Environmental conditions for gravelly and pebbly dunes and sorted bedforms on a moderate-energy inner shelf (Marettimo Island,Italy, western Mediterranean)

Side scan sonar records, sediment textural characteristics, and in-situ field observations were used to study gravelly and pebbly dunes and sorted bedforms on the inner shelf of Marettimo Island, along the northwestern Sicilian shelf. The dunes are composed of coarse sands, gravels and pebbles (D50: 2–16 mm), displaying a symmetrical shape with a wavelength in the range of 1–2.5 m and a height of 0.15–0.30 m. The bedforms are distributed in a patchy pattern in a depth range of 10–50 m, and are described for the first time on a Mediterranean inner shelf. Sorted bedforms are linear morphological features developed almost perpendicular to the coast in the eastern sector of the island between 15 and 50 m water depth. Bottom shear stresses required for sediment entrainment and the generation of the shallower dunes can be reached during strong storms (Hs=5–6 m; Tp=9–11 s), which are not common in the Mediterranean Sea. However, wave storm events recorded in the study area during the last 17 years are not able to generate the coarsest and deeper dunes, suggesting that the stirring mechanism for dune formation is associated with severe storms that have a recurrence interval of more than 17 years. The long-term stability of the coarse bedforms is supported by the permanence of sorted bedforms without significant morphological changes for long periods (>13 years). Therefore, it is shown that processes forming coarse bedforms can occur in tideless and moderate-energy settings like those of the Mediterranean continental shelves, although the morphological features are probably less dynamic and remain unaltered for longer periods than on higher-energy shelves.     

Change of crustal gravitational potential energy in the Taiwan orogen by the Chi-Chi earthquake sequence

The active convergence between the northwest corner of the Philippine Sea Plate and the southeast margin of the Eurasian Plate has given rise to the Taiwan mountain-building and produced numerous earthquakes. Among the earthquakes, the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake is the largest one recorded in the century. In this study, we examine the crustal gravitational potential energy (GPE) change in the Taiwan orogen caused by the Chi-Chi earthquake sequence, which was catalogued by the regional broadband seismometer array for a whole year. As a result, we find that the crust was going up and down randomly during the earthquake sequence, but an overall cumulative gain of the crustal GPE, +1.82×10¹⁶ J, was rapidly achieved in 1 month after the main shock. The crustal GPE was nearly still afterwards and reached +1.90×10¹⁶ J in 1 year. Spatially, although the main surface faulting has occurred in western Taiwan, the crustal GPE gain is mainly distributed in central Taiwan at the area where the existing crustal GPE is high and the existing lithospheric GPE is relatively low. The crustal GPE loss by the Chi-Chi earthquake sequence can also be observed and is generally distributed at both sides of the crustal GPE gain area. The crustal GPE gain mainly found in central Taiwan corroborates that the uplift of the Taiwan orogen is principally taking place in central Taiwan, rather than in the more hazardous western Taiwan.     

震后预报的某些研究

通过研究华北北部中强以上地震震后地震活动，地形变、地电阻率、水化学和水位变化特征，给出了各单项方法识别震后效应与新地震异常的标志。为了综合判别震后短临异常变化是震后效应或新异常，研制了一套综合识别计算机程序系统，该系统考虑了已发生的强震序列类型，地震活动背景特征以及强震前后前兆短临异常变化形态，充分利用专家的知识与经验进行推理和判断。通过运行典型事例表明该系统功能较强，使用方便。系统的实现是专家系     

Multi-objective optimal design for flood risk management with resilience objectives

In flood risk management, the divergent concept of resilience of a flood defense system cannot be fully defined quantitatively by one indicator and multiple indicators need to be considered simultaneously. In this paper, a multi-objective optimization (MOO) design framework is developed to determine the optimal protection level of a levee system based on different resilience indicators that depend on the probabilistic features of the flood damage cost arising under the uncertain nature of rainfalls. An evolutionary-based MOO algorithm is used to find a set of non-dominated solutions, known as Pareto optimal solutions for the optimal protection level. The objective functions, specifically resilience indicators of severity, variability and graduality, that account for the uncertainty of rainfall can be evaluated by stochastic sampling of rainfall amount together with the model simulations of incurred flood damage estimation for the levee system. However, these model simulations which usually require detailed flood inundation simulation are computationally demanding. This hinders the wide application of MOO in flood risk management and is circumvented here via a surrogate flood damage modeling technique that is integrated into the MOO algorithm. The proposed optimal design framework is applied to a levee system in a central basin of flood-prone Jakarta, Indonesia. The results suggest that the proposed framework enables the application of MOO with resilience objectives for flood defense system design under uncertainty and solves the decision making problems efficiently by drastically reducing the required computational time.     

Decoupling of the coupled poroelastic equations for quasistatic flow in deformable porous media containing two immiscible fluids

The study of the poroelastic behavior of sedimentary materials containing two immiscible fluids in response to either applied stress or pore pressure change in a quasistatic limit, i.e., negligible second time-derivatives, is of great importance to many hydrogelogical problems, e.g., land subsidence caused by withdrawal of subsurface fluids. The poroelasticity models developed for analyzing these problems feature partial differential equations that are coupled in the terms describing viscous damping and strain field. To determine closed-form analytical solutions for induced volumetric strain (dilatation) of the solid framework and its interaction with fluid flows, the choice of normal coordinates whose transformation can be performed to decouple these poroelastic equations is highly desirable. In this paper, we show that normal coordinates for decoupling these equations are real-valued and equal to three different linear combinations of the dilatations of the solid and the fluids (or equivalently, three different linear combinations of two individual fluid pressures and solid dilatation). In contrast to fully saturated porous media, it is found that the viscous damping effect must be represented in normal coordinates in the presence of the second fluid. The resulting decoupled equations representing independent motional modes are a Laplace equation and two diffusion equations, which can be solved analytically under a variety of initial and boundary conditions. Thus, after inverse transformation of normal coordinates is performed, the closed-form analytical solutions for induced solid volumetric strain and excess pore fluid pressures can be obtained simultaneously from our decoupled partial differential equations.     

