Exceptional preservation of Upper Carboniferous (lower Westphalian) fossils from Edlington,Doncaster, South Yorkshire,UK

A new fossil‐bearing, Upper Carboniferous (lower Westphalian) locality in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, UK, is reported and an account of the fossils is presented. The diverse flora and fauna consists of plants, bivalves, arthropods (primarily xiphosurans), tentaculitids (microconchids), fish scales, shark egg capsules and coprolites. Fossils are preserved in siderite nodules and shales, and display excellent preservation and detail. Previous collecting of Carboniferous fossils in the Doncaster area has been minimal. The discovery of this locality addresses this deficit and is of further importance as such localities in the UK are diminishing in number with the cessation of coal‐mining and the reclamation of mine dumps, further demonstrating the importance and recognition of the Edlington site. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managing Bay and Estuarine Ecosystems for Multiple Services

Managers are moving from a model of managing individual sectors, human activities, or ecosystem services to an ecosystem-based management (EBM) approach which attempts to balance the range of services provided by ecosystems. Applying EBM is often difficult due to inherent tradeoffs in managing for different services. This challenge particularly holds for estuarine systems, which have been heavily altered in most regions and are often subject to intense management interventions. Estuarine managers can often choose among a range of management tactics to enhance a particular service; although some management actions will result in strong tradeoffs, others may enhance multiple services simultaneously. Management of estuarine ecosystems could be improved by distinguishing between optimal management actions for enhancing multiple services and those that have severe tradeoffs. This requires a framework that evaluates tradeoff scenarios and identifies management actions likely to benefit multiple services. We created a management action-services matrix as a first step towards assessing tradeoffs and providing managers with a decision support tool. We found that management actions that restored or enhanced natural vegetation (e.g., salt marsh and mangroves) and some shellfish (particularly oysters and oyster reef habitat) benefited multiple services. In contrast, management actions such as desalination, salt pond creation, sand mining, and large container shipping had large net negative effects on several of the other services considered in the matrix. Our framework provides resource managers a simple way to inform EBM decisions and can also be used as a first step in more sophisticated approaches that model service delivery.     

基于切片技术的激光点云粗差探测

借鉴数据挖掘领域内的离群点探测技术,提出适合于海量点云数据的、基于切片技术的粗差探测算法,该算法将三维点云经过切片降为二维点,有效解决了三维环境下邻域搜索和粗差指标计算效率低下的问题,使算法整体效率和易用性得以显著提高.     

A high-quality monthly total cloud amount dataset for Australia

A high-quality monthly total cloud amount dataset for 165 stations has been developed for monitoring and assessing long-term trends in cloud cover over Australia. The dataset is based on visual 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. observations of total cloud amount, with most records starting around 1957. The quality control process involved examination of historical station metadata, together with an objective statistical test comparing candidate and reference cloud series. Individual cloud series were also compared against rainfall and diurnal temperature range series from the same site, and individual cloud series from neighboring sites. Adjustments for inhomogeneities caused by relocations and changes in observers were applied, as well as adjustments for biases caused by the shift to daylight saving time in the summer months. Analysis of these data reveals that the Australian mean annual total cloud amount is characterised by high year-to-year variability and shows a weak, statistically non-significant increase over the 1957–2007 period. A more pronounced, but also non-significant, decrease from 1977 to 2007 is evident. A strong positive correlation is found between all-Australian averages of cloud amount and rainfall, while a strong negative correlation is found between mean cloud amount and diurnal temperature range. Patterns of annual and seasonal trends in cloud amount are in general agreement with rainfall changes across Australia, however the high-quality cloud network is too coarse to fully capture topographic influences. Nevertheless, the broadscale consistency between patterns of cloud and rainfall variations indicates that the new total cloud amount dataset is able to adequately describe the broadscale patterns of change over Australia. Favourable simple comparisons between surface and satellite measures of cloudiness suggest that satellites may ultimately provide the means for monitoring long-term changes in cloud over Australia. However, due to the relative shortness and homogeneity problems of the satellite record, a robust network of surface cloud observations will be required for many years to come.     

