Geochronology,stratigraphy and geochemistry of Cambro-Ordovician,Silurian and Devonian volcanic rocks of the Saxothuringian Zone in NE Bavaria (Germany)—new constraints for Gondwana break up and ocean–island magmatism

International Journal of Earth Sciences - Stratigraphically well-defined volcanic rocks in Palaeozoic volcano-sedimentary units of the Frankenwald area (Saxothuringian Zone, Variscan Orogen) were...     

Hot Spots of Nitrification in the Elbe Estuary and Their Impact on Nitrate Regeneration

Estuaries act as an organic matter and nutrient filter in the transition between the land, rivers and the ocean. In the past, high nutrient and organic carbon load and low oxygen concentration made the Elbe River estuary (NW Europe) a sink for dissolved inorganic nitrogen. A recent reduction in loads and subsequent recovery of the estuary changed its biogeochemical function, so that nitrate is no longer removed on its transition towards the coastal North Sea. Nowadays in the estuary, nitrification appears to be a significant nitrate source. To quantify nitrification and determine actively nitrifying regions in the estuary, we measured the concentrations of ammonium, nitrite and nitrate, the dual stable isotopes of nitrate and net nitrification rates in the estuary on five cruises from August 2012 to August 2013. The nitrate concentration increased markedly downstream of the port of Hamburg in summer and spring, accompanied by a decrease of nitrate isotope values that was clearest in summer exactly at the location where nitrate concentration started to increase. Ammonium and nitrite peaked in the Hamburg port region (up to 18 and 8 μmol L^?1, respectively), and nitrification rates in this region were up to 7 μmol L^?1 day^?1. Our data show that coupled re-mineralization and nitrification are significant internal nitrate sources that almost double the estuary’s summer nitrate concentration. Furthermore, we find that the port of Hamburg is a hot spot of nitrification, whereas the maximum turbidity zone (MTZ) only plays a subordinate role in turnover of nitrate.     

Potential Salinity and Temperature Futures for the Chesapeake Bay Using a Statistical Downscaling Spatial Disaggregation Framework

Estuaries are productive and ecologically important ecosystems, incorporating environmental drivers from watersheds, rivers, and the coastal ocean. Climate change has potential to modify the physical properties of estuaries, with impacts on resident organisms. However, projections from general circulation models (GCMs) are generally too coarse to resolve important estuarine processes. Here, we statistically downscaled near-surface air temperature and precipitation projections to the scale of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and estuary. These variables were linked to Susquehanna River streamflow using a water balance model and finally to spatially resolved Chesapeake Bay surface temperature and salinity using statistical model trees. The low computational cost of this approach allowed rapid assessment of projected changes from four GCMs spanning a range of potential futures under a high CO₂ emission scenario, for four different downscaling methods. Choice of GCM contributed strongly to the spread in projections, but choice of downscaling method was also influential in the warmest models. Models projected a ~2–5.5 °C increase in surface water temperatures in the Chesapeake Bay by the end of the century. Projections of salinity were more uncertain and spatially complex. Models showing increases in winter-spring streamflow generated freshening in the Upper Bay and tributaries, while models with decreased streamflow produced salinity increases. Changes to the Chesapeake Bay environment have implications for fish and invertebrate habitats, as well as migration, spawning phenology, recruitment, and occurrence of pathogens. Our results underline a potentially expanded role of statistical downscaling to complement dynamical approaches in assessing climate change impacts in dynamically challenging estuaries.     

The Oeschinensee rock avalanche,Bernese Alps,Switzerland: a co-seismic failure 2300 years ago?

Landslide deposits dam Lake Oeschinen (Oeschinensee), located above Kandersteg, Switzerland. However, past confusion differentiating deposits of multiple landslide events has confounded efforts to quantify the volume, age, and failure dynamics of the Oeschinensee rock avalanche. Here we combine field and remote mapping, topographic reconstruction, cosmogenic surface exposure dating, and numerical runout modeling to quantify salient parameters of the event. Differences in boulder lithology and deposit morphology reveal that the landslide body damming Oeschinensee consists of debris from both an older rock avalanche, possibly Kandertal, as well as the Oeschinensee rock avalanche. We distinguish a source volume for the Oeschinensee event of 37 Mm³, resulting in an estimated deposit volume of 46 Mm³, smaller than previous estimates that included portions of the Kandertal mass. Runout modeling revealed peak and average rock avalanche velocities of 65 and 45 m/s, respectively, and support a single-event failure scenario. ³⁶Cl surface exposure dating of deposited boulders indicates a mean age for the rock avalanche of 2.3 ± 0.2 kyr. This age coincides with the timing of a paleo-seismic event identified from lacustrine sediments in Swiss lakes, suggesting an earthquake trigger. Our results help clarify the hazard and geomorphic effects of rare, large rock avalanches in alpine settings.     

Extreme waves induced by cyclone Nargis at Myanmar coast: numerical modeling versus satellite observations

Natural Hazards - The deltaic coast of Myanmar was severely hit by tropical cyclone Nargis in May 2008. In the present study, a top-down numerical simulation approach using the Weather Research and...     

