Geotectonic significance of the Neoproterozoic ophiolitic metagabbros of Muiswirab area,South Eastern Desert,Egypt: constraints from their mineralogical and geochemical characteristics

Acta Geochimica - Petrological and geochemical studies of Neoproterozoic metagabbros were carried out in the Muiswirab area, South Eastern Desert of Egypt. The Muiswirab area comprises of...     

Climatology of dust days in the Central Plateau of Iran

Natural Hazards - Dust storms are a major natural hazard to human health. Severe erosive storms in parts of the Central Plateau of Iran have made the situation very difficult for the inhabitants,...     

Assessment of Various Fuzzy c-Mean Clustering Validation Indices for Mapping Mineral Prospectivity: Combination of Multifractal Geochemical Model and Mineralization Processes

This paper describes the application of an unsupervised clustering method, fuzzy c-means (FCM), to generate mineral prospectivity models for Cu?±?Au?±?Fe mineralization in the Feizabad District of NE Iran. Various evidence layers relevant to indicators or potential controls on mineralization, including geochemical data, geological–structural maps and remote sensing data, were used. The FCM clustering approach was employed to reduce the dimensions of nine key attribute vectors derived from different exploration criteria. Multifractal inverse distance weighting interpolation coupled with factor analysis was used to generate enhanced multi-element geochemical signatures of areas with Cu?±?Au?±?Fe mineralization. The GIS-based fuzzy membership function MSLarge was used to transform values of the different evidence layers, including geological–structural controls as well as alteration, into a [0–1] range. Four FCM-based validation indices, including Bezdek’s partition coefficient (V_Pc) and partition entropy (V_Pe) indices, the Fukuyama and Sugeno (V_FS) index and the Xie and Beni (V_XB) index, were employed to derive the optimum number of clusters and subsequently generate prospectivity maps. Normalized density indices were applied for quantitative evaluation of the classes of the FCM prospectivity maps. The quantitative evaluation of the results demonstrates that the higher favorability classes derived from V_FS and V_XB (N_d?=?9.19) appear more reliable than those derived from V_Pc and V_Pe (N_d?=?6.12) in detecting existing mineral deposits and defining new zones of potential Cu?±?Au?±?Fe mineralization in the study area.

     

Modeling relationships between the network distance and travel time dynamics for assessing equity of accessibility to urban parks

Static models of accessibility are usually based on the fixed distance or Average Travel Time (ATT) models. Because of ignoring the traffic as a dynamic process affecting the accessibility through the change of Travel Time (TT), these models lead to unperceived temporal inequities. In contrast to the consideration of the temporal Variation of TT (VTT) in the previous studies, the variation of traffic- related TT and its relations with network distance has not been considered. In this study, relations between VTT and network distance to access urban parks in Tehran megacity has been modeled. Traffic maps at five times of day are used to produce TT maps of Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) to their 3-closest parks. Comparison of the Gini coefficients of accessibility show significant inequities of accessibility at different times of day. Relations between the distance, ATT, and TTmax are modeled by statistical analysis. Results show both TT and TTmax have significant positive relations with distance and traffic and reach their maximum at 6 p.m. Observation of significant relations between distance, ATT, TTmax, and VTT provides interesting knowledge for the conversion of temporal measures of equity (TT) to a physical measure of equity (distance). A simple application of these findings for effective management of the spatiotemporal inequities is the definition of critical distances from public services. As an example, to decrease the TTmax of TAZs to less than 12 min, their maximum distance to the closest parks should be less than 4 km. The developed approach can be adopted for the accessibility evaluation of the other public services, particularly the health and education centers.     

Conformal analysis of seepage below a hydraulic structure with an inclined cutoff

Conformal mapping techniques are used to obtain an exact solution for seepage flow below a hydraulic structure founded on permeable soil of infinite depth for a flat floor with an inclined cut-off at the downstream end. Results are presented for different values of b/s and θ. The exit gradient decreases considerably along a distance beyond the floor end with an increase in cut-off inclination. The maximum exit gradient decreases for θ = 10, 20 and 30° and starts increasing for θ = 45°. The uplift pressure decreases as θ increases. It is concluded that using an inclined cut-off increases the factor of safety in design against uplift and piping.     

An investigation into the fault patterns in the Chadegan region, west Iran: Evidence for dextral brittle transpressional tectonics in the Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone

The NW-SE trending Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone (SSZ) is the internal part of the Zagros continental collision zone, which mainly consists of metamorphic rocks deformed in a dextral transpressional zone. This dextral transpression is attributed to brittle deformation related to late Cenozoic Arabia-Eurasia oblique continental collision. Major NW-trending faults, including the Dalan, Garmdareh, Yasechah, Sheida, and Ben faults, are reverse faults with a dextral strike-slip component. These faults were displaced by NW-trending synthetic and NE-trending antithetic faults. There are also E-trending thrusts and N-trending normal faults developing in directions that are, respectively, almost normal and parallel to the major shortening direction. The NW-trending Ben, Yasechah, and Sheida faults are NE-dipping faults, and the Dalan and Garmdareh faults are SW-dipping faults. These faults indicate the presence of a transpressive flower structure zone that probably led to the exhumation of Jurassic high-grade metamorphic rocks, such as eclogite, in the central part of the study area.     

An artificial neural network model for flood simulation using GIS: Johor River Basin, Malaysia

Flooding is one of the most destructive natural hazards that cause damage to both life and property every year, and therefore the development of flood model to determine inundation area in watersheds is important for decision makers. In recent years, data mining approaches such as artificial neural network (ANN) techniques are being increasingly used for flood modeling. Previously, this ANN method was frequently used for hydrological and flood modeling by taking rainfall as input and runoff data as output, usually without taking into consideration of other flood causative factors. The specific objective of this study is to develop a flood model using various flood causative factors using ANN techniques and geographic information system (GIS) to modeling and simulate flood-prone areas in the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia. The ANN model for this study was developed in MATLAB using seven flood causative factors. Relevant thematic layers (including rainfall, slope, elevation, flow accumulation, soil, land use, and geology) are generated using GIS, remote sensing data, and field surveys. In the context of objective weight assignments, the ANN is used to directly produce water levels and then the flood map is constructed in GIS. To measure the performance of the model, four criteria performances, including a coefficient of determination (R ²), the sum squared error, the mean square error, and the root mean square error are used. The verification results showed satisfactory agreement between the predicted and the real hydrological records. The results of this study could be used to help local and national government plan for the future and develop appropriate (to the local environmental conditions) new infrastructure to protect the lives and property of the people of Johor.     

Nonlinear site response evaluation of earthquakes: A case study from Sirdjan Balvavard Bridge,Kerman province,Iran

The aim of this study is to illustrate the soil conditions encountered at the proposed bridge sites to analyze and evaluate the test conducted, submit recommendations regarding foundation design. At first by field investigation, the required data was collected and after primary processing the acceptable data was selected. For nonlinear analysis of elastic and rigid half space bed rock, standard hyperbolic model was selected and performed, and the results were compared. The study clearly showed that the effect of bed rock on soil behavior during earthquake is one of the main factors controlling prediction of ground response. A critical aspect of this work was to develop and use a computer code “Abbas Converter” developed by the authors that has several advantages, such as quick installation, acting as a connecter function between the used softwares which can generate the input data corresponding to a defined format and finally, the results of this computer code can be easily exported to the other softwares used in this study. Moreover this code can make it easy to solve the problems encountered.