Evolution of the Variscan foreland-basin: modelling the interactions between tectonics and surface processes

The geology of Western and Central Europe is significantly influenced by the Variscan orogen that developed during Devonian and Carboniferous time. Numerical models are essential in understanding and quantifying the involved endogenous and exogenous processes and their interactions. These are mainly based on the large-scale mass redistribution caused by erosion and fluvial sedimentary transport. The sedimentary mass flux leads to changing loads on the lithosphere and affects therefore the evolution of the orogen and the foreland-basin. The complex feedback-mechanism of the surface and tectonic processes is studied by three-dimensional elastic–plastic numerical models. The calculated uplift rates are used to model the interaction between tectonic and surface processes such as erosion and sedimentation. An iterative application of the numerical models for the tectonic and surface processes yields a detailed view of the evolution of the foreland-basin. The tectonic model itself (excluding surface processes) already shows some of the palinspastically reconstructed important features of the lower Carboniferous like the London-Brabant Massif, and the northward propagation of the Variscan deformation front. The results obtained from the coupled analysis can be compared to studies of the sedimentary record (i.e. time, thickness, and sedimentation rates) and other geological concepts (i.e. stability of geological provinces). The results demonstrate that both processes are essential in understanding the complex structural evolution of the Variscides and their foreland. The numerical approach on the tectonic–surface process interaction can also be applied easily to other geological settings.     

Simulation of non-stationary ground motion processes (II)

Introduction When doing Monte Carlo analysis of stochastic earthquake response of nonlinear structures, it is necessary to have a great number of ground motion processes with an identical statistical feature; In theoretical analysis of earthquake resistance of structures, to study the effect of one parameter, it is required to keep other parameters fixed, and it is often needed one set of ground motion proc-esses having an identical statistical feature; Similarly, while doing structural model…     

A Reynolds-averaged turbulence modelling approach to the maintenance of the Venus superrotation

Abstract

A maintenance mechanism of an approximately linear velocity profile of the Venus zonal flow or superrotation is explored, with the aid of a Reynolds-averaged turbulence modelling approach. The basic framework is similar to that of Gierasch (Meridional circulation and maintenance of the Venus atmospheric rotation. J. Atmos. Sci. 1975, 32, 1038–1044) in the sense that the mechanism is examined under a given meridional circulation. The profile mimicking the observations of the flow is initially assumed, and its maintenance mechanism in the presence of turbulence effects is investigated from a viewpoint of the suppression of energy cascade. In the present work, the turbulent viscosity is regarded as an indicator of the intensity of the cascade. A novelty of this formalism is the use of the isotropic turbulent viscosity based on a non-local time scale linked to a large-scale flow structure. The mechanism is first discussed qualitatively. On the basis of these discussions, the two-dimensional numerical simulation of the proposed model is performed, with an initially assumed superrotation, and the fast zonal flow is shown to be maintained, compared with the turbulent viscosity lacking the non-local time scale. The relationship of the present model with the current general circulation model simulation is discussed in light of a crucial role of the vertical viscosity.     

Aeolian processes across transverse dunes. I: Modelling the air flow

This paper discusses a two-dimensional second-order closure model simulating air flow and turbulence across transverse dunes. Input parameters are upwind wind speed, topography of the dune ridge and surface roughness distribution over the ridge. The most important output is the distribution of the friction velocity over the surface. This model is dynamically linked to a model that calculates sand transport rates and the resulting changes in elevation. The sand transport model is discussed in a separate paper. The simulated wind speeds resemble patterns observed during field experiments. Despite the increased wind speed over the crest, the friction velocity at the crest of a bare dune is reduced compared to the upstream value, because of the effect of stream line curvature on turbulence. These curvature effects explain why desert dunes can grow in height. In order to obtain realistic predictions of friction velocity it was essential to include equations for the turbulent variables in the model. In these equations streamline curvature is an important parameter. The main flaw of the model is that it cannot deal with flow separation and the resulting recirculation vortex. As a result, the increase of the wind speed and friction velocity after a steep dune or a slipface will be too close to the dune foot. In the sand transport model this was overcome by defining a separation zone. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于强度和能量控制的随机地震动模型

