Geochemistry and mineralogy of arsenic in (natural) anaerobic groundwaters

Here new data from field bioremediation experiments and geochemical modeling are reported to illustrate the principal geochemical behavior of As in anaerobic groundwaters. In the field bioremediation experiments, groundwater in Holocene alluvial aquifers in Bangladesh was amended with labile water-soluble organic C (molasses) and MgSO₄ to stimulate metabolism of indigenous SO₄-reducing bacteria (SRB). In the USA, the groundwater was contaminated by Zn, Cd and SO₄, and contained <10 μg/L As under oxidized conditions, and a mixture of sucrose and methanol were injected to stimulate SRB metabolism. In Bangladesh, groundwater was under moderately reducing conditions and contained ∼10 mg/L Fe and ∼100 μg/L As. In the USA experiment, groundwater rapidly became anaerobic, and dissolved Fe and As increased dramatically (As > 1000 μg/L) under geochemical conditions consistent with bacterial Fe-reducing conditions. With time, groundwater became more reducing and biogenic SO₄ reduction began, and Cd and Zn were virtually completely removed due to precipitation of sphalerite (ZnS) and other metal sulfide mineral(s). Following precipitation of chalcophile elements Zn and Cd, the concentrations of Fe and As both began to decrease in groundwater, presumably due to formation of As-bearing FeS/FeS₂. By the end of the six-month experiment, dissolved As had returned to below background levels. In the initial Bangladesh experiment, As decreased to virtually zero once biogenic SO₄ reduction commenced but increased to pre-experiment level once SO₄ reduction ended. In the ongoing experiment, both SO₄ and Fe(II) were amended to groundwater to evaluate if FeS/FeS₂ formation causes longer-lived As removal. Because As-bearing pyrite is the common product of SRB metabolism in Holocene alluvial aquifers in both the USA and Southeast Asia, it was endeavored to derive thermodynamic data for arsenian pyrite to better predict geochemical processes in naturally reducing groundwaters. Including the new data for arsenian pyrite into Geochemist’s Workbench, its stability field completely dominates in reducing Eh–pH space and “displaces” other As-sulfides (orpiment, realgar) that have been implied to be important in previous modeling exercises and reported in rare field conditions.     

Three decades of landslide activity in western Nepal: new insights into trends and climate drivers

In recent decades, landslide disasters in the Himalayas, as in other mountain regions, are widely reported to have increased. While some studies have suggested a link to increasing heavy rainfall under a warmer climate, others pointed to anthropogenic influences on slope stability, and increasing exposure of people and assets located in harm’s way. A lack of sufficiently high-resolution regional landslide inventories, both spatially and temporally, has prevented any robust consensus so far. Focusing on Far-Western Nepal, we draw on remote sensing techniques to create a regional inventory of 26,350 single landslide events, of which 8778 date to the period 1992–2018. These events serve as a basis for the analyses of landslide frequency relationships and trends in relation to precipitation and temperature datasets. Results show a strong correlation between the annual number of shallow landslides and the accumulated monsoon precipitation (r = 0.74). Furthermore, warm and dry monsoons followed by especially rainy monsoons produce the highest incidence of shallow landslides (r = 0.77). However, we find strong spatial variability in the strength of these relationships, which is linked to recent demographic development in the region. This highlights the role of anthropogenic drivers, and in particular road cutting and land-use change, in amplifying the seasonal monsoon influence on slope stability. In parallel, the absence of any long-term trends in landslide activity, despite widely reported increase in landslide disasters, points strongly to increasing exposure of people and infrastructure as the main driver of landslide disasters in this region of Nepal. By contrast, no climate change signal is evident from the data.

     

Improved seismic hazard model with application to probabilistic seismic demand analysis

An improved seismic hazard model for use in performance‐based earthquake engineering is presented. The model is an improved approximation from the so‐called ‘power law’ model, which is linear in log–log space. The mathematics of the model and uncertainty incorporation is briefly discussed. Various means of fitting the approximation to hazard data derived from probabilistic seismic hazard analysis are discussed, including the limitations of the model. Based on these ‘exact’ hazard data for major centres in New Zealand, the parameters for the proposed model are calibrated. To illustrate the significance of the proposed model, a performance‐based assessment is conducted on a typical bridge, via probabilistic seismic demand analysis. The new hazard model is compared to the current power law relationship to illustrate its effects on the risk assessment. The propagation of epistemic uncertainty in the seismic hazard is also considered. To allow further use of the model in conceptual calculations, a semi‐analytical method is proposed to calculate the demand hazard in closed form. For the case study shown, the resulting semi‐analytical closed form solution is shown to be significantly more accurate than the analytical closed‐form solution using the power law hazard model, capturing the ‘exact’ numerical integration solution to within 7% accuracy over the entire range of exceedance rate. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seismic Activity in the Himalayan Orogenic Belt and Its Related Geohazards

