Premiers résultats d'une étude géophysique sur le flanc nord des glissements de Storegga (Norvège)

The Storegga slides, off Norway, are among the largest submarine slides ever known on a continental slope. The HYDRATECH cruise on N/O Le Suroît aimed at a high-resolution survey of an area at the northern boundary of the slides. This survey images in great detail the bottom simulating reflector (BSR) extent and properties, the various fluid escape structures and the sediment deformations. The combination and the quality of the data help to understand the still poorly constrained relationships between fluid escapes, gas hydrates and slope stability in the survey area. To cite this article: H. Nouzé et al., C. R. Geoscience 336 (2004).     

A Canadian haze climatology

Maps of annual average haze frequencies for Canada show maxima in southwestern Ontario and around Sudbury, with a smaller maximum in the Vancouver area. Small maxima also exist in the Maritimes during summer and over the western Prairies in winter. The principal cause of these maxima appears to be the man-made emissions in and upwind of these areas. There are significant variations from summer to winter, both in time and space. In particular, there has been an increase in summer haziness in Ontario, southern Quebec and the Maritimes, and a general decrease in winter haziness in all regions, during the last twenty years.     

Turbulence spectra of CO2, water vapor,temperature and wind velocity fluctuations over a crop surface

A prototype rapid-response CO₂ sensor was used in conjunction with a Lyman-alpha hygrometer, fine-wire thermocouples and a three-dimensional drag anemometer to measure CO₂, humidity, temperature and wind velocity fluctuations. Measurements were made over a soybean crop grown on relatively flat terrain near Mead, Nebraska.Temperature, humidity and CO₂ spectra measured under near neutral conditions were most similar in shape while longitudinal velocity (U) spectra appeared to be somewhat broader. Peaks occurred around f = 0.02 to 0.06 (where f is the non-dimensional frequency) in all spectra except for vertical velocity which had a peak near f = 0.5. As thermal stability changed from neutral to stable, spectra exhibited lower peaks, were narrower in shape and were shifted towards higher frequencies. Opposite behavior was observed with increasing instability.Cospectra for momentum, heat, water vapor and CO₂ measured during neutral conditions had similar peak frequencies (near f = 0.15). Among the cospectra studied, CO₂ and water vapor cospectra had the greatest similarity in shape.Published as Paper No. 7481, Journal Series, Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station. The work reported here was conducted under Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Project 27-003 and Regional Research Project 11-33.Post-doctoral Research Associate and Professor, respectively, Center for Agricultural Meteorology and Climatology, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0728.     

Efficient reservoir history matching using subspace vectors

In this paper, we describe a method of history matching in which changes to the reservoir model are constructed from a limited set of basis vectors. The purpose of this reparameterization is to reduce the cost of a Newton iteration, without altering the final estimate of model parameters and without substantially slowing the rate of convergence. The utility of a subspace method depends on several factors, including the choice and number of the subspace vectors to be used. Computational gains in efficiency result partly from a reduction in the size of the matrix system that must be solved in a Newton iteration. More important contributions, however, result from a reduction in the number of sensitivity coefficients that must be computed, reduction in the dimensions of the matrices that must be multiplied, and elimination of matrix products involving the inverse of the prior model covariance matrix. These factors affect the efficiency of each Newton iteration. Although computation of the optimal set of subspace vectors may be expensive, we show that the rate of convergence and the final results are somewhat insensitive to the choice of subspace vectors. We also show that it is desirable to start with a small number of subspace vectors and gradually increase the number at each Newton iteration until an acceptable level of data mismatch is obtained.     

460火山岩盆地的地质发展与铀,钍演化

在总结460火山岩盆地地质特征和构造-岩浆活动发展历史的基础上。研究了各时代岩石中铀、钍的演化规律。提出该区晚太古代基底岩石的钾质混合岩化所引起的铀、钍增量是影响其后盖屋火山岩演化和铀成矿的物质基础;具有壳源重熔成因的上侏罗统酸性火山岩盖层,由于分布广泛,厚度巨大,有多种告石组台和多样的岩性序列,以及铀、钍含量高,构成了该区铀成矿有利的地层背景;燕山晚期沿区域断裂侵入的高铀酸性次火山岩或小侵入体,是该区成矿定位的决定因崇,它本身常成为赋矿的有刊围岩;后期热液铀成矿是使地层和岩体中铀和钍最终发生分离的主要地质作用。     

Potential response of pacific northwestern forests to climatic change,effects of stand age and initial composition

We used an individual-based forest simulator (a gap model) to assess the potential effects of anthropogenic climatic change on conifer forests of the Pacific Northwestern United States. Steady-state simulations suggested that forest zones could be shifted on the order of 500–1000 m in elevation, which could lead to the local extirpation of some high-altitude species. For low-elevation sites, species which currently are more abundant hundreds of kilometers to the south would be favored under greenhouse scenarios. Simulations of transient responses suggested that forest stands could show complex responses depending on initial species composition, stand age and canopy development, and the magnitude and duration of climatic warming. Assumptions about species response to temperature, which are crucial to the model's behaviors, were evaluated using data on species temperature limits inferred from regional distributions. The high level of within-species variability in these data, and other confounding factors influencing species distributions, argue against over-interpreting simulations. We suggest how we might resolve critical uncertainties with further research.     

A self-consistent model of the jovian plasma sheet

An axially-symmetric, rapidly-rotating magnetosphere containing low-energy plasma is considered. The resulting plasma sheet is presumed isothermal and thin compared with the radius of the sheet. Solutions of the model equations are found which include the effects of centrifugal, pressure and electro-magnetic forces. These solutions show that the sheet has a constant thickness and that the pressure decays exponentially with distance from the equatorial plane. The calculated curves for the magnetic induction field are compared with the observed field of Jupiter.     

Shoreline variability via empirical orthogonal function analysis: Part II relationship to nearshore conditions

The method of empirical orthogonal function (EOF) or principal component analysis (PCA) was used to investigate the spatial and temporal variability of shoreline data sets from Duck, North Carolina, the Gold Coast, Australia, and the United States Pacific Northwest. In the present work, an attempt is made to relate the individual modes of shoreline variability identified by the EOF analyses to select parameterizations of the nearshore environment. The parameters considered include the wave energy (E), the cross-shore and longshore wave energy fluxes (F_x and F_y), the wave steepness (H_o/L_o), the non-dimensional fall velocity parameter (Ω), the profile parameter (P), the surf-similarity parameter (ζ), and a surfzone Froude number (F_r). Correlation analyses were used to evaluate the linear relationship between each of these parameters and the temporal eigenfunctions, c_k(t), associated with individual modes of shoreline change. Typically, strong correlations were observed between longshore uniform modes and the monthly means of several of the nearshore parameters.