考虑地震动的随机性和频率与强度非平稳性,通过理论分析,提出了一般随机地震动模型,并给出了确定模型参数的原则和方法。该模型以地震动强度、地震动能量以及地震动持时等宏观指标作为控制随机地震动模型参数的指标,而对其内在的频谱组成等指标只要求满足一般地震动的特征。该模型可以用于描述平稳随机过程、强度非平稳随机过程以及强度和频率完全非平稳随机过程。通过与常用功率谱模型的比较,验证了该模型的合理性。     

Random process simulation of strong ground motion

ＲａｎｄｏｍｐｒｏｃｅｓｓｓｉｍｕｌａｔｉｏｎｏｆｓｔｒｏｎｇｇｒｏｕｎｄｍｏｔｉｏｎＸｉｕ－ＬｉＤＵ；ＸｉａｏＨＵａｎｄＨｏｕ－ＱｕｎＣＨＥＮ（杜修力，胡晓，陈厚群）（ＩｎｓｔｄｕｔｅｏｆＷａｔｅｒＡｂｓｔｒａｃｔ：Ｔｈｅｓｔａｔｅ－ｏｆ－ａｒｔｏ...     

Quantifying the impacts of climate change and land use on hydrological processes: A comparison between mountain and lowland agricultural watersheds

Mountain and lowland watersheds are two distinct geographical units with considerably different hydrological processes. Understanding their hydrological processes in the context of future climate change and land use scenarios is important for water resource management. This study investigated hydrological processes and their driving factors and eco-hydrological impacts for these two geographical units in the Xitiaoxi watershed, East China, and quantified their differences through hydrological modelling. Hydrological processes in 24 mountain watersheds and 143 lowland watersheds were simulated based on a raster-based Xin'anjiang model and a Nitrogen Dynamic Polder (NDP) model, respectively. These two models were calibrated and validated with an acceptable performance (Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficients of 0.81 and 0.50, respectively) for simulating discharge for mountain watersheds and water level for lowland watersheds. Then, an Indicators of Hydrological Alteration (IHA) model was used to help quantify the alterations to the hydrological process and their resulting eco-hydrological impacts. Based on the validated models, scenario analysis was conducted to evaluate the impacts of climate and land use changes on the hydrological processes. The simulation results revealed that (a) climate change would cause a larger increase in annual runoff than that under land use scenario in the mountain watersheds, with variations of 19.9 and 10.5% for the 2050s, respectively. (b) Land use change was more responsible for the streamflow increment than climate change in the lowland watersheds, causing an annual runoff to increase by 27.4 and 16.2% for the 2050s, respectively. (c) Land use can enhance the response of streamflow to the climatic variation. (d) The above-mentioned hydrological variations were notable in flood and dry season in the mountain watersheds, and they were significant in rice season in the lowland watersheds. (e) Their resulting degradation of ecological diversity was more susceptible to future climate change in the two watersheds. This study demonstrated that mountain and lowland watersheds showed distinct differences in hydrological processes and their responses to climate and land use changes.     

Unpacking some of the linkages between uncertainties in observational data and the simulation of different hydrological processes using the Pitman model in the data scarce Zambezi River basin

The main objective of this study was to use an uncertainty version of a widely used monthly time step, semi-distributed model (the Pitman model) to explore the equifinalities in the way in which the main hydrological processes are simulated and any identifiable linkages with uncertainties in the available observational data. The study area is the Zambezi River basin and 17 gauged sub-basins have been included in the analyses. Unfortunately, it is not generally possible to quantify some of the observational uncertainties in such a data scarce area and mostly we are limited to identifying where these data are clearly deficient (i.e., erroneous or non-representative). The overall conclusion is that the equifinalities in the model are hugely dominant in terms of the uncertainties in the relative occurrence of different runoff generating processes, although water use uncertainties in the semi-arid parts of the basin can contribute to these uncertainties. The identification of landscape features that suggest the occurrence of saturation excess surface runoff provides some information to constrain the model. Improved independent estimates of groundwater recharge is also identified as a key source of observational data that would help a great deal in constraining the model parameter space and therefore reducing some of the model equifinality.     