Contact oxidation process followed by activated carbon adsorption for textile wastewater treatment

A pilot plant study and a full scale plant study were conducted to determine the feasibility of using contact oxidation followed by activated carbon adsorption process in textile wastewater treatment, and to determine the effects of types of packing media in the contact oxidation tank and types of aeration process on the treatment performance. Results indicated that contact oxidation followed by activated carbon adsorption process was effective in removing organics and color from textile wastewaters. Types of packing media and types of aeration processes had little effect on the treatment performance. The pilot plant performance was found to perform slightly better than the performance of the full scale plant.     

An integrated web-based air pollution decision support system – a prototype

To efficiently and effectively monitor and mitigate air pollution in the urban environment, it is of paramount importance to integrate into a unified whole air pollutant concentration databases coming from different sources including the ground-based stations, mobile sensors, remote sensing, atmospheric-chemical-transport models and social media for the analysis and unraveling of the complex air pollution processes in space and time. This study constructs and implements for the first time a prototype of the fully integrated air pollution decision support system (APDSS) that put together in an integrated manner all relevant multi-scale, multi-type and multi-source data for decision-making on urban air pollution. The prototype contains the main system that handles the multi-source, multi-type and multi-scale databases, queries, visualization and data mining algorithms and the integrated modules that individually and holistically capitalize on the power of the ground-based stations, ground and aerial mobile sensors, satellite-borne remote-sensing technologies, atmospheric-chemical-transport models and social media. It renders a solid scientific foundation and system development methodology for the study of the spatiotemporal air pollution profiles crucial to the mitigation of urban air pollution. Real-life applications of the prototype are employed to illustrate the functionality of the APDSS.     

Influence of food web structure on the biochemical composition of seston,zooplankton and recently deposited sediment in experimental freshwater mesocosms

The effects of food web structure on the quantity and biochemical composition of seston, zooplankton and recently deposited sediment in experimental freshwater mesocosms were examined. Food web structure was manipulated by addition of zooplanktivorous fish. Biochemical characterisations were carried out using lipid biomarkers (sterols, fatty acids, chlorophyll-derived compounds and long-chain alkanediols). Fish addition decreased zooplankton biomass and increased seston biomass and deposited sediment through a trophic cascade. Fish presence strongly influenced the biochemical characteristics of seston and sediment. In contrast, food web structure had a minor impact on the lipid biomarker composition of zooplankton. Although the relative abundance of sterols in the different compartments did not differ strongly between treatments, sterol profiles in seston and sediment depended on food web structure. The predominance of Δ⁷-sterols in seston and sediment in the fish treatment indicated a major contribution of Chlorophyceae. In contrast, the distribution of sterols in seston and sediment in the fishless treatment, dominated by cholesterol, indicated a major zooplanktonic input. The distribution of fatty acids and the relative abundance of chlorophyll-derived compounds and long-chain alkanediols agreed with the predominant contribution of phytoplankton or zooplankton to seston and sediment in the two treatments. The relative abundance of bacterial biomarkers suggested that the contribution of bacteria was rather low. The high relative abundance of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and the absence of stanols in sediments suggested low microbial reworking of organic matter in the recently accumulated sediments. The trophic cascade, generated by the addition of fish, increased the relative abundance of PUFAs in deposited organic matter, thus enhancing sediment quality and potential degradability.     

Transiting aircraft parameter estimation using underwater acousticsensor data

Sound from an airborne source travels to a receiver beneath the sea surface via a geometric path that is most simply described using ray theory, where the atmosphere and the sea are assumed to be isospeed sound propagation media separated by a planar surface (the air-sea interface). This theoretical approach leads to the development of a time-frequency model for the signal received by a single underwater acoustic sensor and a time-delay model for the signals received by a pair of spatially separated underwater acoustic sensors. The validity of these models is verified using spatially averaged experimental data recorded from a linear array of hydrophones during various transits of a turboprop aircraft. The same approach is used to solve the inverse time-frequency problem, that is, estimation of the aircraft's speed, altitude, and propeller blade rate given the observed variation with time of the instantaneous frequency of the received signal. Similarly, the inverse time-delay problem is considered whereby the speed and altitude of the aircraft are estimated using the differential time-of-arrival information from each of two adjacent pairs of widely spaced hydrophones (with one hydrophone being common to each pair). It is found that the solutions to each of the inverse problems provide reliable estimates of the speed and altitude of the aircraft, with the inverse time-frequency method also providing an estimate that closely matches the actual propeller blade rate     

CHANGES IN THE SHAPES OF CHINESE CITIES, 1934–1974

The Boyce-Clark shape index was employed to study changes in the shapes of twenty-three Chinese cities between 1934 and 1974. With the aid of shapes curves and cluster analysis, types of city growth since 1934 were identified. It was found that, on the whole, city shapes have changed only moderately, although cities in the north and northeast tended to experience greater changes. This suggests that these have been priority areas of Chinese urban planning. City shape and population size were employed to produce a simple typology of Chinese cities. The results suggest the persistence of square or rectangle shapes, although some cities in the south and north also experienced linear development.