suggest a new technique for measuring the relative significance or rank of population centers. Unlike raw population measures, prominence gives consideration to both the spatial intensity of concentrated population areas as well as the spatial dependence or independence of neighboring settlement clusters in relation to one another. We explain how to apply the topographic prominence calculation method to gridded population data and examine its practical utility through case studies of several U.S. states. We then discuss some ways in which parametric choices about point-to-surface transformations can result in considerably different outcomes and offer further suggestions for conceptualizing and measuring population center significance.     

Predicting quantiles of water quality from catchment characteristics

Water quality is often highly variable both in space and time, which poses challenges for modelling the more extreme concentrations. This study developed an alternative approach to predicting water quality quantiles at individual locations. We focused on river water quality data that were collected over 25 years, at 102 catchments across the State of Victoria, Australia. We analysed and modelled spatial patterns of the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles of the concentrations of sediments, nutrients and salt, with six common constituents: total suspended solids (TSS), total phosphorus (TP), filterable reactive phosphorus (FRP), total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), nitrate-nitrite (NO_x), and electrical conductivity (EC). To predict the spatial variation of each quantile for each constituent, we developed statistical regression models and exhaustively searched through 50 catchment characteristics to identify the best set of predictors for that quantile. The models predict the spatial variation in individual quantiles of TSS, TKN and EC well (66%–96% spatial variation explained), while those for TP, FRP and NO_x have lower performance (37%–73% spatial variation explained). The most common factors that influence the spatial variations of the different constituents and quantiles are: annual temperature, percentage of cropping land area in catchment and channel slope. The statistical models developed can be used to predict how low- and high-concentration quantiles change with landscape characteristics, and thus provide a useful tool for catchment managers to inform planning and policy making with changing climate and land use conditions.     

Small hypervelocity particles captured in aerogel collectors: Location,extraction, handling and storage

Abstract— It has now been about a decade since the first demonstrations that hypervelocity particles could be captured, partially intact, in aerogel collectors. But the initial promise of a bonanza of partially‐intact extraterrestrial particles, collected in space, has yet to materialize. One of the difficulties that investigators have encountered is that the location, extraction, handling and analysis of very small (10 μm and less) grains, which constitute the vast majority of the captured particles, is challenging and burdensome. Furthermore, current extraction techniques tend to be destructive over large areas of the collectors. Here we describe our efforts to alleviate some of these difficulties. We have learned how to rapidly and efficiently locate captured particles in aerogel collectors, using an automated microscopic scanning system originally developed for experimental nuclear astrophysics. We have learned how to precisely excavate small access tunnels and trenches using an automated micromanipulator and glass microneedles as tools. These excavations are only destructive to the collector in a very small area—this feature may be particularly important for excavations in the precious Stardust collectors. Using actuatable silicon microtweezers, we have learned how to extract and store “naked” particles—essentially free of aerogel—as small as 3 μm in size. We have also developed a technique for extracting particles, along with their terminal tracks, still embedded in small cubical aerogel blocks. We have developed a novel method for storing very small particles in etched nuclear tracks. We have applied these techniques to the extraction and storage of grains captured in aerogel collectors (Particle Impact Experiment, Orbital Debris Collector Experiment, Comet‐99) in low Earth orbit.     

Going underground: in search of Carboniferous coal forests

The development of coal forests during the Carboniferous is one of the best-known episodes in the history of life. Although often reconstructed as steamy tropical rainforests, these ancient ecosystems were a far cry from anything we might encounter in the Amazon today. Bizarre giant club-mosses, horsetails and tree ferns were the dominant plants, not flowering trees as in modern rainforests. At their height, coal forests stretched all the way from Kansas to Kazakhstan, spanning the entire breadth of tropical Pangaea. Most of what we know of their biodiversity and ecology has been quite literally mined out of the ground through two centuries of hard labour. Without coal mining, our knowledge would be greatly impoverished. Over the past few years, we've been exploring underground coal mines in the United States, where entire forested landscapes have been preserved intact over huge areas. Never before have geologists had the opportunity to walk out through mile upon mile of fossilized forest. In this feature article, we describe some of our recent explorations and attempt to shed new light on these old fossils.     

Fire and ice: unravelling the climatic and volcanic history of James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula

Back in the mid-nineteenth century British explorer James Clark Ross took his ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus , farther south than anyone else had been. He now lends his name to James Ross Island, a part-volcanic edifice that rises out of the sea off the north-east tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The island records a geological history dating back to the Cretaceous, though its great peaks are volcanic. The most recent rocks of the island record a monumental struggle between fire and ice, the volcanoes, and the ice sheets that cover them. The glacigenic sediments that are interspersed with the volcanic rocks contain rich fossil assemblages which suggest that at times, the climate was warmer, with the ice retreating. Their study may help us to delimit the patterns of climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula region as Earth's global climate warms.