Himalayan orogenic belt is the highest and largest continental collision and subduction zone on the Earth. The Himalayan orogenic belt has produced frequent large earthquakes and caused several geohazards due to landslides and housing collapse, having an impact on the safety of life and property along a length of over 2500 km. Here we took three earthquake clusters as examples, which occurred at Nepal Himalaya, eastern Himalayan syntaxis and western Himalayan syntaxis, respectively. Here we calculated the earthquake locations and fault plane solutions based on the waveform data recorded by seismic stations deployed in source areas by the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. We found that at the Nepal Himalayan, the Main Himalayan Thrust is the major tectonic structure for large earthquakes to occur. At the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, most earthquakes are of the reverse or strike-slip faulting. The major tectonic feature is the combination of the NE-dipping thrust with the southeastern escape of the Tibetan plateau. At the western Himalayan syntaxis, intermediate-depth earthquakes are active. These observations reveal the geometry of the deep subduction of the continental plate with steep dipping angle.     

Comparative analysis of contributing parameters for rainfall-triggered landslides in the Lesser Himalaya of Nepal

In the Himalaya, people live in widely spread settlements and suffer more from landslides than from any other type of natural disaster. The intense summer monsoons are the main factor in triggering landslides. However, the relations between landslides and slope hydrology have not been a focal topic in Himalayan landslide research. This paper deals with the contributing parameters for the rainfall-triggered landslides which occurred during an extreme monsoon rainfall event on 23 July 2002, in the south-western hills of Kathmandu valley, in the Lesser Himalaya, Nepal. Parameters such as bedrock geology, geomorphology, geotechnical properties of soil, and clay mineralogy are described in this paper. Landslide modeling was performed in SEEP/W and SLOPE/W to understand the relationship of pore water pressure variations in soil layers and to determine the spatial variation of landslide occurrence. Soil characteristics, low angle of internal friction of fines in soil, medium range of soil permeability, presence of clay minerals in soil, bedrock hydrogeology, and human intervention were found to be the main contributing parameters for slope failures in the region.     

Seismic performance of an unreinforced masonry building: An experimental investigation

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation carried out to investigate the seismic performance of a two storey brick masonry house with one room in each floor. A half‐scale building constructed using single wythe clay brick masonry laid in cement sand mortar and a conventional timber floor and timber roof clad with clay tiles was tested under earthquake ground motions on a shaking table, first in the longitudinal direction and then in the transverse direction. In each direction, the building was subjected to different ground motions with gradually increasing intensity. Dynamic properties of the system were assessed through white‐noise tests after each ground motion. The building suffered increasing levels of damage as the excitations became more severe. The damage ranged from cracking to global/local rocking of different piers and partial out‐of‐plane failure of the walls. Nevertheless, the building did not collapse under base excitations with peak ground acceleration up to 0.8g. General behaviour of the tested building model during the tests is discussed, and fragility curves are developed for unreinforced masonry buildings based on the experimental results. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empirical analysis of path effects on prediction equations of pseudo‐velocity response spectra in northern Japan

We study path effects on prediction equations of pseudo‐velocity response spectra (natural period of 0.1–5.0 s) in northern Japan, where heterogeneous attenuation structure exists. The path effects have been examined by comparing the regression analysis results for two different prediction equations. The first equation consists of a single term of anelastic attenuation conventionally. The second equation consists of two terms of anelastic attenuation in consideration of the heterogeneous attenuation structure. In the second equation, we divide a source‐to‐site distance into two distances at the attenuation boundary beneath the volcanic front. The boundary is considered to separate the relatively high Q fore‐arc side mantle wedge (FAMW) from the low Q back‐arc side mantle wedge (BAMW). Strong motion records (hypocentral distances less than 300 km) from interplate and intraslab events with Mw 5.1–7.3 are used. Regression analysis results show that the standard errors are significantly reduced by the second prediction equation at short periods (0.1–0.5 s), whereas the difference in standard errors from both prediction equations is negligible at intermediate and long periods. The Qs values (quality factor for S‐wave) converted from two anelastic attenuation coefficients for the second prediction equation are remarkably similar to the path‐averaged Qs values for the FAMW and BAMW by other studies using spectral inversion method. From these findings, we conclude that the path effects on the prediction equation of pseudo‐velocity response spectra are satisfactorily accomplished by the second prediction equation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identification of critical ground motions for seismic performance assessment of structures