Bridging the gap between turbulence and larger scales of flow motions in rivers

Although flow turbulence in rivers is of critical importance to earth scientists, ecologists and engineers, its relations with larger flow scales are not well understood, thus leaving a fundamental gap in our knowledge. From an analysis of a long time series of the streamwise and vertical flow velocity fluctuations measured in a gravel‐bed river, we show that the signature of the fundamental turbulent flow structures (e.g. ejections and sweeps) is embedded within increasingly larger flow scales in a self‐similar manner. The imbrication of turbulent structures into large flow pulsations of flow acceleration and deceleration covers more than two‐orders of magnitude from a few seconds to nearly 10 minutes. This property is explained by the clustering of turbulent events creating an emergent pattern at larger scales. The size of the larger flow pulsations scales with the spacing of the pools and riffles in the river. This implies a mutual adjustment between turbulence generation mechanisms and long pulsations of flow acceleration and deceleration controlled by the bed morphology. These results bridge a gap in our understanding of flows in rivers and offer a new perspective on the interactions between the turbulent flow with larger scales of flow motion that are critical for sediment transport, habitat selection and fish behaviour. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Theorem of turbulent intensity and macroscopic mechanism of the turbulence development

Turbulence is one of the most common nature phenomena in everyday experience, but that is not adequately understood yet. This article reviews the history and present state of development of the turbulence theory and indicates the necessity to probe into the turbulent features and mechanism with the different methods at different levels. Therefore this article proves a theorem of turbulent transpor- tation and a theorem of turbulent intensity by using the theory of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics, and that the Reynolds turbulence and the Rayleigh-Bénard turbulence are united in the theorems of the turbulent intensity and the turbulent transportation. The macroscopic cause of the development of fluid turbulence is a result from shearing effect of the velocity together with the temperature, which is also the macroscopic cause of the stretch and fold of trajectory in the phase space of turbulent field. And it is proved by the observed data of atmosphere that the phenomenological coefficient of turbulent in- tensity is not only a function of the velocity shear but also a function of temperature shear, viz the sta- bility of temperature stratification, in the atmosphere. Accordingly, authenticity of the theorem, which is proved by the theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, of turbulent intensity is testified by the facts of observational experiment.     

Stochastic modelling of erosion and deposition in cohesive soils

A new stochastic method of detachment rate estimation was used in erosion modelling. This method was based on calculating the probability of driving forces exceeding resistance forces in the interaction of oscillating flow and structured soil. Knowledge of the probability density functions for flow velocity, soil cohesion, aggregate size and soil integrity makes it possible to calculate theoretically the erosion rate of cohesive soil for any combination of these stochastic variables. The proposed theory explains the variability in relationships between rate of detachment and flow velocity. With flow velocity, detachment rate increases more rapidly for more integrated soil with higher cohesion and larger aggregates. This theory also shows the great difference between soil erosion type for relatively high and relatively low flow velocities, and explains rather high errors, even with detailed models, in the calculation of low soil erosion rate. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generalised scale invariance and multiplicative processes in the atmosphere

Many geophysical fields show highly intermittent fractal structures spanning wide ranges of scale. However, few are isotropic: texture, stratification, as well as variable (scale dependent) orientation of structures is far more common. To deal with such fractals, we must generalise the idea of scale invariance beyond the familiar self-similar (or even self-affine) notions. Taking the atmosphere as our primary example (however, we also model galaxies), we outline the necessary formalism (generalised scale invariance), and show how it can be used to deal with the strongly intermittent structures which result from multiplicative (cascade type) processes concentrating matter or energy into smaller and smaller scales.We illustrate these ideas with rain data from blotting paper and radar, showing first how to directly estimate the elliptical dimension characterising the stratification, and second, how to determine universal scale-independent (invariant) codimension functions that characterise the distribution of the intense rain regions.     

