Subduction Initiation and Generation of the Xigaze Ophiolite, Southern Tibet

<正>The Cretaceous Xigaze ophiolite is best exposed at the central Yarlung Zangbo Suture Zone(YZSZ,Tibet)which also includes the Gangdese arc and the Xigaze forearc basin.This study reports new geochronological and geochemical data for this ophiolite to revisit its geodynamic and petrogenetic evolution.The Xigaze     

Estimating sunshine duration from other climatic data by artificial neural network for ET0 estimation in an arid environment

Sunshine duration data are desirable for calculating daily solar radiation (R _s) and subsequent reference evapotranspiration (ET₀) using the Penman–Monteith (PM) method. In the absence of measured R _s data, the Ångström equation has been recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. This equation requires actual sunshine duration that is not commonly observed at many weather stations. This paper examines the potential for the use of artificial neural networks (ANNs) to estimate sunshine duration based on air temperature and humidity data under arid environment. This is important because these data are commonly available parameters. The impact of the estimated sunshine duration on estimation of R _s and ET₀ was also conducted. The four weather stations selected for this study are located in Sistan and Baluchestan Province (southeast of Iran). The study demonstrated that modelling of sunshine duration through the use of ANN technique made acceptable estimates. Models were compared using the determination coefficient (R ²), the root mean square error (RMSE) and the mean bias error (MBE). Average R ², RMSE and MBE for the comparison between measured and estimated sunshine duration were calculated resulting 0.81, 6.3 % and 0.1 %, respectively. Our analyses also demonstrate that the difference between the measured and estimated sunshine duration has less effect on the estimated R _s and ET₀ by using Ångström and FAO-PM equations, respectively.     

Rain-fed fig yield as affected by rainfall distribution

Variable annual rainfall and its uneven distribution are the major uncontrolled inputs in rain-fed fig production and possibly the main cause of yield fluctuation in Istahban region of Fars Province, I.R. of Iran. This introduces a considerable risk in rain-fed fig production. The objective of this study was to find relationships between seasonal rainfall distribution and rain-fed fig production in Istahban region to determine the critical rainfall periods for rain-fed fig production and supplementary irrigation water application. Further, economic analysis for rain-fed fig production was considered in this region to control the risk of production. It is concluded that the monthly, seasonal and annual rainfall indices are able to show the effects of rainfall and its distribution on the rain-fed fig yield. Fig yield with frequent occurrence of 80 % is 374 kg ha^?1. The internal rates of return for interest rate of 4, 8 and 12 % are 21, 58 and 146 %, respectively, that are economically feasible. It is concluded that the rainfall in spring especially in April and in December has negatively affected fig yield due to its interference with the life cycle of Blastophaga bees for pollination. Further, it is concluded that when the rainfall is limited, supplementary irrigation can be scheduled in March.     

Wind-Flow Dynamics Over a Vineyard

Wind-flow dynamics has been extensively studied over horizontally uniform canopies, but agricultural plantations structured in rows such as vineyards have received less attention. Here, the wind flow over a vineyard is studied in neutral stratification from both large-eddy simulation (LES) and in situ measurements. The impact of row structure on the wind dynamics is investigated over a range of wind directions from cross-row to down-row, and a typical range of row aspect ratio (row separation/height ratio). It is shown that the mean flow over a vineyard is similar to that observed in uniform canopies, especially for wind directions from cross-row to diagonal. For down-row winds, the mean flow exhibits noticeable spatial variability across each elementary row-gap pattern, as the wind is channeled in the inter-row. This spatial variability increases with the aspect ratio. With down-row winds the turbulent structures are also more intermittent and generate larger turbulent kinetic energy and momentum flux. The displacement height and roughness length of the vineyard vary with the aspect ratio in a way similar to their variation with canopy density in uniform canopies. Both parameters take smaller values in down-row wind flow, for which the canopy appears more open. The analysis of velocity spectra and autocorrelation functions shows that vineyard canopies share similar features to uniform canopies in terms of turbulent coherent structures, with only minor changes with wind direction.     

Application of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making in Land Evaluation of Agricultural Land Use

The present study was carried out to evaluate agricultural capability of a watershed located in Khuzestan; a province in southern Iran. It is aimed to examine the applicability of Multi Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods in site selection process. Accordingly, the ecological resources of the watershed were initially identified. To specify the criteria required for agricultural land evaluation, Delphi method was applied. After selecting the criteria, they were weighted using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) Method. Weighted Overlay (WO) Method was also used to overlay the map layers in the GIS environment. Afterwards, sensitivity analysis was performed using Weights Sensitivity Analysis (WSA) method to show the impressibility rate of the results against a certain changes in the inputs. The results revealed that out of 6591.2 ha of the total watershed area, 50.8 % has unsuitable potentiality while 27.32 % has a poor suitability for irrigated agriculture. It was also determined that only 6.96 % of the whole study area has a suitable potential for this purpose. Besides, the findings indicated that 23.38 % of the total watershed area is unsuitable for rain-fed farming. the results also showed that 31.78 % and 19.12 % of the entire study area has moderate and high potentials for rain-fed agriculture, respectively. In a general overview, this study could present how MCDM is effective in handling land capability studies.     

