Correction to: Finite Element Solvers for Biot’s Poroelasticity Equations in Porous Media

Mathematical Geosciences - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11004-021-09942-0     

Dance and wellbeing in Vancouver’s ‘A Healthy City for All’

Through the lens of the dancing body, this paper examines practices of health and wellbeing produced in response to City of Vancouver urban governance policies. In particular, it calls attention to the legislative onslaught by city government in the years abutting the 2010 Winter Olympics to cultivate and manage healthy people, communities, and environments. In an effort to sell Vancouver’s ‘liveability’, I argue City of Vancouver endorsed a new legislative alliance that merged a conspicuously Anglo-American wellbeing lexicon, favouring individual responsibility and self-governance, with the performing arts industries. Drawing upon interviews and performance-based research, the paper illustrates how Karen Jamieson’s community dance project Connect, created for the In the Heart of the City festival, embodies Vancouver’s tri-level legislative ambitions to nurture A Healthy City For All. This materialised through the crafting of a dance-health body practice (healthy people), by choreographing a sense of belonging among ‘at risk’ communities (healthy communities), and in the uniting of the arts and health professions in the process of ‘cleaning up’ disenfranchised neighbourhoods (healthy environments). In bringing together scholarship on cultures of wellbeing and creative dance practice, the article contributes to understandings of how the health-seeking subject is embodied and performed. It also offers a productive critique of the exclusionary nature of urban health legislation, and of the contested role artists and arts festivals can play in nurturing urban wellbeing and normalising inequalities.     

“The Coast” is Complicated: A Model to Consistently Describe the Nation’s Coastal Population

Our nation’s coast is a complicated management area where no single delineation provides all of the demographic statistics needed to address the full range of policy and management issues. As a result, several different coastal delineations are currently being used, yielding a variety of US coastal population statistics. This paper proposes a simple model for generating and applying coastal population statistics at the national and regional level to increase consistency in coastal policy discussions and improve public understanding of coastal issues. The model includes two major components. The first component is “the population that most directly affects the coast,” represented by the permanent US population that resides in a standard suite of Coastal Watershed Counties, where land use and water quality changes most directly impact coastal ecosystems. The second component is “the population most directly affected by the coast,” represented by the permanent US population that resides in a standard suite of Coastal Shoreline Counties that are directly adjacent to the open ocean, major estuaries, and the Great Lakes, which due to their proximity to these waters, bear a great proportion of the full range of effects from coastal hazards and host the majority of economic production associated with coastal and ocean resources.     

Review: “Jacob’s Zoo”—how using Jacob’s method for aquifer testing leads to more intuitive understanding of aquifer characteristics

The interpretation of aquifer responses to pumping tests is an important tool for assessing aquifer geometry and properties, which are critical in the assessment of water resources or in environmental remediation. However, the responses of aquifers, measured by time-drawdown relationships in monitoring wells, are nonunique solutions that are affected by many factors. Jacob’s Zoo is a collection of graphical interpretations that allows students and practitioners to develop an intuitive feel for how natural hydrogeological systems work, and develop a set of skills that provide a better understanding of aquifer properties far beyond interpretation of pumping tests. Jacob’s Zoo, based on the work of Jacob (1950), fosters a deeper understanding, although few practitioners realize the full utility of the method. Jacob CE (1950) Flow of groundwater, In: Rouse H (ed) Engineering Hydraulics, Wiley, New York. P 321–386.

     

A survey-based analysis of the public’s willingness for disaster relief in China

Natural Hazards - Meteorological disasters frequently occur in China and around the world. These natural hazards can cause huge economic losses and threaten the personal safety of citizens. The...     

The meaning of “kimberlite”

Inasmuch as kimberlites prove to be porphyritic rocks of effusive habit, upon review of published ideas and facts, the general classification of effusive rocks is fully applicable to kimberlites. Consequently superfluous adjectives such as “massive,” “igneous,” “basaltic,” etc., and use of the term “kimberlite” itself should be discouraged.     

A “fractal” modification of Torricelli’s formula

A modification is proposed of Torricelli’s (1608–1647) formula for the velocity of water discharging from a small hole at the bottom of a large tank filled with fractal solid material. The new formula takes proper account of the mechanical energy losses due to flow in the solid matrix, thus expanding the area of validity of the classical Torricelli’s formula. Moreover, it offers a convenient alternative to Darcy’s law for estimating the discharge rate from an aquifer. The new formula was derived from laboratory experiments, with a low-Reynolds number discharge flow (Darcian flow). It was tested in a natural karst aquifer where the flow is non-Darcian, at Almiros spring on the island of Crete (Greece). In both cases, the predictive capability of the modified formula is established.     