Response of a mid‐latitude cirque glacier to climate over the last two decades: Mangaehuehu Glacier,Mt Ruapehu

The recent loss of mountain glaciers in response to climate warming has been reported across a range of latitudes globally, but the processes involved are not always straightforward. In southern Pacific mid‐latitudes, twentieth‐century glacier fluctuations are thought to reflect the strength of westerly atmospheric circulation, which brings increased precipitation, leading to mass gains. We present a study of the response of Mangaehuehu Glacier, a cirque glacier on Mt Ruapehu, to climate over the last two decades. Glacier surface area fluctuated in size over this period, corresponding closely with mean end‐of‐summer snowlines in the Southern Alps. The key control on glacier extent appears to be ablation season temperature, itself controlled by regional atmospheric circulation, including El Niño‐Southern Oscillation, Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), and to a lesser extent, Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trophic cascades and future harmful algal blooms within ice-free Arctic Seas north of Bering Strait: A simulation analysis

Within larger ice-free regions of the western Arctic Seas, subject to ongoing trophic cascades induced by past overfishing, as well as to possible future eutrophication of the drainage basins of the Yukon and Mackenzie Rivers, prior very toxic harmful algal blooms (HABs) – first associated with ∼100 human deaths near Sitka, Alaska in 1799 – may soon expand. Blooms of calcareous coccolithophores in the Bering Sea during 1997–1998 were non-toxic harbingers of the subsequent increments of other non-siliceous phytoplankton. But, now saxitoxic dinoflagellates, e.g. Alexandrium tamarense, were instead found by us within the adjacent downstream Chukchi Sea during SBI cruises of 2002 and 2003. A previous complex, coupled biophysical model had been validated earlier by ship-board observations from the Chukchi/Beaufort Seas during the summer of 2002. With inclusion of phosphorus as another chemical state variable to modulate additional competition by recently observed nitrogen-fixers, we now explore here the possible consequences of altered composition of dominant phytoplankton functional groups [diatoms, microflagellates, prymnesiophyte Phaeocystis colonies, coccolithophores, diazotrophs, and dinoflagellates] in relation to increases of the toxic A. tamarense, responding to relaxation of grazing pressure by herbivores north of Bering Strait as part of a continuing trophic cascade. Model formulation was guided by validation observations obtained during 2002–2004 from: cruises of the SBI, CHINARE, and CASES programs; moored arrays in Bering Strait; other RUSALCA cruises around Wrangel Island; and SBI helicopter surveys of the shelf-break regions of the Arctic basin. Our year-long model scenarios during 2002–2003 indicate that post bloom silica-limitation of diatoms, after smaller simulated spring grazing losses, led to subsequent competitive advantages in summer for the coccolithophores, dinoflagellates, and diazotrophs. Immediate top-down control is exerted by imposed grazing pressures of the model’s herbivores and bottom-up control is also effected by light-, nitrate-, ammonium-, silicate-, and phosphate-modulated competition among the six functional groups of the simulated phytoplankton community. Similar to the history of the southern North Sea adjacent to the Rhine River, possible farming of northwestern Alaska and Canada, in conjunction with other human activities of ice retreat and overfishing, may lead to future exacerbations of poisonous phytoplankton. These potential killers include both toxic dinoflagellate and diazotroph HABs, deadly to terrestrial and marine mammals, as well as those of prymnesiophytes, some of which have already foamed beaches, while others have killed fishes of European waters.     

Evaluation and error analysis: Kalman gain regularization versus covariance regularization

Ensemble size is critical to the efficiency and performance of the ensemble Kalman filter, but when the ensemble size is small, the Kalman gain generally cannot be well estimated. To reduce the negative effect of spurious correlations, a regularization process applied on either the covariance or the Kalman gain seems to be necessary. In this paper, we evaluate and compare the estimation errors when two regularization methods including the distance-dependent localization and the bootstrap-based screening are applied on the covariance and on the Kalman gain. The investigations were carried out through two examples: 1D linear problem without dynamics but for which the true Kalman gain can be computed and a 2D highly nonlinear reservoir fluid flow problem. The investigation resulted in three primary conclusions. First, if localizations of two covariance matrices are not consistent, the estimate of the Kalman gain will generally be poor at the observation location. The consistency condition can be difficult to apply for nonlocal observations. Second, the estimate of the Kalman gain that results from covariance regularization is generally subject to greater errors than the estimate of the Kalman gain that results from Kalman gain regularization. Third, in terms of removing spurious correlations in the estimation of spatially correlated variables, the performance of screening Kalman gain is comparable as the performance of localization methods (applied on either covariance or Kalman gain), but screening Kalman gain outperforms the localization methods in terms of generality for application, as the screening method can be used for estimating both spatially correlated and uncorrelated variables, and moreover, no assumption about the prior covariance is required for the screening method.