Formation and Movement of the ESIW as Modeled by MICOM

The presence of the minimum salinity and oxygen-rich East Sea Intermediate Water (ESIW) off Korean coast has raised many questions about its origin and movement. This study attempts to answer these questions in the context of numerical model. For this, the Miami Isopycnic Coordinate Ocean Model is used with surface and inflow boundary conditions based on available data. Model results show that the ESIW forms most distinctly off Vladivostok, where the center of doming structure is observed, and moves southward along Korean coast forming a large cyclonic gyre around the doming. The renewed ESIW has the character of minimum potential vorticity common to usual mode waters. These results are compatible with various indications made in previous observational and theoretical studies. However, it is not known whether the doming structure is a result of convection or the latter is favored by the former. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

香港一富营养河港内的底泥耗氧和营养盐释放

Tolo Harbour has received massive discharges of municipal sewage, agricultural wastes and cottage industrial effluents, via three river systems, in the past two decades before the mid Eighties. The Harbour is almost land locked and poorly flushed. The soft sediment acted as a sink for nutrients and organic pollutants. After a decade of efforts in establishing and enforcing water pollution control legislations and upgrading wastewater treatment facilities, the sediments have turned into sources of nutrients and exert a measurable oxygen demand upon the overlying waters. In vitro measurements showed that the sediments oxygen demand (SOD) was between 17.6 and 54.3 mgo₂ · m^-2 · h^-1. The maximum rates of release of ortho-phosphate phosphorus and ammonia nitrogen were 15.0 and 206.0 mg · m^-2 · h^-1, respectively.     

Vibration of vertical rectangular plate in contact with water on one side

In this paper, the vibratory characteristics of a rectangular plate in contact with water on one side are studied. The elastic plate is considered to be a part of a vertical rectangular rigid wall in contact with water, the edges of which are elastically restrained and parallel to those of the rigid wall. The location and size of the plate on the rigid wall may vary arbitrarily. The water with a free surface is in a rectangular domain infinite in the length direction. The effects of free surface waves, compressibility of the water and the hydrostatic water pressure are neglected in the analysis. An analytical‐Ritz method is developed to analyse the interaction of the plate–water system. First of all, by using the method of separation of variables and the method of Fourier series expansion, the exact expression of the motion of water is derived in the form of integral equations including the dynamic deformation of the plate. Then the Rayleigh–Ritz approach is used to derive the eigenfrequency equation of the system via the variational principle of energy. By selecting beam vibrating functions as the admissible functions of the plate, the added virtual mass incremental (AVMI) matrices for plate vibration are obtained. The convergency studies are carried out. The effects of some parameters such as the depth and width of water, the support stiffnesses, location and aspect ratio of the plate and the plate–water size and density ratios on the eigenfrequencies of the plate–water system are investigated. Several numerical examples are given. The validity of AVMI factor approach is also confirmed by comparing the AVMI factor solutions with the analytical‐Ritz solutions. The results show that the approach presented here can also be used as excellent approximate solutions for rectangular plates in contact with water of infinite width and/or infinite depth. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impacts of Seasonal Pumping on Stream‐Aquifer Interactions in Miryang,Korea

Large agricultural fields in South Korea are located mostly on alluvial plains, where a significant amount of groundwater is used for heating of water‐curtain insulated greenhouses. Such greenhouses are commonly used for crop cultivation during the winter dry season from November to March. After use the groundwater is discharged directly into streams, causing groundwater depletion. A hydrogeological study was carried out in a typical agricultural area of this type, located on an alluvial aquifer near the Nakdong River. Groundwater levels, chemical characteristics, and temperatures from 68 observation wells were analyzed to determine the impacts of seasonal groundwater pumping on the groundwater system and stream‐aquifer interactions. Our results show that the groundwater system has not yet reached a state of dynamic equilibrium. Decades of excessive seasonal pumping have caused a gradual decline of groundwater levels, leading to groundwater depletion, especially in areas further from the river. Seasonal pumping has also significantly affected groundwater quality in the aquifer near the river. Groundwater temperature is decreasing (in this case a disadvantage), and saline groundwater is being diluted by induced recharge. The results of this study provide a basic outline for effective integrated water management that is widely applicable in South Korea.     

