Buying environmental insurance: Prospects for trading of global climate-protection services

In order to alleviate the threat of global climate change, coordinated international action is needed. This cooperation should include multilateral agreements and new economic initiatives to help implement measures that will slow the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere due to tropical deforestation and fossil-fuel use. An international market in environmental services can help to safeguard the Earth's climate and foster economic development through a North-South transfer of financial resources.We suggest international carbon-emission offsets (ICEOs) as a means by which international markets, under a policy umbrella such as a multilateral climate-protection treaty, could trade carbon-saving services. Such a market would provide a currency for rewarding actions that reduce global carbon emissions, allowing carbon emitters to seek the least expensive ways to reduce emissions. This currency would transfer cash and/or debt relief from industrialized nations to developing nations, allowing the developing nations to profit from the use of clean energy technologies and the protection, rather than depletion, of tropical forests.     

The origin of laminated and massive anorthosite,Sept Iles layered intrusion,Québec,Canada

Well-laminated plagioclase-rich rocks (‘anorthosite’) occur as layers in mineralogically similar but massive rocks in the Sept Iles intrusion. Several phases of crystallization of poikilitic clinopyroxene have preserved the intermediate stages in the production of these rocks. Plagioclase nucleated and initially grew in random orientations in the stationary part of the boundary layer. There, in the absence of other events, crystallization produced the massive anorthosite. The laminated anorthosite may have been produced by episodic increases in the velocity of the magma adjacent to the boundarylayer induced by magmatic density-currents. Such currents would have caused the zone of simple shear of the boundary-layer to migrate outwards into the previously stationary part. This simple shear would then have rotated the existing plagioclase crystals, as well as crystals that nucleated at that time, towards the shear-plane. Some rocks show evidence of several periods of enhanced flow-velocities. The production of the lamination may have weakened the crystal-mush and enabled slumping to occur, producing folds and contorted layers. Finally, compaction liberated large quantities of intercumulus magma of which some was trapped as granophyric segregations and some escaped by overturing and churning the crystal-pile. Earlier-formed granophyric segregations and laminated layers were disrupted during this process to produce a range of more-complex rocks including igneous breccias.     

Variations in geometric measures of topographic surfaces underlain by fractured granitic plutons

Silicate melts impose systematic fracture patterns on their hosts and their own subsolidus portions as they crystallize and cool to ambient conditions. Weathering of these plutonic bodies accentuates the fractures and produces fragmented topographic surfaces whose geometric measures exceed those of a Euclidean surface. Because geometric measures of these surfaces are potentially indicative of the percolation properties of the fracture network, contours and vertical sections were digitized from 1250000 and 1240000 scale maps, and their statistical fractal dimensions,D, were computed. Regions underlain by granitic plutons with similar fragmentation patterns were found to haveD values ranging from 1.15 to 1.28 within a single pluton. This range of values is caused by noise and several geologic factors. The values contain noise introduced by the map-making and digitizing procedures that amounts toD1.05. However all values lie well above this threshold, and they correlate closely with local differences in weathering. SmallerD values derive from contours where accumulation of screen or glacial erosion has smoothed the surface, whereas largerD values derive from contours along aretes and in unglaciated terrains. In each of these regions, largerD values occur locally where fractures are most frequent and/or continuous. LargeD values were also derived from regions underlain by host rocks that lie in the near-field region of the stress field caused by the pluton. The fractral values derived are apparently related to the magma-hydrothermal event, they can potentially be used to derive properties of the percolation networks that were active during the hydrothermal events.     

Are topographic data sets fractal?

The scale invariant properties of fractal sets make them attractive models for topographic profiles because those profiles are the end product of a complex system of physical processes operating over many spatial scales. If topographic data sets are fractal, their power spectra will be well represented by lines in log-log space with slopess such that –3s<–1. The power spectra from a Digital Elevation Model (30 meter sample spacing) of the Sierra Nevada Batholith and from Seabeam center beam depths (425 meter sample spacing) along a flowline in the South Atlantic are curved. Straight sections in the spectra can be identified but the slopes of those sections are strongly dependent upon the particulars of the data analysis. Fractal geometry must be used with caution in the discussion of topographic data sets.     