A Robust Nonlinear Inversion for the Interpretation of Magnetic Anomalies Caused by Faults,Thin Dikes and Spheres Like Structure Using Stochastic Algorithms

A geophysical interpretative method is proposed to depth, amplitude coefficient (effective magnetization intensity), and index parameter (effective magnetization inclination) determination of a buried structure from magnetic field data anomaly due to a fault, a thin dike or a sphere-like structure. The method is based on the nonlinearly constrained mathematical modelling and also on the stochastic optimization approaches. The proposed interpretative method was first tested on a theoretical synthetic model with different random errors, where a very close agreement was obtained between the assumed and the evaluated parameters. The validity of this method was also tested on practical field data taken from United States, Australia, India and Brazil, where available magnetic data existed and were previously analyzed by different interpretative methods. The agreement between the results obtained by our developed method and those obtained by the other geophysical methods is good.     

Combined effects of groundwater and aeolian processes in the formation of the northernmost closed saline depressions of Europe: north-east Spain

A genetic and evolutionary model is established for saline depressions in continental areas. These depressions are located in arid or subarid areas, and are developed on low permeability geological mediums (K<10 mm/day) with a lack of streams reaching the small lakes. The phenomenon of evaporation is fundamental, since it is the basic requirement for the presence or absence of a free water surface in the lake, and also for depression of the phreatic surface, which causes inflow of groundwater towards the lake. With these conditions, the proposed model includes the following stages: (i) initiation of the close depression; (ii) deepening of the depression; (iii) formation of the lake basin and the end of the deepening; and (iv) levelling and lateral extension of the lake basin. The combined effects of groundwater flows and aeolian action offer a coherent explanation for the origin and evolution both of the closed depressions found in the Ebro Valley, and of the salt lakes that subsequently form. The processes described form morphologies of oval shape with the main axis parallel to the direction of the wind, flat floors and evaporitic sedimentation, although they act on geological materials with different lithologies. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hard state of the urban canopy layer turbulence and its self-similar multiplicative cascade models

It is found by experiment that under the thermal convection condition, the temperature fluctuation in the urban canopy layer turbulence has the hard state character, and the temperature difference between two points has the exponential probability density function distribution. At the same time, the turbulent energy dissipation rate fits the log-normal distribution, and is in accord with the hypothesis proposed by Kolmogorov in 1962 and lots of reported experimental results. In this paper, the scaling law of hard state temperature n order structure function is educed by the self-similar multiplicative cascade models. The theory formula is Sn = n/3μ{n(n+6)/72+[2lnn!-nln2]/2ln6}, and μ Is intermittent exponent. The formula can fit the experimental results up to order 8 exponents, is superior to the predictions by the Kolmogorov theory, the β And log-normal model.     

Stochastic modelling of a diffusive wave for flood propagation using the random walk particle tracking method in a hypothetical city

Deterministic numerical schemes have been widely used for the solution of the diffusive wave (DW) equation, however, these schemes are computationally costly and suffer instability issues. This paper presents a stochastic random walk particle tracking (RWPT) method to solve such an equation for a dam‐break flow problem. Three different wave duration scenarios are presented for simulations of the DW for flood flows in a hypothetical city. The hypothetical city is represented by a domain of size 2,000 m by 500 m in x and y directions, respectively. The domain is divided into 25 m by 25 m cells. A dam is located at the upstream of the hypothetical city. Each scenario has a distinct propagation pattern after the dam is breached. Analysed and presented are 18 different simulations, which are composed of three different building configurations, two different bed slopes, and three different shapes of hydrographs. In this method, the flood volume is divided into a large number of particles where each particle carries a fixed amount of the flood volume. These particles undergo convective and diffusive movements, and their superposition represents propagation of the DW in the flow domain. The solution algorithm of the RWPT‐based equations is used to compute flood inundation depths in the hypothetical city. Comparison is drawn among the simulated results from three different shapes of the inflow hydrographs. The proposed stochastic method has two major advantages over traditional deterministic schemes: (a) greater efficiency, thus lesser computational costs, and (b) no instability issues.     

