Bearing capacity of soft soil model treated with end-bearing bottom ash columns

Granular column technique is a soil improvement method used to increase the bearing capacity of a soft soil area by replacing the soil with a group of granular column materials. The by-product utilisation is a worldwide interest for sustainable infrastructure development. Bottom ash, which is a combustion deposit derived from coal burning, is a potential by-product that could be used alternatively to sand or aggregate as a green granular column material. This research is to study the potential use of the bottom ash column-improved soft clay by conducting a series of small-scale physical modelling test. The bearing capacity behaviour and failure mode of soft clay improved with end-bearing group of bottom ash columns with and without geotextile encasement are investigated. The bearing capacity of soft clay is significantly enhanced by the inclusion of bottom ash columns; that is, 239% of bearing capacity improvement is observed with only 13% of improvement area. The bulging of the bottom ash column is transferred to buckling failure with higher bearing capacity when the bottom ash column is encased by geotextile. The outcome of this research leads to the usage of bottom ash by-product as a granular column material in sustainable soil improvement technique.     

A hybrid model using machine learning methods and GIS for potential rockfall source identification from airborne laser scanning data

The main objectives of this paper are to design and evaluate a hybrid approach based on Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and random forest (RF) for detecting rockfall source areas using airborne laser scanning data. The former model was used to calculate automatically slope angle thresholds for different type of landslides such as shallow, translational, rotational, rotational-translational, complex, debris flow, and rockfalls. After calculating the slope angle thresholds, a homogenous morphometric land use area (HMLA) was constructed to improve the performance of the model computations and reduce the sensitivity of the model to the variations in different conditioning factors. After that, the support vector machine (SVM) was applied in addition to backward elimination (BE) to select and rank the conditioning factors considering the type of landslides. Then, different machine learning methods [artificial neural network (ANN), logistic regression (LR), and random forest (RF) were trained with the selected best factors and previously prepared inventory datasets. The best fit method (RF) was then used to generate the probability maps and then the source areas were detected by combining the slope raster (reclassified according to the thresholds found by the GMM model) and the probability maps. The accuracy assessment shows that the proposed hybrid model could detect the potential rockfalls with an accuracy of 0.92 based on training data and 0.96 on validation data. Overall, the proposed model is an efficient model for identifying rockfall source areas in the presence of other types of landslides with an accepted generalization performance.     

An intermediate-scale model for thermal hydrology in low-relief permafrost-affected landscapes

Integrated surface/subsurface models for simulating the thermal hydrology of permafrost-affected regions in a warming climate have recently become available, but computational demands of those new process-rich simu- lation tools have thus far limited their applications to one-dimensional or small two-dimensional simulations. We present a mixed-dimensional model structure for efficiently simulating surface/subsurface thermal hydrology in low-relief permafrost regions at watershed scales. The approach replaces a full three-dimensional system with a two-dimensional overland thermal hydrology system and a family of one-dimensional vertical columns, where each column represents a fully coupled surface/subsurface thermal hydrology system without lateral flow. The system is then operator split, sequentially updating the overland flow system without sources and the one-dimensional columns without lateral flows. We show that the app- roach is highly scalable, supports subcycling of different processes, and compares well with the corresponding fully three-dimensional representation at significantly less computational cost. Those advances enable recently developed representations of freezing soil physics to be coupled with thermal overland flow and surface energy balance at scales of 100s of meters. Although developed and demonstrated for permafrost thermal hydrology, the mixed-dimensional model structure is applicable to integrated surface/subsurface thermal hydrology in general.     

Testing Nano-Powder and Fused-Glass Mineral Reference Materials for In Situ Rb-Sr Dating of Glauconite,Phlogopite, Biotite and Feldspar via LA-ICP-MS/MS

Reference materials (RMs) with well-characterised composition are necessary for reliable quantification and quality control of isotopic analyses of geological samples. For in situ Rb-Sr analysis of silicate minerals via laser ablation inductively coupled plasma tandem mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS/MS) with a collision/reaction cell, there is a general lack of mineral-specific and matrix-matched RMs, which limits wider application of this new laser-based dating technique to certain minerals. In this work, pressed nano-powder pellets (NP) of four RMs, GL-O (glauconite), Mica-Mg (phlogopite), Mica-Fe (biotite) and FK-N (K-feldspar), were analysed and tested for in situ Rb-Sr dating, complemented by isotope dilution (ID) MC-ICP-MS Rb-Sr analyses of GL-O and Mica-Mg. In addition, we attempted to develop alternative flux-free and fused ‘mineral glasses’ from the above RMs for in situ Rb-Sr dating applications. Overall, the results of this study showed that among the above RMs only two NP (Mica-Mg-NP and GL-O-NP) were suitable and robust for in situ dating applications. These two nano-powder reference materials, Mica-Mg-NP and GL-O-NP, were thus used as primary RMs to normalise and determine Rb-Sr ages for three natural minerals: MDC phlogopite and GL-O glauconite grains, and also Mica-Fe-NP (biotite). Our in situ analyses of the above RMs yielded Rb-Sr ages that are in good agreement (within 8%) of published ages, which suggests that both Mica-Mg-NP and GL-O-NP are suitable RMs for in situ Rb-Sr dating of phlogopite, glauconite and biotite. However, using secondary RMs is recommended to monitor the quality of the obtained ages.     