Identifying ‘place’ in place branding: core and periphery in Brisbane’s “New World City”

Brisbane is Australia’s third largest city, and capital of the state of Queensland. It has a sprawling urban footprint and impending connections to neighbouring metropolises, said to create a ‘200 km city’. The governing body of Brisbane controls the largest municipality in Australia, with unrivalled opportunity to influence both urban planning and marketing for the CBD and suburbs. Brisbane is home to over one million people, and its population has grown rapidly over the past decades, doubling in the past 40 years. Brisbane represents the quintessential city with an emerging quest for urbanity, both in brand and physical form. The relationships between the city’s urban planning and its branding is not well examined, despite clear entanglement between these two strategies. We use a case-study analysis of both Brisbane City (which is glossed as the Central Business District) and an outer-suburban area, Inala, to interrogate how urban identities and brand are being constructed in relation to their social settings and governance, with particular reference to the importance of city branding and its relationship to planning strategies. The manifestation of branding and relationship to place qualities at the core and on the periphery of Brisbane are examined, with relevance for other rapidly growing, ambitious cities. The focus of Brisbane’s push for urbanity is on the city centre, and is not representative of the typical suburban condition, nor of many cities dominated by suburban forms. An analysis of place brand, planning strategies and resident’s responses to place, from planning, architectural and anthropological perspectives are offered, as an alternative reading of place brand from the marketing dominated approach usually favoured in branding analysis. We make recommendations to incorporate a more complete version of place in the construction of a “genuine” urbanity. We argue that the recognition of resident-centred place identity in place branding will produce more socially sustainable places, as well as more authentic city brands.     

The Chelyabinsk meteoroid: A seismologist’s view

This work determines the parameters of the meteoroid that exploded in Chelyabinsk oblast on February 15, 2013. Using video observation and automobile registration cameras, we identified the trajectory and velocity of the meteoric body from the beginning of its glow to the destruction. The precise explosion time (03:20:34UTC) was determined on the basis of records of the broadband seismic stations and arrivals of the surface wave. The estimated explosion energy with assumption of a point source similar to a high thermonuclear explosion was 100 kt in TNT equivalent based on the surface wave amplitude. The archive of records of seismic stations during the meteorite flight is composed.     

Limits to “counter-neoliberal” reform: Mining expansion and the marginalisation of post-extractivist forces in Evo Morales’s Bolivia

The expansion of resource extractivism in Latin America in the last decade has been related to previous neoliberalisation processes, which opened-up mineral exploitation to transnational firms and granted investors favourable conditions. Extractivism, however, expanded equally (or more) in countries which have undertaken “counter-neoliberal” reform—as it is most clearly the case for Evo Morales’s Bolivia. Building on regulationist approaches and strategic-relational state theory, this paper analyses recent changes in the governance of Bolivian mining. It contributes to understanding how and why the Morales governments’ objectives to initiate a transition towards a more plural and diversified economy—informed by social movements—have not been achieved to date. We make three interrelated claims. First, the expansion of mining has been enabled by the maintaining of institutional arrangements for mineral exploitation established during neoliberalism, favouring transnational firms and self-employed (“cooperative”) miners over state-owned and community-managed operations. Second, despite the new government’s improved legal framework for the promotion of environmental and indigenous rights, the mining sector has continued to benefit from de facto lax environmental regulation, which constitutes an indirect incentive to expansion at the expense of ecologies and indigenous–peasant livelihoods. Third, the state has played a central role in weakening social resistance to mining expansion, by demobilising those social forces—particularly peasant–indigenous organisations—whose proposals and demands conflicted most clearly with extractivist development. We suggest, therefore, that analysing changing state–society relations is central to understanding the counter-neoliberalisation of resource governance and its limits.     

A vision for Iran’s fuel cell and hydrogen development

Hydrogen combined with fuel cell (FC) technology has been widely discussed as a long-term fuel option to address environmental and energy security concerns. Iran, despite outlining a long-term plan to develop its renewable energies’ (REs) infrastructures, is faced with difficulties in deploying fuel cell hydrogen (FCH). These obstacles—led by lack of adequate funding—have caused a slowdown in the government-driven initiatives in recent years, thus resulting in projects delays and suspensions. This paper focuses on current status of Iran’s FCH within and among leading and neighboring countries. Barriers and challenges of the three main actors (government, university, and industry) on Iran’s FCH development are analyzed and then supported with a policy perspective. It is shown that the government obligations play a significant role to overcome these obstacles and also act as the main driving force to perform the required actions. The paper also proposes strategic measures in a short-, medium-, and long-term framework to promote the technology in Iran in hopes of a clear national policy and a proper vision. It is shown that the responsibility for the short- and medium-term actions lies predominantly upon the government while it will be fully devolved to the private sector in the long term.     