Community-based responses to climate hazards: typology and global analysis

Climatic Change - The severity and frequency of climate change hazards are increasing around the world. Because the impacts are most acutely felt in local communities, it is critical to improve...     

Using Statistical Downscaling to Quantify the GCM-Related Uncertainty in Regional Climate Change Scenarios： A Case Study of Swedish Precipitation

There are a number of sources of uncertainty in regional climate change scenarios. When statistical downscaling is used to obtain regional climate change scenarios, the uncertainty may originate from the uncertainties in the global climate models used, the skill of the statistical model, and the forcing scenarios applied to the global climate model. The uncertainty associated with global climate models can be evaluated by examining the differences in the predictors and in the downscaled climate change scenarios based on a set of different global climate models. When standardized global climate model simulations such as the second phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project （CMIP2） are used, the difference in the downscaled variables mainly reflects differences in the climate models and the natural variability in the simulated climates. It is proposed that the spread of the estimates can be taken as a measure of the uncertainty associated with global climate models. The proposed method is applied to the estimation of global-climate-model-related uncertainty in regional precipitation change scenarios in Sweden. Results from statistical downscaling based on 17 global climate models show that there is an overall increase in annual precipitation all over Sweden although a considerable spread of the changes in the precipitation exists. The general increase can be attributed to the increased large-scale precipitation and the enhanced westerly wind. The estimated uncertainty is nearly independent of region. However, there is a seasonal dependence. The estimates for winter show the highest level of confidence, while the estimates for summer show the least.     

Boosting for Mineral Prospectivity Modeling: A New GIS Toolbox

With an increasing demand for raw materials, predictive models that support successful mineral exploration targeting are of great importance. We evaluated different machine learning techniques with an emphasis on boosting algorithms and implemented them in an ArcGIS toolbox. Performance was tested on an exploration dataset from the Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) with respect to accuracy, performance, stability, and robustness. Boosting algorithms are ensemble methods used in supervised learning for regression and classification. They combine weak classifiers, i.e., classifiers that perform slightly better than random guessing to obtain robust classifiers. Each time a weak learner is added; the learning set is reweighted to give more importance to misclassified samples. Our test area, the IPB, is one of the oldest mining districts in the world and hosts giant volcanic-hosted massive sulfide (VMS) deposits. The spatial density of ore deposits, as well as the size and tonnage, makes the area unique, and due to the high data availability and number of known deposits, well-suited for testing machine learning algorithms. We combined several geophysical datasets, as well as layers derived from geological maps as predictors of the presence or absence of VMS deposits. Boosting algorithms such as BrownBoost and Adaboost were tested and compared to Logistic Regression (LR), Random Forests (RF) and Support Vector machines (SVM) in several experiments. We found performance results relatively similar, especially to BrownBoost, which slightly outperformed LR and SVM with respective accuracies of 0.96 compared to 0.89 and 0.93. Data augmentation by perturbing deposit location led to a 7% improvement in results. Variations in the split ratio of training and test data led to a reduction in the accuracy of the prediction result with relative stability occurring at a critical point at around 26 training samples out of 130 total samples. When lower numbers of training data were introduced accuracy dropped significantly. In comparison with other machine learning methods, Adaboost is user-friendly due to relatively short training and prediction times, the low likelihood of overfitting and the reduced number of hyperparameters for optimization. Boosting algorithms gave high predictive accuracies, making them a potential data-driven alternative for regional scale and/or brownfields mineral exploration.

     

Variation in style of magmatism and emplacement mechanism induced by changes in basin environments and stress fields (Pannonian Basin,Central Europe)

The development of high‐resolution 3D seismic cubes has permitted recognition of variable subvolcanic features mostly located in passive continental margins. Our study area is situated in a different tectonic setting, in the extensional Pannonian Basin system (central Europe) where the lithospheric extension was associated with a wide variety of magmatic suites during the Miocene. Our primary objective is to map the buried magmatic bodies, to better understand the temporal and spatial variation in the style of magmatism and emplacement mechanism within the first order Mid‐Hungarian Fault Zone (MHFZ) along which the substantial Miocene displacement took place. The combination of seismic, borehole and log data interpretation enabled us to delineate various previously unknown subvolcanic‐volcanic features. In addition, a new approach of neural network analysis on log data was applied to detect and quantitatively characterise hydrothermal mounds that are hard to interpret solely from seismic data. The volcanic activity started in the Middle Miocene and induced the development of extrusive volcanic mounds south of the NE‐SW trending, continuous strike‐slip fault zone (Hajdú Fault Zone). In the earliest Late Miocene (11.6–9.78 Ma), the style of magmatic activity changed resulting in emplacement of intrusions and development of hydrothermal mounds. Sill emplacement occurred from south‐east to north‐west based on primary flow‐emplacement structures. The time of sill emplacement and the development of hydrothermal mounds can be bracketed by onlapped forced folds and mounds. This time coincided with the acceleration of sedimentation producing poorly consolidated, water‐saturated sediments preventing magma from flowing to the paleosurface. The change in extensional direction resulted in change in fault pattern, thus the formerly continuous basin‐bounding strike‐slip fault became segmented which could facilitate the magma flow toward the basin centre.