Changing land use/land cover patterns and growing human population in Wular catchment of Kashmir Valley,India

GeoJournal - The profound increase in human activities and the degrading scenario in fragile ecosystems of the western Himalayas like that of Wular Lake have highlighted the need to analyze the...     

Vorticity Analysis and Deformation History of the Mizil Gneiss Dome,Eastern Arabian Shield,Saudi Arabia

The Mizil gneiss dome is an elliptical structure consisting of an amphibolite-facies volcanosedimentary mantle and a gneissic granite core. This dome is located at the northern tip of the Ar Rayn terrane only a few kilometers from the eastern edge of the Arabian shield. Previous investigations have shown the intrusive core to be an adakitic diapir with a U–Pb zircon age of 689 ± 10 Ma; this age is 50–80 Ma years older than other granites in this terrane. Vorticity analysis was carried out on samples from the intrusive core and volcanosedimentary cover; the Passchier and Rigid Grain Net (RGN) methods were used to obtain the kinematic vorticity number (W_k) and the mean kinematic vorticity number (W_m). The W_k and W_m values show a marked increase towards the south; such a pattern indicates a N-S movement of the core pluton thus creating an inclined diapir tilted to the south. Analogue experiments simulating the flow of magma diapirs rising form a subducted slab through the mantle wedge have shown that supra-subduction zone oblique diapirs are produced close to the trench and are elongated normal to the convergence direction as is the case in the Mizil pluton. This effect was found to increase with increasing slab dip due to enhanced drag along the upper surface of the subducted lithospheric plate. Spontaneous subduction which is often associated with rollback resulting in back-arc extension and steep dipping slabs is thought to have occurred in the Mozambique Ocean by 700 Ma. The Mizil pluton is coeval with the back-arc Urd ophiolite from the adjacent Dawadimi terrane, and could therefore have been produced by incipient subduction of a relatively cold slab as observed in many Pacific margin adakites. The tectonic evolution of the eastern shield, as deduced from the Mizil dome and other data from Ar Rayn and neighboring terranes, begins with the subduction of >100 My-old lithosphere beneath the Afif terrane resulting in back-arc spreading and the splitting of the Ar Rayn arc from the Afif microplate, with the concomitant production of a small volume of adakite melt. Other arc terrane(s) docked east of Ar Rayn with the westward-directed subduction still going but a lower angles and greater depth due to trench jump; this phase produced the more prevalent non-adakitic group-1 granites. A major collisional orogeny affected the entire eastern shield between 620–600 Ma and sutured the eastern shield terranes with northern Gondwana.     

Seismic hazard and probability assessment of Kashmir valley,northwest Himalaya,India

Seismic hazard analysis of the northwest Himalayan belt was carried out by using extreme value theory (EVT). The rate of seismicity (a value) and recurrence intervals with the given earthquake magnitude (b value) was calculated from the observed data using Gutenberg–Richter Law. The statistical evaluation of 12,125 events from 1902 to 2017 shows the increasing trend in their inter-arrival times. The frequency–magnitude relation exhibits a linear downslope trend with negative slope of 0.8277 and positive intercept of 4.6977. The empirical results showed that the annual risk probability of high magnitude earthquake M?≥?7.7 in 50 years is 88% with recurrence period of 47 years, probability of M?≤?7.5 in 50 years is 97% with recurrence period of 27 years, and probability of M?≤?6.5 in 50 years is 100% with recurrence period of 4 years. Kashmir valley, located in the NW Himalaya, encompasses a peculiar tectonic and structural setup. The patterns of the present and historical seismicity records of the valley suggest a long-term strain accumulation along NNW and SSE extensions with the decline in the seismic gap, posing a potential threat of earthquakes in the future. The Kashmir valley is characterized by the typical lithological, tectono-geomorphic, geotechnical, hydrogeological and socioeconomic settings that augment the earthquake vulnerability associated with the seismicity of the region. The cumulative impact of the various influencing parameters therefore exacerbates the seismic hazard risk of the valley to future earthquake events.