Seasonal trends in the uranium-series istopic signatures of lake waters and sediments: Hawes Water, north-west England

Potential seasonal variation in the U-series radioisotopic signatures of lake and input waters was investigated in Hawes Water, north-west England, and the sedimentary record was examined to establish whether any observed seasonality is preserved in the sediment U and Th radioisotopic activity ratios. U-series disequilibrium in the waters is indicative of both surface and shallow sub-surface origins for the dissolved U, and that this supply is influenced by changes in the prevailing hydrological regime. However, the lake is buffered from this seasonality in that the ²³⁴U/²³⁸U activity ratio remains constant during the year, and the U content undergoes only a marginal decrease during summer. The change in the mechanism of lake sedimentation from allochthonous organic input during winter to autochthonous carbonate formation during summer has a more significant influence on the U-series radioisotopic characteristics of sedimentary record in that the proportion of organic and carbonate material both exhibit a strong control on the²³⁴U/²³⁸U activity ratio and U content. In addition, significant proportions of sediment U and Th are associated with ferromanganese oxyhydroxides. Given this seasonality, it is of some significance that the ²³⁴U/²³⁸U activity ratios of the bottom sediments preserve a reasonable record of lake U-series disequilibrium and are, therefore, potential indicators of long-term changes in catchment hydrology.     

Dispersion and cost analysis of some finite difference schemes in one-parameter acoustic wave modeling

Given a precision threshold to be imposed on the group velocity error and a finite difference scheme for the acoustic wave equation, it is possible to determine time-step and grid-spacing in an optimal manner, i.e., so as to minimize the computational cost. Using this optimal cost as a criterion, it becomes easy to compare schemes for efficiency in homogeneous media. Heterogeneous media with constant density can be accommodated to a certain extent by minimizing the cost over a range of Courant numbers. Such analysis shows that, amongst the second-order Taylor series schemes in time, higher-order schemes are generally more efficient than lower-order schemes. However, this result does not extend to very high order schemes.     

Redistribution of sea level rise associated with enhanced greenhouse warming: a simple model study

Future sea level rise from thermal expansion of the World Ocean due to global warming has been explored in several recent studies using coupled ocean-atmosphere models. These coupled models show that the heat input by the model atmosphere to the ocean in such an event could be quite non-uniform in different areas of the ocean. One of the most significant effects predicted by some of the models is a weakening of the thermohaline circulation, which normally transports heat poleward. Since the greatest heat input from enhanced greenhouse warming is in the higher latitudes, a weakening of the poleward heat transport effectively redistributes the heat anomaly and the associated sea level rise to lower latitudes. In this study, the mechanism of ocean circulation spindown and heat redistribution was studied in the context of a much simpler, linearized shallow water model. Although the model is much simpler than the three-dimensional ocean circulation models used in the coupled model experiments, and neglects several important physical effects, it has a nearly 10-fold increase in horizontal resolution and clearer dynamical interpretations. The results indicated that advanced signals of sea level rise propagated rapidly through the action of Kelvin and Rossby waves, but the full adjustment toward a more uniform sea level rise took place much more slowly. Long time scales were required to redistribute mass through narrow currents trapped along coasts and the equatorial wave guide. For realistic greenhouse warming, the model showed why the sea level rise due to ocean heating could be far from uniform over the globe and hence difficult to estimate from coastal tide gauge stations.     

Convective scaling of the average dissipation rate of temperature variance in the atmospheric surface layer

The flux of sensible heat from the land surface is related to the average rate of dissipation of temperature fluctuations in the atmospheric surface layer through the temperature variance budget equation. In many cases it is desirable to estimate the heat flux from measurement or inference of the dissipation rate. Here we study how the dissipation rate scales with atmospheric stability, using three inertial range methods to calculate the dissipation rate: power spectra, second order structure functions, and third order structure functions. Experimental data are analyzed from a pair of field experiments, during which turbulent fluctuations of velocity and temperature were measured over a broad range of neutral and unstable atmospheric flows. It is shown that the temperature dissipation rate scales with a single convective power law continuously from near-neutral to strongly unstable stratification. The dissipation scaling is found to nearly match production in the near-neutral region, but to be consistently lower than production in the more convective regimes. The convective scaling is shown to offer a simplified means of computing sensible heat flux from the dissipation rate of temperature variance.Also at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MarylandAlso at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico.     

