Hydrologic and geomorphic processes in the Colville River delta, Alaska

The Colville basin drains the North Slope of Alaska and is one of several large Arctic river systems located within permafrost. The timing and style of fluvial processes in the earth's permafrost regions differ from those occurring in midlatitude settings. Moreover, in comparison to temperate-zone systems, rivers located entirely within permafrost perform most of their work during relatively short periods of time. This paper examines river ice hydrology and the resulting geomorphic processes that occur within the Colville delta, Alaska. Fluvial processes and landform development within the Colville delta occur after the flood-pulse is initiated by the breakup of river ice. During this 4-month period, the geomorphic processes are largely influenced by the movement of ice. The flood-pulse and accompanying river ice influences erosional and depositional processes and results in unique styles of sediment transport, deposition, and riverbank erosion.     

Wind erosion from military training lands in the Mojave Desert, California, U.S.A.

Military training activities reduce vegetation cover, disturb crusts, and degrade soil aggregates, making the land more vulnerable to wind erosion. The objective of this study was to quantify wind erosion rates for typical conditions at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, CA, U.S.A. Five Big Spring Number Eight (BSNE) sampler stations were installed at each of five sites. Each BSNE station consisted of five BSNE samplers with the lowest sampler at 0·05 m and the highest sampler at 1·0 m above the soil surface. Once a month, sediment was collected from the samplers for analysis. Occurrence of saltating soil aggregates was recorded every hour using Sensits, one at each site. The site with the most erosion had a sediment discharge of 311 kg m⁻¹ over a period of 17 months. Other sites eroded much less because of significant rock cover or the presence of a crust. Hourly sediment discharge was estimated combining hourly Sensit count and monthly sediment discharge measured using BSNE samplers. More simultaneously measured data are needed to better characterize the relationship between these two and reconstruct a detailed time-series of wind erosion. This measured time-series can then be used for comparison with simulation results from process-based wind erosion models such as the Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS), once it has been adapted to the unique aspects of military lands.     

Practical VTI approximations: a systematic anatomy

Transverse isotropy (TI) with a vertical symmetry axis (VTI) often provides an appropriate earth model for prestack imaging of steep-dip reflection seismic data. Exact P-wave and SV-wave phase velocities in VTI media are described by complicated equations requiring four independent parameters. Estimating appropriate multiparameter earth models can be difficult and time-consuming, so it is often useful to replace the exact VTI equations with simpler approximations requiring fewer parameters. The accuracy limits of different previously published VTI approximations are not always clear, nor is it always obvious how these different approximations relate to each other. Here I present a systematic framework for deriving a variety of useful VTI approximations. I develop first a sequence of well-defined approximations to the exact P-wave and SV-wave phase velocities. In doing so, I show how the useful but physically questionable heuristic of setting shear velocities identically to zero can be replaced with a more precise and quantifiable approximation. The key here to deriving accurate approximations is to replace the stiffness a₁₃ with an appropriate factorization in terms of velocity parameters. Two different specific parameter choices lead to the P-wave approximations of Alkhalifah (Geophysics 63 (1998) 623) and Schoenberg and de Hoop (Geophysics 65 (2000) 919), but there are actually an infinite number of reasonable parametrizations possible. Further approximations then lead to a variety of other useful phase velocity expressions, including those of Thomsen (Geophysics 51 (1986) 1954), Dellinger et al. (Journal of Seismic Exploration 2 (1993) 23), Harlan (Stanford Exploration Project Report 89 (1995) 145), and Stopin (Stopin, A., 2001. Comparison of v(θ) equations in TI medium. 9th International Workshop on Seismic Anisotropy). Each P-wave phase velocity approximation derived this way can be paired naturally with a corresponding SV-wave approximation. Each P-wave or SV-wave phase velocity approximation can then be converted into an equivalent dispersion relation in terms of horizontal and vertical slownesses. A simple heuristic substitution also allows each phase velocity approximation to be converted into an explicit group velocity approximation. From these, in turn, travel time or moveout approximations can also be derived. The group velocity and travel time approximations derived this way include ones previously used by Byun et al. (Geophysics 54 (1989) 1564), Dellinger et al. (Journal of Seismic Exploration 2 (1993) 23), Tsvankin and Thomsen (Geophysics 59 (1994) 1290), Harlan (89 (1995) 145), and Zhang and Uren (Zhang, F. and Uren, N., 2001. Approximate explicit ray velocity functions and travel times for P-waves in TI media. 71st Annual International Meeting, Society of Exploration Geophysicists, Expanded Abstracts, 106–109).     

Towards non-linear inversion for characterization of time-lapse phenomena through numerical modelling

We compare two geophysical survey measurements of the same type made at different times in order to characterize the change in the geological medium during the elapsed time. The aim of this study is to develop a strategy using a full non-linear inversion algorithm as the interpretation tool. In this way, not only the location and the form of the changes are recovered, but also the changes in the material parameters of the geological medium can be estimated. In order to solve this fully non-linear problem, the so-called ‘multiplicative regularized contrast source inversion’ (MR-CSI) method is employed. The unique property of this iterative method is that it does not solve the forward problem at each iterative step. This makes it possible to use the non-linear inversion algorithm for large-scale computation problems. The numerical results show that by taking into account the non-linear nature of the problem, interpretation of the time-lapse data can be significantly improved, compared with that obtained using linear inversion.     

Dark skies action

Helen Walker and Paul Murdin report on the Royal Astronomical Society's involvement in government action to protect dark skies.