Lunar magnetic variations

Displayed daygraphs of magnetic observatory hourly mean values and of lunar magnetic variations reconstructed from spherical harmonic coefficients are used to illustrate the difficulties that arise in separating lunar magnetic effects from those associated with the 27 day recurrence tendency in magnetic activity.     

Melting and premelting of silicates: Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction of Li2SiO3 and Na2SiO3

The isostructural lithium (Li₂SiO₃) and sodium (Na₂SiO₃) metasilicates have been investigated from room temperature up to the melting point by single-crystal Raman spectroscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray powder diffraction. The unit-cell parameters and Raman frequencies of Li₂SiO₃ vary regularly with temperature up to the melting point, which is consistent with the lack of premelting effects in calorimetric measurements. In contrast, Na₂SiO₃ undergoes a transition at about 850 K from orthorhombic Cmc 2₁ symmetry, to a lower symmetry (possibly Pmc 2₁), and shows near 1200 K changes in the Raman spectra that correlate well with the premelting effects as determined from calorimetry observations. In both compounds, a high alkali mobility likely sets in several hundreds of degrees below the melting point. Premelting in Na₂SiO₃ is associated with extensive deformation of the silicate chains as evidenced near the melting point by similarities in the Raman spectra of the crystalline and liquid phases.     

Respiration rates and hypoxia on the Louisiana shelf

The spatial and temporal variation in water-column respiration, estimated from enzymatic respiratory electron-transport-system activity, was measured monthly on a cross-shelf transect on the Louisiana shelf from May through October 1991. In July 1991, water-column respiration was also determined on an alongshore transect, and in situ benthic respiration and photosynthesis rates were determined at jour stations on the cross-shelf transect. Bottom waters were persistently hypoxic (O₂<2 mg 1^?1) at most stations in July and August and sporadically hypoxic at other times. Water-column respiration rates were in the same range as earlier, less extensive studies and not unusually high for coastal and estuarine waters. They were highest in summer, decreased with distance offshore and depth, and increased with temperature. Their variation with pigment and oxygen concentrations were complex functions of season and depth. Oxygen depletion below the oxycline could occur within days to months, depending on the season and location. In July, benthic respiration rates were also not unusually high in comparison with other shallow sediments, although the ratio of benthic: total (water column+benthic) respiration was high. Combined water-column and benthic respiration could deplete the bottom water oxygen in approximately 1 mo. Because the system rarely goes anoxic (defined as observing sulfide), some mechanism(s) must exist to reaerate bottom waters. Most physical mechanisms are unlikely to provide significant reaeration at this time of year. Measured benthic and conservatively estimated bottom-water photosynthesis could resupply 23% of the oxygen lost daily by respiration. Although this is too limited a dataset from which to draw conclusions about the relative importance of bottom-water and benthic respiration and photosynthesis in determining bottom-water oxygen concentrations, it does suggest that all these processes must be considered.     

Trace element behaviour during anatexis in the presence of a fluid phase

If anatexis takes place in the presence of an immiscible volatile-rich fluid phase, the behaviour of a trace element depends not only on partition coefficients D^{i ?} between mineral i and silicate liquid, but also on coefficients D^{i f} between mineral i and fluid. The limited experimental data available, as well as theoretical arguments, suggest that for common minerals these coefficients differ, in some cases (REE) notably.Theory has been developed to permit calculation of concentration variations with the fraction F of rock melted, if D-values are known. In its present state this theory neglects the influence of T, P and composition variations in liquid and fluid on the D-values: if such variations can be expressed as functions of F, appropriate modifications can be made. The theory also neglects the effects of T and P on the solubility of fluid in liquid and the resulting modifications to phase petrology, by assuming simply that a given mass of rock melts in the presence of a mass proportion v of fluid. By choosing different values of v, from 0 (dry melting) to 100 (large fluid excess), the response of the trace element concentrations can be followed, beginning with concentration c_o in the unmelted rock. Such treatment is highly idealised, but serves to indicate some limits on what can occur.     

Geomagnetic multipoles, 1965.0

Summary Following the recent appearance of spherical harmonic coefficients for the potential of the geomagnetic field for epoch 1965.0, the strengths and axes for a dipole, quadrupole and octupole have been computed from first, second and third order spherical harmonic coefficients respectively. An interesting relation existing between the parameters of the dipole, quadrupole and geomagnetic eccentric dipole is also indicated.