Quantifying the relative impact of hydrological and hydraulic modelling parameterizations on uncertainty of inundation maps

ABSTRACT

Flood risk management strongly relies on inundation models for river basin zoning in flood-prone and risk-free areas. Floodplain zoning is significantly affected by the diverse and concurrent uncertainties that characterize the modelling chain used for producing inundation maps. In order to quantify the relative impact of the uncertainties linked to a lumped hydrological (rainfall–runoff) model and a FLO-2D hydraulic model, a Monte Carlo procedure is proposed in this work. The hydrological uncertainty is associated with the design rainfall estimation method, while the hydraulic model uncertainty is associated with roughness parameterization. This uncertainty analysis is tested on the case study of the Marta coastal catchment in Italy, by comparing the different frequency, extent and depth of inundation simulations associated with varying rainfall forcing and/or hydraulic model roughness realizations. The results suggest a significant predominance of the hydrological uncertainty with respect to the hydraulic one on the overall uncertainty associated with the simulated inundation maps.     

Investigating the use of spatial discretization of hydrological processes in conceptual rainfall runoff modelling: a case study for the meso‐scale

In this study a simple modelling approach was applied to identify the need for spatial complexity in representing hydrological processes and their variability over different scales. A data set of 18 basins was used, ranging between 8 and 4011 km² in area, located in the Nahe basin (Germany), with daily discharge values for over 30 years. Two different parsimoniously structured models were applied in lumped as well as in spatially distributed according to two distribution classifications: (1) a simple classification based on the lithology expressed in three permeability types and (2) a more complex classification based on seven dominating runoff production processes. The objective of the study was to compare the performances of the models on a local and on a regional scale as well as between the models with a view to identifying the accuracy in capturing the spatial variability of the rainfall‐runoff relationships. It was shown that the presence of a specific basin characteristic or process of the distribution classification was not related with higher model performance; only a larger basin size promoted higher model performance. The results of this study also indicated that the permeability generally contained more useful information on the spatial heterogeneity of the hydrological behaviour of the natural system than did a more detailed classification on dominating runoff generation processes. Although model performance was slightly lower for the model that used permeability as a distribution classification, consistency in its parameter values was found, which was lacking with the more complex distribution classification. The latter distribution classification had a higher flexibility to optimize towards the variability of the runoff, which resulted in higher performance, however, process representation was applied inconsistently. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

龙门山构造带深部动力学过程与地表地质过程的耦合关系

发生在地球浅层的2008年汶川地震驱动了龙门山及前陆地区的地表同震垂向位移.根据冲断带-前陆盆地弹性挠曲模型理论,在进行弹性挠曲模拟反演的基础上,结合对深部地球物理特征（泊松比、电性结构）的分析,发现龙门山前陆盆地现今岩石圈有效弹性厚度（T_e）具有自东向西逐渐减薄的趋势,自川中地区的30~40 km减至龙门山地区的10~20 km.在对晚三叠世以来前陆盆地各阶段盆地结构进行刻画的基础上,进行弹性挠曲模拟反演,推断龙门山前陆盆地的前渊地区（四川盆地西部）岩石圈的T_e值自晚三叠世以来具有逐渐减薄的趋势.这可能与松潘-甘孜地块下方广泛存在的软流圈热物质对四川盆地西部岩石圈下部的长期加热而导致的熔融有关,反映了地球深部动力学过程与地球表层盆地演化之间的耦合关系.