Digital imaging and public engagement in palaeontology

Public engagement and the promotion of science to a wider non-academic audience form an integral role of the professional scientist in the twenty-first century. The high level of public interest in palaeontology means that the Earth's prehistoric past can provide an important medium through which to communicate information concerning contemporary scientific issues. Here we explain how modern computer techniques can be used to enhance public understanding of complex palaeontological issues.     

Interpreting geology at Portreath, Cornwall: a resource for geological education

The geology of Portreath preserved both in the natural outcrop and as building stones is assessed as a potential resource for visiting educational groups. Portreath is a former mining port, its expansion and historical development being closely associated with local and regional geology. A fieldwork programme and complementary literature search revealed that this location contains a wide range of accessible rock types suitable for student analysis.     

A note on photography in structural geology

When photographs of outcrops are required for detailed and/or accurate structural work the photographic image should be parallel to the outerop surface. A method has been developed which allows oblique photographs to be corrected when processed. The method imposes certain restrictions on the combinations of camera and enlarger lenses which will yield a correctly proportioned print, and graphs are presented which predict suitable combinations for a wide range of conditions. The technique has been successfully applied to several problems, one of which is presented as an illustrative example.     

中国海域灾害地质区划初步探讨

基于对现有调查研究成果资料的分析和认识,本文探讨了海洋灾害地质区划的原则,首次提出了我国全海域的海洋灾害地质区划方案,按大型构造地貌界线作为一级灾害地质分区,划分为海岸带、陆架、陆坡(岛坡)、海盆与海槽4个灾害地质区,然后根据地理位置及灾害地质环境特征划分出24个灾害地质亚区。此外,从灾害致灾因子和孕灾环境角度出发,定性的将中国海域的地质灾害风险(危险性)划分为4级,在24个灾害地质亚区中,较高风险区11个,约占近总数的一半;其次是较低风险区7个,占近三分之一;高风险区、低风险区分别仅4个、2个。     

区块链地学领域应用综述

正近年来,区块链在政府层面、学术领域以及产业界都引起了广泛关注,各国陆续出台了区块链相关政策,国际国内众多企业纷纷进行区块链技术投入,行业应用已从金融领域扩展到了供应链、数字资产、医疗、公共服务等领域,逐步推进了实体产业的转型升级。区块链在地学领域的应用仍处于初步探索的阶段,如何基于已有的产业应用经验,利用区块链技术解决地质调查的现有困境值得进一步探讨。     