Beatrice Ketchemen-Tandia’s contributions to isotope hydrology in sub-Saharan Africa

Hydrogeology Journal -     

Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory for modelling community resilience to natural disasters

This paper advocates the use of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory as a framework to analyse resilience at diverse scales. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory can be employed to (a) benchmark social resilience, (b) target the priority interventions required and (c) measure progress arising from these interventions to enhance resilience to natural disasters. First, the paper explores resilience to natural disasters in the context of climatic change as building resilience is seen as a way to mitigate impacts of natural disasters. Second, concepts of resilience are systematically examined and documented, outlining resilience as a trait and resilience as a process. Third, issues arising in relation to the measurement of resilience are discussed. Fourth, Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory is described and proffered to model and assess resilience at different scales. Fifth, studies are described which have supported the use of the bioecological systems theory for the study of resilience. Sixth, an example of the use of Bronfenbrenner’s theory is offered and the paper concludes with suggestions for future research using Bronfenbrenner’s theory.     

Application of a Weighted-Averaging Method for Determining Paleosalinity: A Tool for Restoration of South Florida’s Estuaries

A molluscan analogue dataset is presented in conjunction with a weighted-averaging technique as a tool for estimating past salinity patterns in south Florida’s estuaries and developing targets for restoration based on these reconstructions. The method, here referred to as cumulative weighted percent (CWP), was tested using modern surficial samples collected in Florida Bay from sites located near fixed water monitoring stations that record salinity. The results were calibrated using species weighting factors derived from examining species occurrence patterns. A comparison of the resulting calibrated species-weighted CWP (SW-CWP) to the observed salinity at the water monitoring stations averaged over a 3-year time period indicates, on average, the SW-CWP comes within less than two salinity units of estimating the observed salinity. The SW-CWP reconstructions were conducted on a core from near the mouth of Taylor Slough to illustrate the application of the method.     

Rock Mass Characteristics in Beishan, A Preselected Area for China’s High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal

Geological and hydrological characteristics, joint geometric features, rock physical and mechanical properties and rock mass quality are studied in the Beishan area, preselected for China’s high-level radioactive waste (HLW) disposal engineering. A comprehensive survey method is developed to study joint geometric features in the outcrop and samples from borehole BS06 into the Xinchang rock mass were tested. The optimal joint sets are determined by rose diagrams and equal-area lower hemisphere plots of joint poles. Results show that: 1) the distribution of joint occurrence obeys a normal distribution, while the distribution of joint spacing obeys a negative exponential distribution; 2) concentric circular and tangent circular sampling windows are applied to study the trace length and the trace midpoint density. Results indicate that tangent circular sampling window is more stable and reasonable; 3) Beishan granite shows high density, low porosity and high strength based on many laboratory tests and the physical properties and mechanical properties are closely related; and 4) a synthesis index, Joint Structure Rating (JSR), is applied to evaluate the quality of rock mass. Through the research results of rock mass characteristics, the Xinchang rock mass in the Beishan preselected area has the favorable conditions for China’s HLW disposal repository site.     

A Green’s function method for calculating the potential magnetic field in solar active regions in a spherical geometry

A Green’s function solution of Laplace’s equation for the potential magnetic field in an external spherical region is found using the derivative of the potential along a selected direction as a boundary condition. A set of programs applying this solution to construct the potential magnetic-field lines in solar active regions based on the photospheric line-of-sight field component has been developed. The method is tested using some model fields, and the optimal step size is found for realistic conditions. The developed software is applied to four real solar active regions, adopting HMI/SDO magnetograms as the boundary conditions. The potential magnetic field in the chromosphere and corona have been reconstructed for the selected regions. The calculated field lines are compared with flux tubes observed by AIA/SDO in the EUV. This comparison is used as a basis to discuss the applicability of a potential field approximation to the magnetic fields in solar active regions.     

A heuristic method for the analytical solution of Maxwell’s equations for direct current

We propose a heuristic method for the analytical solution of electrical-prospecting problems for direct currents and 3D isotropic media. The corresponding parameters of the medium (conductivity, magnetic permeability) are determined from Maxwell’s equations by the assignment of electric- or magnetic-field intensity in the analytical form. The application of this method is illustrated with examples.