Deriving hillslope sediment budgets in wildfire-affected forests using fallout radionuclide tracers

Information on post-fire sediment and nutrient redistribution is required to underpin post-fire catchment management decisions. Fallout radionuclide budgets (²¹⁰Pb_xs, ¹³⁷Cs and ⁷Be) were derived to quantify soil redistribution and sediment yield in forested terrain following a moderately severe wildfire in a small (89 ha) water supply catchment in SE Australia. Application of these techniques in burnt terrain requires careful consideration of the partitioning of radionuclides between organic and mineral soil components. Beryllium-7 and ²¹⁰Pb_xs were shown to be closely associated with ash, litter and soil organic matter whereas ¹³⁷Cs was more closely associated with subsurface coarse mineral soil. Comparison of the three tracer budgets indicated that the dominant sediment source areas were ridgetops and steep valley sideslopes, from which burnt surface material was conveyed to the stream network via pre-existing gullies. Erosion was predominantly driven by sheetwash, enhanced by soil water repellency, and modified by bioturbation which both supplies subsurface sediment and provides sinks for erosive overland flow. Footslope and riparian zones were not important sediment source areas. The estimated event-based (wildfire and subsequent rainfall) sediment yield is 58 ± 25 t km^− 2, based on fallout ⁷Be measurements. The upper estimate of total particulate phosphorus yield (0.70 kg ha^− 1) is more than 10 times that at equivalent unburnt sites. This illustrates that, soon after fire, burnt eucalypt forest can produce nutrient loads similar to those of agricultural catchments. The tracer budgets indicate that wildfire is an important control on sediment and phosphorus inputs to the stream network over the decadal timeframe and the pulsed nature of this release is an important concern for water quality management.     

The cold and wet year 1695 — a contemporary German account

After describing briefly some of the outstanding features of the uncommonly cold and wet year 1695, one of the coldest years of the Little Ice Age, an annotated translation is presented of a contemporary review of the unusual weather events of the year in Europe. The original was published in 1702 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in vol. XIV of the seriesTheatrum Europaeum. The annotation relates to the historical events of the year that were substantially affected by the weather, events to which rather abstruse references are made in the aforementioned contemporary account. In addition to the fact that the contemporary review describes the uncommon weather conditions of 1695, it appears to be the first extended weather review in history.     

Numerical study on dry deposition processes in canopy layer

A coupling model between the canopy layer (CL) and atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) for the study of dry deposition velocity is developed. The model consists of six parts: chemical species conservation equation including absorptive factor; the species uptake action including detailed vertical variation of absorptive element in CL; momen-tum exchange in CL which is represented by a first-order closure momentum equation with an additional larger-scale diffusive term; momentum exchange in ABL which is described by a complete set of the ABL turbulent statistic parameters; absorptivity (or solubility or reflection) at the surface including effects of the physical and chemi-cal characters of the species, land type, seasonal and diurnal variations of the meteorological variables; and deposition velocity derived by distributions of the species with height in CL. Variational rules of the concentration and deposi-tion velocity with both height and time are simulated with the model for both corn and forest canopies. Results pre-dicted with the bulk deposition velocity derived in the paper consist well with experimental data.     

Past environmental change and seawater intrusion into coastal Lake Lilaste,Latvia