Intercomparison of Waterborne 222Rn Collection Methods: Professional Vs. Homeowner Collection

An intercomparison between trained professional and homeowner water collection techniques was conducted to assess the validity of using both inexperienced homeowner water collectors and mail-in return of point-of-use water samples. The findings indicate that homeowner-collected water samples obtained at the point of use inside the home and professionally collected water samples collected at an outside tap are comparable, especially if confounders, such as air bubbles in the sampling vials, are minimized.     

COARSE-PARTICLE TRANSPORT IN A GRAVEL-BED RIVER

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Estimation of interception capacity of the forest floor

Methods of measuring interception capacity of the understorey (grasses) and litter layer have been developed to estimate the forest floor interception capacity of a 15-year-old Pinus radiata plantation and a native dry sclerophyll eucalypt forest at Lidsdale State Forest, Australia.

In this study, interception by various types of forest floor have been measured in the laboratory using a technique of applying artificial rain to undisturbed samples of the forest floor. These laboratory experiments separately measure the interception storage capacity of the pine needle mat, the leaf/twig/bark debris mat in the eucalypt forest, and of the understorey (grasses). The results indicate that the interception storage capacity of all components of the forest floor of both vegetation types were proportional to the mass per unit area of forest floor cover. It was also shown that the interception storage capacity of the pine needle mat and the leaf/twig bark debris mat under eucalypt were proportional to the thickness of the surface debris. For standing grasses the capacity was proportional to the percentage of ground cover. These laboratory results were then used to estimate the forest floor interception storage capacity of two experimental catchments each covered by one of the two forest types.

In each case the forest floor was extremely heterogeneous, and so a large number of undisturbed samples were examined. Approximate forest floor interception capacity of the pine catchment was 2.8 mm and of eucalypt was 1.7 mm. The contribution of leaf litter, stem and branch litter, and grass vegetation to the overall interception capacity was similar for both catchments at 47%, 8% and 45%, respectively.     

A laboratory study of the biogeochemical cycling of Fe,Mn, Zn and Cu across the sediment-water interface of a productive lake

Laboratory incubation experiments were carried out on sediment cores collected from Esthwaite Water, U.K., during April 1987, when the sediments displayed a characteristic surface (1.5 to 2 cm) oxide floc. The experiments were undertaken at 10°C, in the dark, under variable redox and pH conditions for periods of ~ 720 h (30 d). In some cases, realistic amounts of decomposing lake algae were added to simulate the deposition of an algal bloom. Pore waters and overlying waters were obtained from the incubated sediment cores at various time intervals and the samples analysed for pH and dissolved Fe, Mn, Zn and Cu by AAS. The results demonstrated that trace metal concentrations at the sediment-water interface can show rapid, pulsed responses to episodic events associated with controlling factors such as algal deposition and mixing conditions. The variations in dissolved Fe and Mn concentrations could generally be explained by their well known redox behaviour. Appreciable loss of Mn from solution under conditions of well-developed anoxia was consistent with adsorption of Mn²⁺ by FeS. Cu and Zn were both rapidly (24 h) released into solution during incubation of sediment cores prior to the development of anoxia in the overlying waters. Their most likely sources were the reductive remobilization of Mn oxides and the decomposition of organic matter. The addition of decomposing algae to a series of cores resulted in even higher interfacial dissolved concentrations of Cu and Zn, probably through acting as a supplementary source of the metals and through increased oxide dissolution. Switching from anoxic to oxic conditions also rapidly increased dissolved Cu and Zn concentrations, possibly due to their release during the oxidation of metal sulphides. The enhanced releases of dissolved Cu and Zn were generally short-lived with removal being attributed to the formation of sulphides during anoxia and to adsorption by Fe and Mn oxides under oxic conditions.     

Oxygen isotope partitioning between phosphate and carbonate in mammalian apatite

The oxygen isotope compositions of phosphate and structural carbonate in mammalian enamel and bone apatite are linked to that of body water at constant body temperature near 37°C, but the isotope systematics of oxygen in structural carbonate are not well understood. Using coupled measurements of the oxygen isotope composition of structural carbonate and phosphate from horse tooth enamel, the apparent oxygen isotope fractionation factor between structural carbonate and body water is estimated to be 1.0263 ± 0.0014. These estimates provide a quantitative basis for using the oxygen isotope composition of structural carbonate in mammalian biogenic apatite for ecological, climatological, and physiological reconstruction.