A method is established to identify critical earthquake ground motions that are to be used in physical testing or subsequent advanced computational studies to enable seismic performance to be assessed. The ground motion identification procedure consists of: choosing a suitable suite of ground motions and an appropriate intensity measure; selecting a computational tool and modelling the structure accordingly; performing Incremental Dynamic Analysis on a non‐linear model of the structure; interpreting these results into 50th (median) and 90th percentile performance bounds; and identifying the critical ground motions that are close to these defining probabilistic curves at ground motion intensities corresponding to the design basis earthquake and the maximum considered earthquake. An illustrative example of the procedure is given for a reinforced concrete highway bridge pier designed to New Zealand specifications. Pseudodynamic tests and finite element based time history analyses are performed on the pier using three earthquake ground motions identified as: (i) a Design Basis Earthquake (10% probability in 50 years) with 90 percent confidence of non‐exceedance; (ii) a Maximum Considered Event (2% probability in 50 years) representing a median response; and (iii) a Maximum Considered Event representing 90 percent confidence of non‐exceedance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An evaluation of 3-D velocity models of the Kanto basin for long-period ground motion simulations

We performed three-dimensional (3-D) finite difference simulations of long-period ground motions (2–10 s) in the Kanto basin using the Japan Seismic Hazard Information Station (J-SHIS 2009), Yamada and Yamanaka (Exploration Geophysics 65(3):139–150, 2012) (YY), and Head Quarter for Earthquake Research Promotion (HERP 2012) velocity models for two intermediate depth (68–80 km) moderate earthquakes (Mw 5.8–5.9), which occurred beneath the Kanto basin. The models primarily differ in the basic data set used in the construction of the velocity models. The J-SHIS and HERP models are the results of integration of mainly geological, geophysical, and earthquake data. On the other hand, the YY model is oriented towards the microtremor-array-observation data. We obtained a goodness of fit between the observed and synthetic data based on three parameters, peak ground velocities (PGVs), smoothed Fourier spectra (FFT), and cross-correlations, using an algorithm proposed by Olsen and Mayhew (Seism Res Lett 81:715–723, 2010). We found that the three models reproduced the PGVs and FFT satisfactorily at most sites. However, the models performed poorly in terms of cross-correlations especially at the basin edges. We found that the synthetics using the YY model overestimate the observed waveforms at several sites located in the areas having V _s 0.3 km/s in the top layer; on the other hand, the J-SHIS and HERP models explain the waveforms better at the sites and perform similarly at most sites. We also found that the J-SHIS and HERP models consist of thick sediments beneath some sites, where the YY model is preferable. Thus, we have concluded that the models require revisions for the reliable prediction of long-period ground motions from future large earthquakes.     

Elemental damping formulation: an alternative modelling of inherent damping in nonlinear dynamic analysis

To date, nonlinear dynamic analysis for seismic engineering predominantly employs the classical Rayleigh damping model and its variations. Though earlier studies have identified issues with the use of this model in nonlinear seismic analysis, it still remains the popular choice for engineers as well as for software providers. In this paper a new approach to modelling damping is initiated by formulating the damping matrix at an elemental level. To this regard, two new elemental level discrete damping models adapted from their global counterparts are proposed for its application in nonlinear dynamic analysis. Implementation schemes for these newly proposed models using Newmark incremental method and revised Newmark total equilibrium method is outlined. The performance of these proposed models, compared to existing models, is illustrated by conducting nonlinear dynamic analyses on a four story RC frame designed to Eurocodes. The incremental dynamic analysis study presented in the paper illustrates the fact that both the proposed models seem to produce more reliable results from an engineering perspective in comparison to the global models. It is also shown that the proposed elemental damping models lead to smaller and more realistic damping moments in the plastic hinges. Furthermore, these models could be easily included in existing software frameworks without adding noticeably to the computational effort. The computation time required for these models is approximately equivalent to the one required when using the tangent Rayleigh damping matrix with constant coefficients.