Abundance and size of larval fishes outside the entrance to Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina

Synoptic ichthyoplankton sampling was conducted on two transects, one on either side of Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, during the winter immigration season of seven ocean-spawned, estuarine-dependent fishes;Brevoortia tyrannus (Atlantic menhaden),Leiostomus xanthurus (spot),Micropogonias undulatus (Atlantic croaker),Lagodon rhomboides (pinfish),Paralichthys albigutta (Gulf flounder),P. dentatus (summer flounder), andP. lethostigma (southern flounder). Densities and lengths of larvae were significantly different among sampling dates, with distance offshore, and between sides of the inlet. Flood-tide stage had minimal effect on larval densities and lengths except forP. albigutta andP. lethostigma. Changes in larval densities with distance offshore were not coherent among species; densities ofB. tyrammus increased offshore whereas densities of the other species decreased offshore. Average larval densities on a sampling date were coherent among species. Patterns in larval lengths were also coherent among the four non-flounder species. Larval densities outside of Beaufort Inlet were correlated with larval densities inside of Beaufort Inlet. Larval densities outside of Beaufort Inlet were also correlated with the north component of the wind, nearshore water temperature, and distance to the mid-shelf front. Differences in larval density across the inlet were significantly correlated with the east component of the wind. The patterns in larval densities outside of Beaufort Inlet were complex and apparently influenced by both the physical processes that supply larvae to the nearshore region and nearshore physical dynamics.     

Surface water resources for prehistoric peoples in western Papaguer?́a of the North American south-west

Water for personal use was a limiting factor for the prehistoric and historic indigenous peoples who inhabited the extremely arid North American region of south-western Arizona and north-western Sonora, known as Papaguer?́a. This paper lists and quantifies the perennial and intermittent water resources available to them. In the 16,824 km²study area of the Sonoran Desert, there were 128 waterholes, most of them in the mountains and, when full, these offered at least 3,099,141 l of water. At today's precipitation levels, virtually all points of the region were accessible to inhabitants within a 40 km radius of one or more water sources.     

Late Paleozoic orogeny in Alaska's Farewell terrane

Evidence is presented for a previously unrecognized late Paleozoic orogeny in two parts of Alaska's Farewell terrane, an event that has not entered into published scenarios for the assembly of Alaska. The Farewell terrane was long regarded as a piece of the early Paleozoic passive margin of western Canada, but is now thought, instead, to have lain between the Siberian and Laurentian (North American) cratons during the early Paleozoic. Evidence for a late Paleozoic orogeny comes from two belts located 100–200 km apart. In the northern belt, metamorphic rocks dated at 284–285 Ma (three ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar white-mica plateau ages) provide the main evidence for orogeny. The metamorphic rocks are interpreted as part of the hinterland of a late Paleozoic mountain belt, which we name the Browns Fork orogen. In the southern belt, thick accumulations of Pennsylvanian-Permian conglomerate and sandstone provide the main evidence for orogeny. These strata are interpreted as the eroded and deformed remnants of a late Paleozoic foreland basin, which we name the Dall Basin. We suggest that the Browns Fork orogen and Dall Basin comprise a matched pair formed during collision between the Farewell terrane and rocks to the west. The colliding object is largely buried beneath Late Cretaceous flysch to the west of the Farewell terrane, but may have included parts of the so-called Innoko terrane. The late Paleozoic convergent plate boundary represented by the Browns Fork orogen likely connected with other zones of plate convergence now located in Russia, elsewhere in Alaska, and in western Canada.     

A primer on upscaling tools for porous media

Over the last few decades a number of powerful approaches have been developed to intelligently reduce the number of degrees of freedom in very complex heterogeneous environs, e.g. mathematical homogenization, mixture and hybrid mixture theory, spatial averaging, moment methods, central limit or Martingale methods, stochastic-convective approaches, various other Eulerian and Lagrangian perturbation schemes, projection operators, renormalization group techniques, variational approaches, space transformational methods, continuous time random walks, and etc. In this article we briefly review many of these approaches as applied to specific examples in the hydrologic sciences.     

A New Magnetically Active Binary System Discovered in Yunnan-Hong Kong Wide Field Survey

We present a newly discovered magnetically active binary system detected by Yunnan-Hong Kong wide field survey, with an orbital period of 0.60286 days. Two color photometry for the system was performed using the 1 m Cassegrain telescope of Yunnan Observatories with its CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) camera. In the observed light curves, there are clearly different light maxima existed in the out-of-eclipse regions. We made spectroscopic observations for the binary system using the 2.4 m telescope and YFOSC (Yunnan Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera) of Lijiang station of Yunnan Observatories, China. The radial velocity curve was derived for primary star of the binary system. The primary star exhibited strong chromospheric activity, which confirms that the distortion of the light curves results from the starspot activity on the primary star. Through analyzing the light curves and RV (Radial Velocity) curve mentioned above by means of the W-D (Wilson-Devinney) code, orbital parameters and starspot configuration of the binary system are obtained. Finally, we have discussed the properties of the binary system, and given the prospects on the future work.     

A comparison of biological trends from four marine ecosystems: Synchronies, differences, and commonalities

Major features of four marine ecosystems were analyzed based on a broad range of fisheries-associated datasets and a suite of oceanographic surveys. The ecosystems analyzed included the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, the Norwegian/Barents Seas in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, and the eastern Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. We examined survey trends in major fish abundances, total system fish biomass, and zooplankton biomasses. We standardized each time series and examined trends and anomalies over time, using both time series and cross-correlational statistical methods. We compared dynamics of functionally analogous species from each of these four ecosystems. Major commonalities among ecosystems included a relatively stable amount of total fish biomass and the importance of large calanoid copepods, small pelagic fishes and gadids. Some of the changes in these components were synchronous across ecosystems. Major differences between ecosystems included gradients in the magnitude of total fish biomass, commercial fish biomass, and the timing of major detected events. This work demonstrates the value of comparative analysis across a wide range of marine ecosystems, suggestive of very few but none-the-less detectable common features across all northern hemisphere ocean systems.     

