Hydropedology of a mildly‐arid loess covered area,southern Israel

Extensive loess covered areas characterize the mildly arid areas of western Israel, where average annual rainfall is 280 mm. Hydrological data point to a peculiar hydrological behavior of the ephemeral streams. The frequency of sporadic flash floods is very high. However, even in extreme rain events peak discharges are extremely low. Hydrographs are usually characterized by very steep rising and falling limbs, representative of saturated areas, extending over a limited part of the watershed. Following this observation we advanced the hypothesis that storm channel runoff originated in the channel itself, with negligible contribution from the adjoining hillslopes. The study was based on two complementary approaches. The hydrological approach was based on the detailed analysis of rainfall–runoff relationships in a small watershed (11 km²) and on the analysis of the hydrological characteristics of the drainage network. The second approach was based on the toposequence concept. Several boreholes were dug along a hillslope 400 m long. Chemical data obtained show no significant difference in the downslope direction. Similar results were also obtained for the particle size distribution and soil moisture content. Data obtained perfectly fit the concept of ‘Partial Area Contribution’ as it presents an extreme case of hydrological discontinuity at the hillslope–channel interface. The lack of pedological trends in the downslope direction is an additional indication of the limited connectivity between the hillslopes and the adjoining channel. The limited connectivity is attributed to the prevalence of low rain intensities in the study area. The present study is also relevant to our understanding of pedological processes in dryland areas. The high frequency of intermittent low intensity rainstorms limits runoff generation and flow distances, and casts doubt on the general application of the toposequence approach. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Limnic condition in ombrotrophic peat type as the origin of Muara Wahau coal,Kutei basin,Indonesia

Samples of early Miocene Muara Wahau coal from three drill cores were investigated with respect to maceral composition. Huminite macerals are dominant in the coal, ranging from 73.3 to 88.0% (vol.) with an average value of 77.4% (vol.). Liptinite macerals account for lower amount, from 0.7 to 6.7 with an average value of 1.8% (vol.). Inertinite macerals vary from 4.3 to 34.0% (vol.), averaging at 15.3% (vol.). Some paleoenvironmental indices based on the maceral composition were determined. Groundwater index (GWI) and vegetation index (VI) were considered as indicators for hydrological regime and type of peat vegetation. Tissue preservation index (TPI) and gelification index (GI) were determined to indicate the degree of preservation and relative wetness of the peat forming conditions. The VI-GWI diagram suggest that the coal was developed from herbaceous plants in ombrotrophic type of peat. TPI-GI diagram shows that the preservation was low and the peat was relatively wet or limnic. However, ombrotrophic peat type have commonly been related to relatively drier or telmatic environments. It is therefore, interpreted that the limnic condition could occur in ombrotrophic peat type, as the water level was rising up during the development of a high moor peat.     

Objective classification of galaxy spectra using the information bottleneck method

A new method for classification of galaxy spectra is presented, based on a recently introduced information theoretical principle, the information bottleneck . For any desired number of classes, galaxies are classified such that the information content about the spectra is maximally preserved. The result is classes of galaxies with similar spectra, where the similarity is determined via a measure of information. We apply our method to ∼6000 galaxy spectra from the ongoing 2dF redshift survey, and a mock-2dF catalogue produced by a cold dark matter (CDM) based semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. We find a good match between the mean spectra of the classes found in the data and in the models. For the mock catalogue, we find that the classes produced by our algorithm form an intuitively sensible sequence in terms of physical properties such as colour, star formation activity, morphology, and internal velocity dispersion. We also show the correlation of the classes with the projections resulting from a principal component analysis.