Scale-dependent analysis of satellite imagery for characterization of glacier surfaces in the Karakoram Himalaya

Information regarding process-structure relationships and change in the Karakoram Himalaya is of great importance in studying glacier hydrollogy, mass balance, and dynamic environmental change. Such information is not readily available. Detailed spatio-temporal assessment requires field investigation coupled with quantitative remote sensing studies. We conducted an investigation of the large Batura Glacier in Pakistan to determine if spectral variability can be quantified and used to characterize glacier surfaces. Specifically, SPOT Panchromatic satellite data were evaluated for differentiating features of glacier structure resulting from ice movement, ablation, and supraglacial fluvial action. Image semivariogram analysis was conducted. for assessing spectral variability patterns and fractal analysis was used to examine scale-dependent variation in the data. Results indicate that spectral variability from fields of ice seracs can exhibit fractal characteristics, although most surface features on the glacier exhibit a change in the fractal dimension over different ranges in scale. The fractal dimension was found to be useful for differentiating between glacier surfaces such as white ice and debris-covered ice. Characteristics of the debris-load and the scale-dependent nature of calculating the fractal dimension ultimately determined the potential of class separability.     

Nitrate sources and sinks in Elkhorn Slough,California: Results from long-term continuous in situ nitrate analyzers

Nitrate and water quality parameters (temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and depth) were measured continuously with in situ NO₃ analyzers and water quality sondes at two sites in Elkhorn Slough in Central California. The Main Channel site near the mouth of Elkhorn Slough was sampled from February to September 2001. Azevedo Pond, a shallow tidal pond bordering agricultural fields further inland, was sampled from December 1999 to July 2001. Nitrate concentrations were recorded hourly while salinity, temperature, depth, oxygen, and turbidity were recorded every 30 min. Nitrate concentrations at the Main Channel site ranged from 5 to 65 μM. The propagation of an internal wave carrying water from ≈100 m depth up the Monterey Submarine Canyon and into the lower section of Elkhorn Slough on every rising tide was a major source of nitrate, accounting for 80–90% of the nitrogen load during the dry summer period. Nitrate concentrations in Azevedo Pond ranged from 0–20 μM during the dry summer months. Nitrate in Azevedo Pond increased to over 450 μM during a heavy winter precipitation event, and interannual variability driven by differences in precipitation was observed. At both sites, tidal cycling was the dominant forcing, often changing nitrate concentrations by 5-fold or more within a few hours. Water volume flux estimates were combined with observed nitrate concentrations to obtain nitrate fluxes. Nitrate flux calculations indicated a loss of 4 mmol NO₃ m^?2 d^?1 for the entire Elkhorn Slough and 1 mmol NO₃ m^?2 d^?1 at Azevedo Pond. These results suggested that the waters of Elkhorn Slough were not a major source of nitrate to Monterey Bay but actually a nitrate sink during the dry season. The limited winter data at the Main Channel site suggest that nitrate was exported from Elkhorn Slough during the wet season. Export of ammonium or dissolved organic nitrogen, which we did not monitor, may balance some or all of the NO₃ flux.     

Transformative left-wing parties’ and grassroots organizations: Unpacking the politics of “top-down” and “bottom-up” development

Academic analyses of the potential for agents to transform development processes have been dominated by social movement theorists who focus on the prospects for creating an alternative to development that challenges the status quo. This has downplayed the role of political parties in the transformation process. This article takes the South African Communist Party (SACP) as a unit of analysis by drawing from a case study in Alexandra township, Johannesburg, where the local SACP has assisted with mobilizing a community-based organization in an informal settlement called S’swetla where the ruling African National Congress (ANC) purportedly imposed development onto residents. The local SACP viewed its intervention as pro-poor and bottom-up. It appeared initially to offer a transformative alternative to the official approach taken by the Alexandra Development Forum (ADF), an invited participatory space adopted by the Alexandra Renewal Project (ARP) – a flagship project of the ANC. This paper uses this example to problematize the simplistic dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up development in the context of a political party that claims to be committed to pro-poor and people-driven development. In doing so, it argues that theorists must pay closer empirical attention to the politics of both invited and invented participatory spaces in order to understand the implications that this has for transforming development.     

The role of in situ stress in determining hydraulic connectivity in a fractured rock aquifer (Australia)

Fracture network connectivity is a spatially variable property that is difficult to quantify from standard hydrogeological datasets. This critical property is related to the distributions of fracture density, orientation, dimensions, intersections, apertures and roughness. These features that determine the inherent connectivity of a fracture network can be modified by secondary processes including weathering, uplift and unloading and other mechanisms that lead to fracture deformation in response to in situ stress. This study focussed on a fractured rock aquifer in the Clare Valley, South Australia, and found that fracture network connectivity could be discriminated from several geological, geophysical and hydrogeological field datasets at various scales including single well and local- to regional-scale data. Representative hydromechanical models of the field site were not only consistent with field observations but also highlighted the strong influence of in situ stress in determining the distribution of fracture hydraulic apertures and the formation of hydraulic chokes that impede fluid flow. The results of this multi-disciplinary investigation support the notion that the hydraulic conductivity of a fracture network is limited to the least hydraulically conductive interconnected fractures, which imposes a physical limit on the bulk hydraulic conductivity of a fractured rock aquifer.     

