Submarine landslides at the eastern Sunda margin: observations and tsunami impact assessment

Our analysis of new bathymetric data reveals six submarine landslides at the eastern Sunda margin between central Java and Sumba Island, Indonesia. Their volumes range between 1 km3 in the Java fore-arc basin up to 20 km3 at the trench off Sumba and Sumbawa. We estimate the potential hazard of each event by modeling the corresponding tsunami and its run-up on nearby coasts. Four slides are situated remarkably close to the epicenter of the 1977 tsunamigenic Sumba M _w  = 8.3 earthquake. However, comparison of documented tsunami run-up heights and arrival times with our modeling results neither allows us to confirm nor can we falsify the hypothesis that the earthquake triggered these submarine landslides.     

Murchison's first sighting of the Permian, at Vyazniki in 1841

Roderick Impey Murchison named the Permian Period in 1841 based on his work on Lower Permian marine sediments around the city of Perm’, on the west flank of the Ural Mountains. However, he had observed post-Carboniferous red beds earlier, around the town of Vyazniki, west of Moscow, lying above the classic Carboniferous limestones of the Moscow Basin. Murchison's notebooks and papers show that he and colleagues equivocated about the exact age of these red beds, whether latest Permian or early Triassic, but he always favoured the former view. So, his initial observation of the Vyazniki redbeds provided a marker for the top of the Permian and base of the Triassic in the European Russian platform.     

On the role of diffractions in velocity model building: a full-waveform inversion example

Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica - Imaging of small-scale heterogeneities is important for the geological exploration in complex environments. It requires a processing sequence tuned to...     

Stability Analysis of the Climate-Vegetation System in the Northern High Latitudes

The stability of the climate-vegetation system in the northern high latitudesis analysed with three climate system models of different complexity: A comprehensive 3-dimensional model of the climate system, GENESIS-IBIS, and two Earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs), CLIMBER-2 andMoBidiC. The biogeophysical feedback in the latitudinal belt 60–70° N, although positive, is not strong enough to support multiple steady states: A unique equilibriumin the climate-vegetation system is simulated by all the models on a zonal scale for present-day climate and doubled CO₂ climate.EMIC simulations with decreased insolation also reveal a unique steady state. However, the climate sensitivity to tree cover, T_F, exhibits non-linear behaviour within the models. For GENESIS-IBIS and CLIMBER-2, T_F islower for doubled CO₂ climate than for present-day climate due to a shorter snow season and increased relative significance ofthe hydrological effect of forest cover. For the EMICs, T_F is higher for low tree fraction than for high treefraction, mainly due to a time shift in spring snow melt in response to changes in tree cover. The climate sensitivity to tree coveris reduced when thermohaline circulation feedbacks are accounted for in the EMIC simulations. Simpler parameterizations of oceanic processes have opposite effects on T_F: T_F is lower in simulations with fixed SSTs and higher in simulations with mixed layer oceans. Experiments with transient CO₂ forcing show climate and vegetation not in equilibrium in the northern high latitudes at the end of the 20thcentury. The delayed response of vegetation and accelerated global warming lead to rather abrupt changes in northern vegetation cover in the first halfof the 21st century, when vegetation cover changes at double the present day rate.     

Study of variable stars associated with maser sources: G025.65+1.05

We report variation of K-band infrared(IR) emission in the vicinity of the G025.65+1.05 water and methanol maser source. New observational data were obtained with the 2.5 m telescope at the Caucasian Mountain Observatory(CMO) of Moscow State University on 2017–09–21 during a strong water maser flare. We found that the IR source situated close to the maser position had decreased brightness in comparison to archive data. This source is associated with a massive young stellar object(MYSO) corresponding to the compact IR source IRAS 18316–0602(RAFGL 7009 S). A similar decrease in K-brightness of the IR source close to the maser position was observed in March 2011 when the water maser experienced a period of increased activity. The dips in MYSO brightness can be related to the maser flare phases. Maser flares that are concurrent with dips in the IR emission can be explained if the lower IR radiation field enables a more efficient sink for the pumping cycle by allowing IR photons to escape the maser region.     

Ecosystem structure and resilience—A comparison between the Norwegian and the Barents Sea