Carbonate factories: A conundrum in sedimentary geology

Describing, characterizing and interpreting the nearly infinite variety of carbonate rocks are conundrums – intricate and difficult problems having only conjectural answers – that have occupied geologists for more than two centuries. Depositional features including components, rock textures, lithofacies, platform types and architecture, all vary in space and time, as do the results of diagenetic processes on those primary features. Approaches to the study of carbonate rocks have become progressively more analytical. One focus has evolved from efforts to build reference models for specific Phanerozoic windows to scrutinize the effect of climate and long-term oscillations of the ocean–atmosphere system in influencing the mineralogy of carbonate components.This paper adds to the ongoing lively debates by attempting to understand changes in the predominant types of carbonate-producing organisms during the Mesozoic–Cenozoic, while striving to minimize the uniformitarian bias. Our approach integrates estimates of changes in Ca²⁺ concentration in seawater and atmospheric CO₂, with biological evolution and ecological requirements of characteristic carbonate-producing marine communities. The underlying rationale for our approach is the fact that CO₂ is basic to both carbonates and organic matter, and that photosynthesis is a fundamental biological process responsible for both primary production of organic matter and providing chemical environments that promote calcification. Gross photosynthesis and hypercalcification are dependent largely upon sunlight, while net primary production and, e.g., subsequent burial of organic matter typically requires sources of new nutrients (N, P and trace elements). Our approach plausibly explains the changing character of carbonate production as an evolving response to changing environmental conditions driven by the geotectonic cycle, while identifying uncertainties that deserve further research.With metazoan consumer diversity reduced by the end-Permian extinctions, excess photosynthesis by phytoplankton and microbial assemblages in surface waters, induced by moderately high CO₂ and temperature during the Early Mesozoic, supported proliferation of non-tissular metazoans (e.g., sponges) and heterotrophic bacteria at the sea floor. Metabolic activity by those microbes, especially sulfate reduction, resulted in abundant biologically-induced geochemical carbonate precipitation on and within the sea floor. For example, with the opening of Tethyan seaways during the Triassic, massive sponge/microbe boundstones (the benthic automicrite factory) formed steep, massive and thick progradational slopes and, locally, mud-mounds. As tectonic processes created shallow epicontinental seas, photosynthesis drove lime-mud precipitation in the illuminated zone of the water column. The resulting neritic lime-mud component of the shallow-water carbonate factory became predominant during the Jurassic, paralleling the increase in atmospheric pCO₂, while the decreasing importance of the benthic automicrite factory parallels the diversification of calcifying metazoans, phytoplankton and zooplankton.With atmospheric pCO₂ declining through the Cretaceous, the potential habitats for neritic lime-mud precipitation declined. At the same time, peak oceanic Ca²⁺ concentrations promoted biotically-controlled calcification by the skeletal factory. With changes produced by extinctions and turnovers at the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary, adaptations to decreasing Ca²⁺ and pCO₂, coupled with increasing global temperature gradients (i.e., high-latitude and deep-water cooling), and strategies that efficiently linked photosynthesis and calcification, promoted successive changes of the dominant skeletal factory through the Cenozoic: larger benthic foraminifers (protist–protist symbiosis) during the Paleogene, red algae during the Miocene and modern coral reefs (metazoan–protist symbiosis) since Late Miocene.     

深度学习在地质学上的应用

自Hinton等使用基于卷积神经网络的深度学习模型赢得Image Net分类比赛以来,深度学习的研究席卷了各个行业。通过介绍深度学习的历史,探索国内地质行业中深度学习模型的使用情况,并介绍深度学习的基础概念(如神经元、神经网络、监督学习和无监督学习等)以及深度学习基础模型中的2个重要网络:深度信念网络(DBN)和卷积神经网络(CNN)。在此基础上,类比深度学习在医学等相关领域的应用,提出了深度学习在地质上的几点应用:利用深度学习在计算机视觉上表现出的强大能力,可以对遥感图像进行聚类、对岩石样品图像进行分类、对岩石薄片数据进行描述;利用深度学习对原始数据表现出的强大识别能力,处理地质异常数据,从而确定成矿靶区的可能位置;利用深度学习的特点,对地震前的声信号数据进行处理,从而判断出地震发生前的剩余时间。     

矿田地质分类研究

矿田地质学是研究矿田建造、矿田构造和矿田成矿的学科领域。本文提出矿田的构造岩相分类建议。矿田第一层次的构造岩相分类以成矿地质作用和成矿地质环境为基础,概分为4大类,即沉积矿田或沉积岩相矿田、岩浆矿田或岩浆岩相矿田、变质矿田或变质岩相矿田以及复成型构造蚀变矿田或构造蚀变岩相矿田。考虑矿田成矿构造环境的规模、可识别性和可观测性,本研究以次级岩相建造划分矿田类型：比如在火山岩矿田类型之中,应该具体细分为火山角砾岩相矿田、火山熔结凝灰岩相矿田等类型。初步划分了31类构造岩相矿田：例如,山东淄博湖泊相铝土矿田、德兴陆相次火山热液相斑岩铜矿田、攀枝花基性辉长岩相钒钛磁铁矿田、美国上湖绿片岩相铁矿田、胶东玲珑焦家式黄铁绢英岩相金矿田等。矿田成矿作用和环境及其构造岩相分类,将会推动矿田尺度的地质调查和勘探,推进构造结合建造研究,为矿田地质研究紧密结合找矿预测提供了一个基础分类和研究思路。     