Recent climate forcing and physical oceanographic changes in Northern Hemisphere regions: A review and comparison of four marine ecosystems

As part of a project comparing the structure and function of four marine ecosystems off Norway and the United States, this paper examines the oceanographic responses to climate forcing, with emphasis on recent changes. The four Northern Hemisphere ecosystems include two in the Pacific Ocean (Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska) and two in the Atlantic Ocean (Georges Bank/Gulf of Maine and the Barents/Norwegian Seas). Air temperatures, wind forcing and heat fluxes over the four regions are compared as well as ocean hydrography and sea-ice conditions where seasonal sea ice is found. The long-term interannual variability in air temperatures, winds and net heat fluxes show strong similarity between adjacent ecosystems and within subregions of an ecosystem, but no significant correlations between Pacific and Atlantic ecosystems and few across the Atlantic. In spite of the lack of correlation between climate forcing and ocean conditions between most of the ecosystems, recent years have seen record or near record highs in air and sea temperatures in all ecosystems. The apparent causes of the warming differ. In the Atlantic, they appear to be due to advection, while in the Pacific temperatures are more closely linked to air-sea heat exchanges. Advection is also responsible for the observed changes in salinity in the Atlantic ecosystems (generally increasing salinity in the Barents and Norwegian Seas and decreasing in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank) while salinity changes in the Gulf of Alaska are largely related to increased local runoff.     

Geographical accessibility and Kentucky's heart-related hospital services

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a leading cause of mortality in the US. Rates of mortality vary spatially and demographically, influenced not only by individual patient characteristics but also by levels of accessibility to hospital services and facilities. In 2000, Kentucky ranked third in the nation for heart-related deaths. The purpose of this paper is to assess geographical accessibility and service utilization related to ambulatory care sensitive CVDs in Kentucky. This study utilizes the Kentucky Hospital Discharge Database to evaluate service utilization and the Compressed Mortality File to examine mortality related to CVDs. A spatial statistical comparison of the geographical distribution of service usage and travel time to hospitals assists in assessing the relationship between accessibility and health. Our findings suggest that the distribution of utilization and mortality is geographically variable. People living in rural areas travel further to services; populations residing more than 45 min from health facilities are more likely to be socially and economically marginalized. Spatial clustering of high rates of hospital utilization occurs in areas with lower accessibility.     

Integration of Tracer Test Data to Refine Geostatistical Hydraulic Conductivity Fields Using Sequential Self-Calibration Method

On the basis of local measurements of hydraulic conductivity,geostatistical methods have been found to be useful in heterogeneity characterization of a hydraulic conductivity field on a regional scale. However,the methods are not suited to directly integrate dynamic production data,such as,hydraulic head and solute concentration,into the study of conductivity distribution. These data,which record the flow and transport processes in the medium,are closely related to the spatial distribution of hydraulic conductivity. In this study,a three-dimensional gradient-based inverse method-the sequential self-calibration (SSC) method-is developed to calibrate a hydraulic conductivity field,initially generated by a geostatistical simulation method,conditioned on tracer test results. The SSC method can honor both local hydraulic conductivity measurements and tracer test data. The mismatch between the simulated hydraulic conductivity field and the reference true one,measured by its mean square error (MSE),is reduced through the SSC conditional study. In comparison with the unconditional results,the SSC conditional study creates the mean breakthrough curve much closer to the reference true curve,and significantly reduces the prediction uncertainty of the solute transport in the observed locations. Further,the reduction of uncertainty is spatially dependent,which indicates that good locations,geological structure,and boundary conditions will affect the efficiency of the SSC study results.     

Assessment of radionuclide transport uncertainty in the unsaturated zone of Yucca Mountain

The present study assesses the uncertainty of flow and radionuclide transport in the unsaturated zone at Yucca Mountain using a Monte Carlo method. Matrix permeability, porosity, and sorption coefficient are considered random. Different from previous studies that assume distributions of the parameters, the distributions are determined in this study by applying comprehensive transformations and rigorous statistics to on-site measurements of the parameters. The distribution of permeability is further adjusted based on model calibration results. Correlation between matrix permeability and porosity is incorporated using the Latin Hypercube Sampling method. After conducting 200 Monte Carlo simulations of three-dimensional unsaturated flow and radionuclide transport for conservative and reactive tracers, the mean, variances, and 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles for quantities of interest (e.g., matrix liquid saturation and water potential) are evaluated. The mean and 50th percentile are used as the mean predictions, and their associated predictive uncertainties are measured by the variances and the 5th and 95th percentiles (also known as uncertainty bounds). The mean predictions of matrix liquid saturation and water potential are in reasonable agreement with corresponding measurements. The uncertainty bounds include a large portion of the measurements, suggesting that the data variability can be partially explained by parameter uncertainty. The study illustrates propagation of predictive uncertainty of percolation flux, increasing downward from repository horizon to water table. Statistics from the breakthrough curves indicate that transport of the reactive tracer is delayed significantly by the sorption process, and prediction on the reactive tracer is of greater uncertainty than on the conservative tracer because randomness in the sorption coefficient increases the prediction uncertainty. Uncertainty in radionuclide transport is related to uncertainty in the percolation flux, suggesting that reducing the former entails reduction in the latter.