Collaborative Ontology Development for the Geosciences

Ontology‐based information publishing, retrieval, reuse, and integration have become popular research topics to address the challenges involved in exchanging data between heterogeneous sources. However, in most cases ontologies are still developed in a centralized top‐down manner by a few knowledge engineers. Consequently, the role that developers play in conceptualizing a domain such as the geosciences is disproportional compared with the role of domain experts and especially potential end‐users. These and other drawbacks have stimulated the creation of new methodologies focusing around collaboration. Based on a review of existing approaches, this article presents a two‐step methodology and implementation to foster collaborative ontology engineering in the geosciences. Our approach consists of the development of a minimalistic core ontology acting as a catalyst and the creation of a virtual collaborative development cycle. Both methodology and prototypical implementation have been tested in the context of the EU‐funded ForeStClim project which addresses environmental protection with respect to forests and climate change.     

Influence of local sources on rainwater chemistry over Pune region,India

Rainwater samples were collected at five locations in the Pune region, an urban area in the south-west part of India, during 2006–2009. These locations; viz., Swargate (Traffic), Bhosari (Industrial), Pashan, Sangvi (Urban) and Sinhagad (Rural and High Altitude), represent different environments in this region. The study based on chemical analyses of these samples reveals that, on average, rainwater was alkaline at all the locations with pH values of 6.7, 6.16, 5.94, 6.04 and 5.92, respectively. Higher pH value of rainwater at the traffic location than those at the other locations is due mainly to the abundance of Ca²⁺ caused by vehicle-driven road-side dust. The maximum SO₄^2? and NO₃^? concentrations were found at Bhosari and Swargate respectively caused by local industrial and vehicular emissions. The average Fractional acidity over Pune area is 0.024, indicating about 98% acidity is neutralized by alkaline constituents. Factor analysis of the results indicated the influence of various sources, such as anthropogenic, soil dust, sea salt and biomass burning.     

An exploratory study on the use of enzyme activities as sediment tracers: biochemical fingerprints?

Little information exists on the potential of soil enzyme activities,which are sensitive to soil properties and management,for the characterization of sediment sources at the catchment scale.The objective of this study is to explore and evaluate enzyme activity as tracer for sediment fingerprinting in the Hiv catchment(55 km~2),Iran.Therefore,four enzymes were measured from 42 different sampling sites,covering three sediment source areas(rangeland/surface erosion,orchard/surface erosion,and streambank erosion),as well as from 12 sediment samples from reservoir check dams (sediment sinks).The results indicate that,based upon backward mode discriminant analysis,βglucosidase and dehydrogenase,allowed more than 95%of the samples to be correctly assigned to their source areas.These enzymes were selected as input data for a mixing-model to determine the relative contribution of the sampled sediment sources.The mean contributions from rangeland, orchard and streambank sources in the study area were estimated as 11.3%,15.1%and 73.7%, respectively.Using geochemical tracers,the mean contribution from rangeland,orchard and streambank sources was estimated as 14.1%,9.5%and 74.8%,respectively.Combined biochemical and geochemical tracers,similar values were obtained(18.7%,10.7%and 70.7%,respectively).Our results indicate that soil enzyme activity allows for a good characterization of sediment sources,and can provide a complementary tool to currently existing sediment fingerprinting approaches.However, the method should be also tested in other regions.     

Applications of cumulative absolute velocity to urban earthquake early warning systems

An early warning system forewarns an urban area of the forthcoming strong shaking, normally with a few seconds to a few tens of seconds of early warning time before the arrival of the destructive S-wave part of the strong ground motion. For urban and industrial areas susceptible to earthquake damage, where the fault rupture system is complex and the fault-site distances are short, there is usually insufficient time to compute the hypocenter, focal parameters and the magnitude of an earthquake. Therefore, simpler and robust early warning algorithm is needed. The direct (engineering) early warning systems are based on algorithms of the exceedance of specified threshold time domain amplitude levels. The continuous stations’ data are processed to compute specific engineering parameters robustly and compared with specified threshold levels. The parameters can be chosen as band-pass filtered peak ground accelerations and/or the bracketed cumulative absolute velocity (BCAV). In this paper, an enhancement to bracket cumulative absolute velocity for the application of online urban early warning systems results in a new parameter called window based bracketed cumulative absolute velocity (BCAV-W). The BCAV-W allows computation of cumulative absolute velocity in a specified window size and to include the vertical component of the motion. The importance of choosing optimum window size for the cumulative absolute velocity BCAV-W is discussed and the correlations between BCAV-W and the macro-seismic intensity are studied for three combinations of horizontal and vertical components of the motion. Empirical relationship is developed to estimate BCAV-W as a function of magnitude, distance, fault mechanism, and site category based on 1,208 recorded ground motion data from 75 earthquakes in active plate-margins.