Metamorphic petrology and geology in China: A review

The development of metamorphic petrology to metamorphic geology in China has a long history. Ancient basement metamorphic rocks are distributed primarily in the North China Craton, the Yangtze Block and Tarim Craton. They are mainly made up of plutonic gneiss and metamorphosed supercrust rock, transformed to granulite facies through Archean Paleoproterozoic. Many of the Paleoproterozoic metamorphic rocks have undergone high-pressure granulite facies metamorphism with a clockwise metamorphic evolution path. The ultrahigh temperature (UHT) granulites from the Late Paleoproterozoic are found in North China Craton. Many high-precision chronological data have allowed preliminary construction of the formation and evolutionary framework of different metamorphic basements. Primarily there are low-temperature and high-pressure blue schist, high-temperature and high-pressure granulite and ultrahigh-pressure (UHP) eclogite facies metamorphic rocks in the Phanerozoic orogenic belt. The discovery of eclogite in the Sulu orogen and a large quantity of coesite in its country rocks show that there was a deep subduction of voluminous continental materials during the collision process between the Yangtze block and the North China Craton in the Early Mesozoic phase. From the studies of, for instance, organic matter vitrinite reflectance, illite crystallinity, illite (muscovite) polytype and illite (muscovite) b dimension, the Late Paleozoic strata in the eastern region of Inner Mongolia and the north-central region of NE China have only experienced diagenesis to an extremely low-grade metamorphism. The discovery of impact-metamorphosed rocks in Xiuyan area of Liaoning province has enriched the type and category of metamorphic rocks in China. The phase equilibrium method has been widely used in the study of metamorphism of middle and high-grade metamorphic rocks. On the basis of existing geologic surveys and monographic study results, different scholars have respectively compiled 1:1500000 Metamorphic Geological Map and Specifications of Qinghai Tibet Plateau and its Adjacent Areas, 1:2500000 Metamorphic Tectonic Map of China, and the 1:5000000 Metamorphic Geological Map and Specifications of China, among others repectively, which have systematically summarized the research results of metamorphic petrology and metamorphic geology in China.     

Putting stakeholder engagement in its place: how situating public participation in community improves natural resource management outcomes

Stakeholders in natural resource management decisions are also multifaceted individuals and members of communities; as such, they bring complex histories, experiences, values, aspirations, and relationships to public participation processes. When these processes fail to take this social context into account, multiple problems can result, including a perceived lack of process trustworthiness; perceived focus on issues that seem immaterial or irrelevant; failure to equitably represent and take account of diverse voices; and failure to engage participants in productive dialogue. In this article we evaluate the Community Voice Method (CVM) as a way of addressing those problems by better situating public participation in place. CVM is a mixed-method approach to public participation in which stakeholders are interviewed and the interview data is presented through a film, which is then screened at public meetings to catalyze dialogue. We draw on 14 years of CVM projects addressing natural resource management issues in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Caribbean. Through an overview of nine projects and their results, and more in-depth consideration of three, we elucidate how this method fosters trustworthy, relevant, representative, and productive public participation that has resulted in community capacity-building, institutional capacity-building, and stakeholder-guided policymaking.

     

世界大洋地质与矿产标准物质评介

自20世纪80年代中以来,中国相继研制了4批共11个大洋地质与矿产标准物质,形成了多金属结核(GSPN-1～3)、海山富钴结壳(GSMC-1～3)、富钴结壳的铂族元素(MCPt-1,2)和深海沉积物(GSMS-1～3)4个标准物质系列。笔者简介了这些标准物质的研制背景,评介了中国和世界其他国家(美国、俄罗斯、印度和日本等)研制的大洋地质与矿产各标准物质系列,对比了其定值数据、特点及应用。虽然中国的研制工作起步较晚,但由于采用了更先进的分析测试技术和国内外多实验室合作定值方式,使这些标准物质定值组分多、系列性好,也有较大国际影响。     

Integrating international linguistic minorities in emergency planning at institutions of higher education

Natural Hazards - Research concerning the behavior of international linguistic minorities at institutions of higher education during disasters is very limited. Many international groups suffer from...     

