Are carbonate barrier islands mobile? Insights from a mid to late-Holocene system,Al Ruwais,northern Qatar

Barrier islands are important landforms in many coastal systems around the globe. Studies of modern barrier island systems are mostly limited to those of siliciclastic realms, where the islands are recognized as mobile features that form on transgressive coastlines and migrate landward as sea-level rises. Barrier islands of the ‘Great Pearl Bank’ along the United Arab Emirates coast are the best-known carbonate examples. These Holocene islands, however, are interpreted to be anchored by older deposits and immobile. The mid-Holocene to late-Holocene depositional system at Al Ruwais, northern Qatar, provides an example of a mobile carbonate barrier island system, perhaps more similar to siliciclastic equivalents. Sedimentological and petrographic analyses, as well as ¹⁴C-dating of shells and biogenic remains from vibracored sediments and surface deposits, show that after 7000 years ago a barrier system with a narrow back-barrier lagoon formed along what is now an exposed coastal zone, while, contemporaneously, a laterally-extensive coral reef was forming immediately offshore. After 1400 years ago the barrier system was forced to step ca 3 km seaward in response to a sea-level fall of less than 2 m, where it re-established itself directly on the mid-Holocene reef. Since that time, the barrier has retreated landward as much as 1000 m to its current position, exposing previously-deposited back-barrier lagoonal sediment at the open-coast shoreline. In modern neritic warm-water carbonate settings mobile barrier island systems are rare. Their construction and migration may be inhibited by reef formation, early cementation, and the relative inefficiency of sourcing beach sediments from open carbonate shelves. Carbonate barrier island systems likely formed more commonly during geological periods when ramps and unrimmed shelves predominated and in calcite seas, when meteoric cementation was minimized as a result of initial calcitic allochem mineralogy. As with their siliciclastic analogues, however, recognition of the influence of these transient landforms in the rock record is challenging.     

Classification of seismic signals at Villarrica volcano (Chile) using neural networks and genetic algorithms

Each volcano has its own unique seismic activity. The aim of this work is to construct a system able to classify seismic signals for the Villarrica volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in South America. Since seismic signals are the result of particular processes inside the volcano's structure, they can be used to forecast volcanic activity. This paper describes the different kinds of seismic signals recorded at the Villarrica volcano and their significance. Three kind of signals were considered as most representative of this volcano's activity: the long-period, the tremor, and the energetic tremor signals. A classifier is implemented to read the seismic registers at 30-second intervals, extract the most relevant features of each interval, and classify them into one of the three kinds of signals considered as most representative of this particular volcano. To do so, 1033 different kinds of 30-s signals were extracted and classified by a human expert. A feature extraction process was applied to obtain the main characteristics of each of them. This process was developed using criteria which have been shown by others to effectively classify seismic signals, based on the experience of a human expert. The classifier was implemented with a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) artificial neural network whose architecture and training process were optimized by means of a genetic algorithm. This technique searched for the most adequate MLP configuration to improve the classification performance, optimizing the number of hidden neurons, the transfer functions of the neurons, and the training algorithm. The optimization process also performed a feature selection to reduce the number of signal features, optimizing the number of network inputs. The results show that the optimized classifier reaches more than 93% exactitude. identifying the signals of each kind. The amplitude of the signals is the most important feature for its classification, followed by its frequency content. The described methodology can be used to classify more seismic signals to improve the study of the activity of this volcano or to extend the study to other active volcanoes of the region.     

Light‐dependence of photosynthesis and growth in cyanobacteria: Implications for their dominance in eutrophic lakes

In eutrophic lakes cyanobacteria are favoured relative to other phytoplankton, both under stratified and mixed conditions. During stratification, gas vacuole formation allows the accumulation of dense surface scums which attain the highest possible area‐specific photosynthetic rates in aquatic environments owing to high irradiances, near‐complete harvesting of impinging light, and minimal light inhibition and photo‐oxidation. During moderate mixing, high yields of biomass can be achieved by effective light harvesting for photosynthesis (aided by phycobilin pigments) and low maintenance energy requirements at low mean irradiances. Howevrr, nitrogen fixation competes for energy and reductant with photosynthesis, and leads to a decline of light‐saturated maximum growth rates. Wind‐driven vertical mixing and lateral advection are the main causes for the instability of cyanobacterial blooms in hyper‐eutrophic lake ecosystems.     

Field calibration of a formula for entrance mixing of river inflows to lakes: Lake Taupo,North Island,New Zealand

Field measurements were used to validate predictions for the initial dilution of negatively buoyant, cold‐water inflows to Lake Taupo, as part of a study to quantify mixing processes associated with the two largest inflows to the lake. The predictions were made using a formulation originally derived for positively buoyant, warm‐water inflows to cooling ponds. The formulation predicts the total dilution of an inflow during its inertia‐dominated phase between its entrance to the lake and the point where buoyancy forces are great enough to cause the inflow to plunge and form a submerged density current. In one of the measured inflows, the inflowing jet was free to entrain from both sides; in the other, entrainment was restricted on one side by attachment of the inflowing jet to the shoreline of a bay just upstream of the plunge point. In the former example, the unmodified coefficients from the cooling pond formulation provided an excellent prediction of initial dilution. In the latter example, entrainment was reduced and different coefficients were derived. In both examples the inflows remained attached to the lake bed throughout their course until their liftoff at depths of 45–55 m to form interflows. The difference between coefficients for the two inflows indicates that the coefficient values should be considered site‐specific. The formulation is not valid for inflows that separate from the bottom of the inflow channel before plunging. The entrance mixing formulation was incorporated in a more general model of lake stratification, DYRESM, which already includes a well‐documented routine for routing underflows down submerged channels on the bed of a lake. Application of the model to the inflows measured in Lake Taupo gave good results for two model outputs that were not involved in the calibration of the entrance mixing formulation, but that are affected by the result of the initial dilution calculation—the temperatures in the river plume after it has plunged, and the insertion depth.     

Geochemistry and origins of the annagh division of the precambrian erris complex,N.W. county Mayo,Ireland

A geochemical study of 29 acid gneisses from the Annagh Division of the Erris Complex has shown that all lithologies are chemically distinct and that further distinction can be made between different areas. The acid and intermediate gneisses, which in the field have been regarded as orthogneisses associated with widespread metasomatism, have orthogneiss chemistry and show the effects of considerable local metasomatism. Isotopic age dating records that the latest major pre-Caledonian event in the Annagh Gneiss is of Grenvillian age. The Annagh Division gneiss differs chemically from Laxford gneiss but is similar to reworked Lewisian inliers seen in the N.W. Highlands of Scotland.All analysed basic rocks fall into three categories: early basic and ultrabasic pods and metadolerite dykes. All originated as minor intrusives of tholeiitic affinities.     

Streiflichter Ein Holzschnitt von Hans Holbein d. J. (?) aus dem Jahre 1523, frei umgedeutet als Sinnbild des Geologenwahlspruches „Mente et Malleo“

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

A comment on “Calcic amphibole equilibria and a new amphibole — plagioclase geothermometer” by J.D. Blundy and T.J.B. Holland (Contrib Mineral Petrol (1990) 104: 208–224)

Conclusions The calibration by Blundy and Holland is not a calibration of the reaction albite + tremolite = edenite + 4quartz, because the Al^IV content of amphiboles is a combined result of substitutions.The requirements for a calibration of any of these substitutions are: (1) an amphibole-activity model unequivocally accounting for each substitution and (2) a data-set, wherein all amphiboles are buffered by the same assemblages.     

III. Bücher- und Zeitschriftenschau

Ohne Zusammenfassung