A Spatial Data Infrastructure Approach for the Characterization of New Zealand's Groundwater Systems

The future information needs of stakeholders for hydrogeological and hydro‐climate data management and assessment in New Zealand may be met with an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards‐compliant publicly accessible web services framework which aims to provide integrated use of groundwater information and environmental observation data in general. The stages of the framework development described in this article are search and discovery as well as data collection and access with (meta)data services, which are developed in a community process. The concept and prototype implementation of OGC‐compliant web services for groundwater and hydro‐climate data include demonstration data services that present multiple distributed datasets of environmental observations. The results also iterate over the stakeholder community process and the refined profile of OGC services for environmental observation data sharing within the New Zealand Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) landscape, including datasets from the National Groundwater Monitoring Program and the New Zealand Climate Database along with datasets from affiliated regional councils at regional‐ and sub‐regional scales. With the definition of the New Zealand observation data profile we show that current state‐of‐the‐art standards do not necessarily need to be improved, but that the community has to agree upon how to use these standards in an iterative process.     

Estimating Population Attribute Values in a Table: “Get Me Started in” Iterative Proportional Fitting

Iterative proportional fitting (IPF) is a technique that can be used to adjust a distribution reported in one data set by totals reported in others. IPF is used to revise tables of data where the information is incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, or a sample. Although widely applied, the IPF methodology is rarely presented in a way that is accessible to nonexpert users. This article fills that gap through discussion of how to operationalize the method and argues that IPF is an accessible and transparent tool that can be applied to a range of data situations in population geography and demography. It offers three case study examples where IPF has been applied to geographical data problems; the data and algorithms are made available to users as supplementary material.     

Collapse‐induced fluidization structures in the Lower Cretaceous Athabasca Oil Sands Deposit,Western Canada

Unique vertical fluidization structures from the Lower Cretaceous Athabasca Oil Sands Deposit in Western Canada are described. The multi‐metre long structures resulted from ascending Devonian karst aquifer waters injected into the overlying unconsolidated sands of the McMurray Formation (Aptian). The dissolution removal of 100–200 m of Middle Devonian salt beds caused the collapse and fragmentation of the 200 m of Upper Devonian limestones underlying the Cretaceous sands. Hypogene karst aquifer waters fingered upwards along the faults and fractures. Disintegrated muddy wall rock sourced hydroplastic mud flows along fractures in the limestone beds below the floor of the central Bitumount Trough. These dykes widened and lengthened collapse‐induced Upper Devonian fault blocks that differentially subsided due to salt dissolution. Conduits plugged by these mud flows diverted over‐pressured aquifer waters upwards along remaining open pipes, some of which vented on the trough floor. Aquifer waters injected into the McMurray sand and mud beds accumulated on the trough floor generated several types of collapse‐induced fluidization structures: (1) stronger aquifer flows mobilized sands into tens‐of‐metres high sand dykes consisting of multiple vertical pipes of fluidized sand contorted around and intertwined with fragmented muddy wall rock; (2) smaller aquifer jets resulted in 1–2 m high sand‐rich pillars on the trough floor; and (3) narrower high‐pressure jets flowed muddy waters along multi‐metre long, 3–5 cm wide, vertical pipes that cross‐cut and wrapped around fragmented in situ beds. The velocity gradient between these narrow but multi‐metre long water pipe flows and the ambient velocity in the surrounding sediments caused water infiltration to radiate outwards. This plugged porosity along the outer wall of the pipe, diminished drainage into the wall rock, and stabilized concentric growth ring depositions along the length of the pipe. These pipe fills appear as unique striped ribbon fabrics when viewed in longitudinal section.     

Along-Channel Winds in Howe Sound: Climatological Analysis and Case Studies

This paper examines along-channel winds within Howe Sound, British Columbia, Canada, that occur from both the interior plateau out toward the coast as outflows and from the coast inland as inflows. First, the relationships between along-channel winds and pressure, temperature, and humidity are explored in Howe Sound–Cheakamus Valley. The pressure gradients between Pam Rocks and Squamish and Pam Rocks and Pemberton have the strongest correlations with outflow strength and that between Pam Rocks and Squamish has the strongest correlation with inflow strength. Outflows (inflows) have lower (higher) temperatures and dew point temperatures, except for the inflows in summer, which have lower dewpoint temperatures than the overall mean. Second, two case studies of outflow events are presented and described during the period of intensive observations prior to and during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. The January 2010 outflow event is caused by a zone of strong across-barrier mean sea level pressure gradient. The pressure gradient is formed behind an Arctic front that moved southward across Howe Sound. The February 2010 outflow event is caused by an approaching sea level low pressure centre from the Pacific that formed a northeast–southwest mean sea level pressure gradient across southern British Columbia. In the January case, the outflow layer is about 1.5?km deep, while it is shallower in the February case. Only the January outflow case exhibits hydraulic behaviour.     

Dependence of inferred magnetic sector structure upon geomagnetic and solar activity

Inferred solar sector polarity given by the AC index of Svalgaard, has been intensively studied as a single time series and as a time series correlated with geomagnetic and solar activity. Power auto-spectra of the AC index yield a highly significant harmonic series with fundamental at 27 days period and possessing clear harmonics up to the sixth; and a very prominent peak at a period of 1 yr. The 27 day harmonic series clearly indicates the solar control of the index while the 1-yr period might be taken as confirmation of the work of Rosenberg and Coleman to the effect that the sector pattern observed on Earth depends upon Earth's heliographic latitude which has a 1-yr period.Cross correlation analysis and superposed epoch analysis are used to show that sectors inferred to be positive or away are associated with low geomagnetic and solar activity whereas sectors inferred to be negative or toward exhibit significantly enhanced geomagnetic and solar activity.These results appear to be in conflict with superposed epoch analyses by Wilcox and Ness using satellite observed sector polarities which showed that geomagnetic activity increased after passage of a sector boundary, independent of the nature, whether + ? or ? + of the boundary.The conflict is resolved here by noting that the yearly correlation coefficient, at zero time lag, between inferred sector structure and geomagnetic activity averaged about 0·5 for the year 1927–1958, dropped to low values by 1960, recovered by 1962 and then dropped sharply in 1963 by an order to magnitude; the correlation has remained essentially zero ever since. Thus, the satellite results, all obtained post 1963, would not show increased activity during either sector sign.The results cast doubt upon the accuracy of the early ‘inferred’ sector polarities because it is felt that the only simple explanation for the strange behavior of the correlation coefficient lies in some artifact of the data.     

The interrelationship between cosmic dust and the microwave background

Attention is given to the radiation of microwaves by charged dust in space. Presently-used particle distributions do not restrict the presence in space of large numbers of small (r<10^–6 cm) silicate grains, but it is shown that such densities (10^–25–10^–26 g cm^–3) of small grains would produce a microwave background with an energy density of the same order of magnitude as the energy density of the (presumed) cosmological 3 K background. Limits set by the isotropy of the latter are: (HI clouds)10^–26, (Galactic plane)10^–30, (Halo)10^–32, (Local Group)10^–34 g cm^–3. These limits imply that either there is a cutoff in particle distributions atr10^–6 cm, or that the density of silicate grains in space has been generally overestimated, or that cosmic rays have broken up a lot of grains so that they now form a population of grains of very small size (10^–7 cm) which are difficult to detect by conventional methods. One way to look for the latter population is by studying expected distortions of the 3 K spectrum to the short wavelength side of the portion hitherto observed (grains may have a size distribution able to give an approximate black-body curve for radiation from larger grains of 10^–6 cm size), and by testing the effective energy density of the 3 K field in other galaxies.