SHRIMP U–Pb ages of detrital zircons from the Early Cretaceous Nakdong Formation,South East Korea: Timing of initiation of the Gyeongsang Basin and its provenance

To constrain the depositional age of the lowermost Nakdong Formation in the Early Cretaceous Gyeongsang Basin, SHRIMP U–Pb age determination was carried out on zircon separates. The U–Pb compositions of detrital zircons from the Nakdong Formation yield a wide range of ages from the Archean to the Cretaceous but show a marked contrast in age distribution according to the geographical locations within the basin. The provenance of the southern Nakdong Formation is dominantly the surrounding Yeongnam Massif, which is composed of Paleoproterozoic metamorphic rocks and Triassic to Jurassic plutonic rocks, whereas the central to northern Nakdong Formation records significant sediment derivation from the Okcheon Metamorphic Belt, which is distributed to the northwest, in addition to the contribution from the Yeongnam Massif. It is suggested that the maximum depositional age of the Nakdong Formation is ca 127 Ma, based on its youngest detrital zircon age population. The onset of its deposition at 127 Ma coincided with the tectonic inversion in East Asia from a compressional to an extensional geodynamic setting, probably due to the contemporaneous change in the drift direction of the Izanagi Plate and its subsequent oblique subduction.     

A nearly analytic symplectic partitioned Runge–Kutta method based on a locally one-dimensional technique for solving two-dimensional acoustic wave equations

In this paper, we develop a new nearly analytic symplectic partitioned Runge–Kutta method based on locally one-dimensional technique for numerically solving two-dimensional acoustic wave equations. We first split two-dimensional acoustic wave equation into the local one-dimensional equations and transform each of the split equations into a Hamiltonian system. Then, we use both a nearly analytic discrete operator and a central difference operator to approximate the high-order spatial differential operators, which implies the symmetry of the discretized spatial differential operators, and we employ the partitioned second-order symplectic Runge–Kutta method to numerically solve the resulted semi-discrete Hamiltonian ordinary differential equations, which results in fully discretized scheme is symplectic unlike conventional nearly analytic symplectic partitioned Runge–Kutta methods. Theoretical analyses show that the nearly analytic symplectic partitioned Runge–Kutta method based on locally one-dimensional technique exhibits great higher stability limits and less numerical dispersion than the nearly analytic symplectic partitioned Runge–Kutta method. Numerical experiments are conducted to verify advantages of the nearly analytic symplectic partitioned Runge–Kutta method based on locally one-dimensional technique, such as their computational efficiency, stability, numerical dispersion and long-term calculation capability.     

Seismic ground-roll noise attenuation using deep learning

We propose to adopt a deep learning based framework using generative adversarial networks for ground-roll attenuation in land seismic data. Accounting for the non-stationary properties of seismic data and the associated ground-roll noise, we create training labels using local time–frequency transform and regularized non-stationary regression. The basic idea is to train the network using a few shot gathers such that the network can learn the weights associated with noise attenuation for the training shot gathers. We then apply the learned weights to test ground-roll attenuation on shot gathers, that are not a part of training input to obtain the desired signal. This approach gives results similar to local time–frequency transform and regularized non-stationary regression but at a significantly reduced computational cost. The proposed approach automates the ground-roll attenuation process without requiring any manual input in picking the parameters for each shot gather other than in the training data. Tests on field-data examples verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Three-dimensional topography corrections of magnetotelluric data

Topographic effects due to irregular surface terrain may prevent accurate interpretation of magnetotelluric (MT) data. Three-dimensional (3-D) topographic effects have been investigated for a trapezoidal hill model using an edge finite-element method. The 3-D topography generates significant MT anomalies, and has both galvanic and inductive effects in any polarization. This paper presents two different correction algorithms, which are applied to the impedance tensor and to both electric and magnetic fields, respectively, to reduce topographic effects on MT data. The correction procedures using a homogeneous background resistivity derived from a simple averaging method effectively decrease distortions caused by surface topography, and improve the quality of subsurface interpretation. Nonlinear least-squares inversion of topography-corrected data successfully recovers most of structures including a conductive or resistive dyke.     

Physiological energetics of the fourth instar of Chinese horseshoe crabs (Tachypleus tridentatus) in response to hypoxic stress and re-oxygenation

Hypoxia associated with eutrophication is a potential threat to the Chinese horseshoe crab Tachypleus tridentatus which inhabits intertidal sand flats in Asia. This study investigated the effect of dissolved oxygen level (DO) (6, 4 and 2 mg O₂ l⁻¹) on the physiological energetics in the juvenile T. tridentatus. They were exposed to various oxygen levels for three days and then transferred to normoxia for three days to examine the recovery from low oxygen stress. Feeding rate, respiration rate and scope for growth were reduced at lower DO levels while absorption efficiency and excretion rate were independent of DO levels. Although full recovery of the physiological responses and scope for growth from hypoxis stress was observed when normoxia resumed, their long term survival in suboptimal habitats with frequent occurrence of hypoxia deserves a close monitoring as hypoxia may be even more common in future in a warming world.