一个新的矿物面扫描分析方法开发和地质学应用

LA-ICP-MS面扫描分析近些年来发展的新兴技术,相对于其他面扫描仪器,其具有样品制样流程简单、仪器购置和分析成本低、分析时间短、检测限低、多元素表面分析(5μm)、近乎无损等分析优势,在地球科学和生物学领域有着大量的应用。本文系统介绍了作者应用Photon Machines激光剥蚀系统与安捷伦ICP-MS新开发矿物元素面扫描分析方法。该方法基于近些年来开发的双室样品仓技术和Matlab软件,通过自主开发的LaIcpMsSoftware(LIMS)进行数据处理来完成的。本次研究开发的激光面扫描分析技术可以在短时间内(2小时)分析3mm×3mm区域,并同时给出多组元素(包括稀土元素等)在二维平面的分布特征。论文详细描述了LIMS工作原理和特点,相对于国外同类型软件,LIMS具有操作简单,并具有多种数据显示模式和剖面切割展示,元素比值面分布分析等优势,便于后期数据分析与解译。同时,还展示了对斜长石、白钨矿和石榴子石进行面扫描分析的初步结果。研究表明,通过LA-ICP-MS面扫描,可以获得比点分析更为准确的元素分布特征,并能够更为直观的展示不同元素在矿物分布特征和相关关系,更好的开展矿物地球化学研究。     

碳酸盐岩早成岩岩溶作用及油气地质意义

碳酸盐岩早成岩岩溶作用可发育溶蚀孔洞或具有规模的溶洞,这对于认识我国塔里木盆地、四川盆地碳酸盐岩内幕岩溶区孔洞成因与分布具有重要参考价值。然而碳酸盐岩早成岩岩溶在我国现代岩溶发育较少,研究程度低。文章通过总结国外在碳酸盐岩早成岩岩溶形成机理及孔洞发育特征的研究成果,探讨早成岩岩溶的油气地质意义:（1）成岩早期碳酸盐岩胶结程度差,岩石疏松,孔隙度、渗透率极高,介质空间较均匀;（2）早成岩岩溶作用与海平面升降具有明显的关系,尤其海岛或滨岸地区的淡水-海水交互带,以混合水岩溶为特征的岩溶作用较强烈;（3）早成岩岩溶孔洞发育分布具有一定特点,岛屿岩溶以发育侧面边缘洞穴为特征,而滨海岩溶以发育混合带管道为特征;（4）孔洞的发育主要受淡水中CO2含量、水流通过混合过渡带的水动力及海平面变化速率控制;（5）早成岩岩溶为研究我国地质历史时期碳酸盐岩短期暴露岩溶作用提供借鉴,对其孔洞发育分布特征的认识,将促进碳酸盐岩内幕区孔洞型油气储层形成机理研究,指导内幕区孔洞储层分布预测和油气勘探。      

The rationalization of neoliberalism in Ontario's public education system, 1995-2000

The globalization of neo-liberal policy solutions to education problems has gained increasing dominance in recent years. In Ontario, Canada the success of this ideological discourse, particularly during the past decade, has been hard to combat due to the ideal message that it conveys to the general electorate, that is one based on efficiency, accountability and equity of resources across different school boards in the province. Despite protests from many activist groups (i.e. unions, educators, parent-groups) the implementation of such policies has been largely successful. By tracking education policies, statements and events, newspaper articles and other policy reports from 1995 to 2000, this paper seeks to understand the nature of its success during the early years of restructuring. I argue that part of the success lies in understanding the techniques and strategies of implementation or the process of rationalization. I argue that policies formulated at one spatial level operate quite differently at another and the spatial disjunctures that arise as a result of this process lead to the continued success of neo-liberal ideologies and inequalities in education.     

21世纪工程地质学生长点：土体微结构力学

本文认为土体结构对其工程性质有重要制约作用,土的结构性模型的建立已成为当代土力学前沿性课题。提出的“微结构力学”理论与方法体系的建立,将为土体工程地质研究开辟崭新的研究领域和工作空间。文中,作者对“微结构力学”的概念及其研究内容、近期和远期研究课题进行了分析,并提供了开展本项研究工作的技术路线建议。