Improving the recreational value of Ireland's coastal resources: A contingent behavioural application

This paper measures willingness to pay (WTP) for public access to additional beach area and trail improvements to a coastal recreational site in the west of Ireland. The Contingent Behaviour model is used to measure the increased number of trips associated with improved public access using a connecting trail between two beach areas along a stretch of Irish coastline. Results show that improving access through the use of the connecting trail increases consumer surplus by €111.15 per person per annum. It is argued that in designing new regulation such as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for the management of Ireland's coastline, an understanding of the values the Irish public place on coastal recreational access will be important to manage the resource in a sustainable manner.     

Can planetesimals left over from terrestrial planet formation produce the lunar Late Heavy Bombardment?

The lunar Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) defines a time between ∼3.8 to possibly 4.1 Gy ago when the Nectarian and early-Imbrium basins on the Moon with reasonably well-constrained ages were formed. Some have argued that these basins were produced by a terminal cataclysm that caused a spike in the inner Solar System impactor flux during this interval. Others have suggested the basins were formed by the tail end of a monotonically decreasing impactor population originally produced by planet formation processes in the inner Solar System. Here we investigate whether this so-called declining bombardment scenario of the LHB is consistent with constraints provided by planet formation models as well as the inferred ages of Nectaris, Serenitatis, Imbrium, and Orientale. We did this by modeling the collisional and dynamical evolution of the post-planet formation population (PPP) for a range of starting PPP masses. Using a Monte Carlo code, we computed the probability that the aforementioned basins were created at various times after the Moon-forming event approximately 4.54 Ga. Our results indicate that the likelihood that the declining bombardment scenario produced Nectaris, Serenitatis, Imbrium, and Orientale (or even just Imbrium and Orientale) at any of their predicted ages is extremely low and can be ruled out at the 3σ confidence level, regardless of the PPP's starting mass. The reason is that collisional and dynamical evolution quickly depletes the PPP, leaving behind a paucity of large projectiles capable of producing the Moon's youngest basins between 3.8-4.1 Gy ago. If collisions are excluded from our model, we find that the PPP produces numerous South Pole-Aitken-like basins during the pre-Nectarian period. This is inconsistent with our understanding of lunar topography. Accordingly, our results lead us to conclude that the terminal cataclysm scenario is the only existing LHB paradigm at present that is both viable from a dynamical modeling perspective and consistent with existing constraints.     

The water content of CM carbonaceous chondrite falls and finds,and their susceptibility to terrestrial contamination

CM carbonaceous chondrites can be used to constrain the abundance and H isotopic composition of water and OH in C-complex asteroids. Previous measurements of the water/OH content of the CMs are at the higher end of the compositional range of asteroids as determined by remote sensing. One possible explanation is that the indigenous water/OH content of meteorites has been overestimated due to contamination during their time on Earth. Here we have sought to better understand the magnitude and rate of terrestrial contamination through quantifying the concentration and H isotopic composition of telluric and indigenous water in CM falls by stepwise pyrolysis. These measurements have been integrated with published pyrolysis data from CM falls and finds. Once exposed to Earth's atmosphere CM falls are contaminated rapidly, with some acquiring weight percent concentrations of water within days. The amount of water added does not progressively increase with time because CM falls have a similar range of adsorbed water contents to finds. Instead, the petrologic types of CMs strongly influence the amount of terrestrial water that they can acquire. This relationship is probably controlled by mineralogical and/or petrophysical properties of the meteorites that affect their hygroscopicity. Irrespective of the quantity of water that a sample adsorbs or its terrestrial age, there is minimal exchange of H in indigenous phyllosilicates with the terrestrial environment. The falls and finds discussed here contain 1.9–10.5 wt% indigenous water (average 7.0 wt%) that is consistent with recent measurements of C-complex asteroids including Bennu.     

Testing the ‘two water worlds’ hypothesis under variable preferential flow conditions

Widespread observations of ecohydrological separation are interpreted by suggesting that water flowing through highly conductive soil pores resists mixing with matrix storage over periods of days to months (i.e., two ‘water worlds’ exist). These interpretations imply that heterogeneous flow can produce ecohydrological separation in soils, yet little mechanistic evidence exists to explain this phenomenon. We quantified the separation between mobile water moving through preferential flow paths versus less mobile water remaining in the soil matrix after free-drainage to identify the amount of preferential flow necessary to maintain a two water world's scenario. Soil columns of varying macropore structure were subjected to simulated rainfall of increasing rainfall intensity (26 mm h⁻¹, 60 mm h⁻¹, and 110 mm h⁻¹) whose stable isotope signatures oscillated around known baseline values. Prior to rainfall, soil matrix water δ²H nearly matched the known value used to initially wet the pore space whereas soil δ¹⁸O deviated from this value by up to 3.4‰, suggesting that soils may strongly fractionate ¹⁸O. All treatments had up to 100% mixing between rain and matrix water under the lowest (26 mm h⁻¹) and medium (60 mm h⁻¹) rainfall intensities. The highest rainfall intensity (110 mm h⁻¹), however, reduced mixing of rain and matrix water for all treatments and produced significantly different preferential flow estimates between columns with intact soil structure compared to columns with reduced soil structure. Further, artificially limiting exchange between preferential flow paths and matrix water reduced bypass flow under the most intense rainfall. We show that (1) precipitation offset metrics such as lc-excess and d-excess may yield questionable interpretations when used to identify ecohydrological separation, (2) distinct domain separation may require extreme rainfall intensities and (3) domain exchange is an important component of macropore flow.