Diatoms, organic matter and magnetic susceptibility in a 10-m-long sediment sequence from coastal Lake Lilaste, Latvia, were analysed to evaluate Holocene environmental changes related to past sea-water intrusions. Lake Lilaste is located ~1 km from the present sea coast in an area with a low uplift rate and a threshold altitude of 0.5 m a.s.l. It was thus considered to be an appropriate site to study the influence of past sea level fluctuations on the lake and its sediments. Variations in diatom community composition, along with sediment lithostratigraphy, show that a shallow, nutrient-rich freshwater lake existed there during the early Holocene. The first brackish-water diatoms appeared concurrent with a sea level rise ca. 8700 ± 50 cal a BP, but long-term, intermittent inputs of brackish water were observed between 6700 ± 40 and 4200 ± 80 cal a BP. During those time spans, diatoms indicate increased nutrient concentrations and high conductivity, a consequence of occasional mixing of brackish and freshwater that promoted biological productivity. Lilaste was isolated from the sea at 4200 ± 80 cal a BP, after which a stable freshwater environment, dominated by planktonic diatoms such as Aulacoseira ambigua, A. granulata, A. islandica and A. subarctica, was established. At 400 ± 50 cal a BP, planktonic diatoms were gradually replaced by Fragilaria spp., indicating the beginning of anthropogenic impact. The reconstructed relative water-level curve from the lake coincides with the eustatic sea level curve from 6800 ± 40 cal a BP onwards. There was a distinct increase in abundance of brackish-water diatoms when the sea level reached the threshold of Lilaste, which at that time was probably about 3 m lower than the present sea level. According to radiocarbon-dated shifts in the diatom community composition, the Litorina Sea transgression was a long-lasting event (ca. 2200 years) in the southern part of the Gulf of Riga, where the land uplift rate was near zero. It culminated more than 1000 years later than at other sites with higher uplift, in the northern part of the Baltic Sea.     

Spatial Pair-Copula Modeling of Grade in Ore Bodies: A Case Study

A real-world mining application of pair-copulas is presented to model the spatial distribution of metal grade in an ore body. Inaccurate estimation of metal grade in an ore reserve can lead to failure of a mining project. Conventional kriged models are the most commonly used models for estimating grade and other spatial variables. However, kriged models use the variogram or covariance function, which produces a single average value to represent the spatial dependence for a given distance. Kriged models also assume linear spatial dependence. In the application, spatial pair-copulas are used to appropriately model the non-linear spatial dependence present in the data. The spatial pair-copula model is adopted over other copula-based spatial models since it is better able to capture complex spatial dependence structures. The performance of the pair-copula model is shown to be favorable compared to a conventional lognormal kriged model.     

中国入境旅游的经济增长效应与空间差异性研究

在旅游业与经济增长作用关系分析基础上,探究了旅游溢出理论,将其产生机制归纳为知识溢出、市场溢出和竞争效应3个方面。实证分析中,构建了包括入境旅游、物质资本、人力资本、科技创新和对外开放的分析框架,运用中国大陆31个省域2000~2014年面板数据对入境旅游的经济增长效应进行实证检验。全局分析得出中国入境旅游在邻近省市以集聚与合作为主,邻近省域入境旅游发展对本地经济增长具有辐射带动作用,且这种空间溢出效应大于直接效应;入境旅游业发达的地区,入境旅游的经济增长效应更大。局部分析发现,随着入境旅游的发展,入境旅游的经济增长效应不断强化,中部部分地区提升幅度最大;入境旅游的经济增长效应存在空间差异性,东部沿海地区贡献最大,西北地区相对最小。     

南极乔治王岛环境质量现状调查

本文以１９９２／１９９３年度中国第九次南极考察期间对南极乔治王岛的表土、地衣、苔藓等样品的分析资料为基础，研究探讨了８种无机重金属元素、５种有机污染物的浓度水平。其结果表明，重金属在三种环境样品中的含量分布存在着明显的差异；地衣、苔藓两种植物呈现对不同重金属元素的不同富集能力；∑６６６、∑ＤＤＴ和ＰＣＢｓ及油的沾污亦很明显。本文还对污染物质的来源、南极环境样品历次调查分析的结果以及世界部分地区的背景水平进行了讨论和比较     

豫西山区与承德基地相似距研究

用修改欧氏距离和马氏距离，分析了豫西山区不同海拔与河北省承德地区，全国闻名的良种繁育基地玉米制种的农业气候相似性．确定了与承德地区相似的玉米制种海拔界限为３３４－１２１５ｍ．其中海拔５００ｍ以上农业气候条件更为适宜．