Abundance and biomass of the most important fish species inhabited the Barents and Norwegian Sea ecosystems have shown considerable fluctuations over the last decades. These fluctuations connected with fishing pressure resulted in the trophic structure alterations of the ecosystems. Resilience and other theoretical concepts (top-down, wasp-waste and bottom-up control, trophic cascades) were viewed to examine different response of the Norwegian and Barents Sea ecosystems on disturbing forces. Differences in the trophic structure and functioning of Barents and Norwegian Sea ecosystems as well as factors that might influence the resilience of the marine ecosystems, including climatic fluctuation, variations in prey and predator species abundance, alterations in their regular migrations, and fishing exploitation were also considered. The trophic chain lengths in the deep Norwegian Sea are shorter, and energy transfer occurs mainly through the pelagic fish/invertebrates communities. The shallow Barents Sea is characterized by longer trophic chains, providing more energy flow into their benthic assemblages. The trophic mechanisms observed in the Norwegian Sea food webs dominated by the top-down control, i.e. the past removal of Norwegian Spring spawning followed by zooplankton development and intrusion of blue whiting and mackerel into the area. The wasp-waist response is shown to be the most pronounced effect in the Barents Sea, related to the position of capelin in the ecosystem; large fluctuations in the capelin abundance have been strengthened by intensive fishery. Closer links between ecological and fisheries sciences are needed to elaborate and test various food webs and multispecies models available.     

Relaxation time distribution from time domain induced polarization measurements

We propose an algorithm for inverting time domain induced polarization data to a relaxation time distribution. The algorithm is based on the (Tikhonov) regularized solution of the 1^st kind Fredholm integral equation. We test the algorithm on synthetic data, and show its robustness for a noise level, typical of laboratory time domain measurements. We also show that, for the inversion purpose, the time domain data must be obtained with the different current wavelengths. We then test the algorithm on the experimental data recently obtained on brine-saturated medium-grained quartz sand (average grain diameter of 4 × 10⁻⁴ m), and on sand mixtures. For the medium-grained sand, relaxation time distribution contains a main peak at 25 s. Different amounts (3%, 8% and 12%) of fine-grained quartz sand (average grain diameter of 1.12 × 10⁻⁴ m) were added to the medium-grained quartz sand. For the sand mixture, an additional peak is observed in the relaxation time distributions, in the time range from 1.0 to 2.5 s. The magnitude of the second peak increases with the increase of the fine-grained sand content. Therefore, the experimental data show that peaks in the relaxation time distributions are related to the grain size. On the basis of the known peak location, and of the known grain size value, we obtained the values of the diffusion coefficient, which were found to be of the same order of magnitude as those in the bulk solution.     

Effects of substrate structure and composition on the structure, dynamics, and energetics of water at mineral surfaces: A molecular dynamics modeling study

Molecular dynamics computer simulations of the molecular structure, diffusive dynamics and hydration energetics of water adsorbed on (0 0 1) surfaces of brucite Mg(OH)₂, gibbsite Al(OH)₃, hydrotalcite Mg₂Al(OH)₆Cl · 2H₂O, muscovite KAl₂(Si₃Al)O₁₀(OH)₂, and talc Mg₃Si₄O₁₀(OH)₂ provide new insight into the relationships between the substrate structure and composition and the molecular-scale structure and properties of the interfacial water. For the three hydroxide phases studied here, the differences in the structural charge on the octahedral sheet, cation occupancies and distributions, and the orientations of OH groups all affect the surface water structure. The density profiles of water molecules perpendicular to the surface are very similar, due to the prevalent importance of H-bonding between the surface and the water and to their similar layered crystal structures. However, the predominant orientations of the surface water molecules and the detailed two-dimensional near-surface structure are quite different. The atomic density profiles and other structural characteristics of water at the two sheet silicate surfaces are very different, because the talc (0 0 1) surface is hydrophobic whereas the muscovite (0 0 1) surface is hydrophilic. At the hydrophilic and electrostatically neutral brucite and gibbsite (0 0 1) surfaces, both donating and accepting H-bonds from the H₂O molecules are important for the development of a continuous hydrogen bonding network across the interfacial region. For the hydrophilic but charged hydrotalcite and muscovite (0 0 1) surfaces, only accepting or donating H-bonds from the water molecules contribute to the formation of the H-bonding network at the negatively and positively charged interfaces, respectively. For the hydrophobic talc (0 0 1) surface, H-bonds between water molecules and the surface sites are very weak, and the H-bonds among H₂O molecules dominate the interfacial H-bonding network. For all the systems studied, the orientation of the interfacial water molecules in the first few layers is influenced by both the substrate surface charge and the ability by the surfaces to facilitate H-bond formation. The first layer of water molecules at all surfaces is well ordered in the xy plane (parallel to the surface) and the atomic density distributions reflect the substrate crystal structure. The enhanced ordering of water molecules at the interfaces indicates reduced orientational and translational entropy. In thin films, water molecules are more mobile parallel to the surface than perpendicular to it due to spatial constraints. At neutral, hydrophilic substrates, single-monolayer surface coverage stabilizes the adsorbed water molecules and results in a minimum of the surface hydration energy. In contrast, at the charged and hydrophilic muscovite surface, the hydration energy increases monotonically with increasing water coverage over the range of coverages studied. At the neutral and hydrophobic talc surface, the adsorption of H₂O is unfavorable at all surface coverages, and the hydration energy decreases monotonically with increasing coverage.