Paired 10Be sampling of polished bedrock and erratic boulders to improve dating of glacial landforms: an example from the Western Alps

Cosmogenic nuclide dating of glacial landforms may lead to ambiguous results for ice retreat histories. The persistence of significant cosmogenic concentrations inherited from previous exposure may increase the apparent exposure ages for polished bedrocks affected by limited erosion under ice and for erratic boulders transported by glaciers and previously exposed in high-altitude rock walls. In contrast, transient burying by moraines, sediments and snow decreases the apparent exposure age. We propose a new sampling strategy, applied to four sites distributed in the Arc and Arve valleys in the Western Alps, to better constrain the factors that can bias exposure ages associated with glacial processes. We used the terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide ¹⁰Be (TCN) to estimate the exposure time from paired sampling of depth profiles in polished bedrock and on overlying erratic boulders. For a given sampling site, the exposure ages for both the polished bedrock and boulder are expected to be the same. However, in six cases out of seven, boulders had significantly higher ¹⁰Be surface concentrations than those of the associated polished surfaces. In present and past glacial processes, the ¹⁰Be distribution with depth for boulders and bedrocks implies the presence of an inheritance concentration of ¹⁰Be. Our study suggests that ¹⁰Be concentrations in erratic boulders and in polished bedrocks provide maximum and minimum exposure ages of the glacial retreat, respectively. © 2019 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

A concerted research effort to advance the hydrological understanding of tropical páramos

Páramos, a neotropical alpine grassland-peatland biome of the northern Andes and Central America, play an essential role in regional and global cycles of water, carbon, and nutrients. They act as water towers, delivering water and ecosystem services from the high mountains down to the Pacific, Caribbean, and Amazon regions. Páramos are also widely recognized as a biodiversity and climate change hot spots, yet they are threatened by anthropogenic activities and environmental changes. Despite their importance for water security and carbon storage, and their vulnerability to human activities, only three decades ago, páramos were severely understudied. Increasing awareness of the need for hydrological evidence to guide sustainable management of páramos prompted action for generating data and for filling long-standing knowledge gaps. This has led to a remarkably successful increase in scientific knowledge, induced by a strong interaction between the scientific, policy, and (local) management communities. A combination of well-established and innovative approaches has been applied to data collection, processing, and analysis. In this review, we provide a short overview of the historical development of research and state of knowledge of the hydrometeorology, flux dynamics, anthropogenic impacts, and the influence of extreme events in páramos. We then present emerging technologies for hydrology and water resources research and management applied to páramos. We discuss how converging science and policy efforts have leveraged traditional and new observational techniques to generate an evidence base that can support the sustainable management of páramos. We conclude that this co-evolution of science and policy was able to successfully cover different spatial and temporal scales. Lastly, we outline future research directions to showcase how sustainable long-term data collection can foster the responsible conservation of páramos water towers.     

Present-day deformation along the El Pilar Fault in eastern Venezuela: Evidence of creep along a major transform boundary

The right-lateral strike-slip El Pilar Fault is one of the major structures that accommodate the relative displacement between the Caribbean and South-America Plates. This fault, which trends East–West along the northeastern Venezuela margin, is a seismogenic source, and shows numerous evidence for active tectonics, including deformation of the Quaternary sediments filling the Cariaco Gulf. Because the main El Pilar Fault strand belongs to a set of strike-slip faults and thrusts between the stable Guyana shield (South) and the Caribbean oceanic floor (North), a GPS network was designed and installed to measure the relative motion of the El Pilar Fault and other faults. The results obtained from the comparison of 2003 and 2005 surveys indicate: (i) a lack of significant displacement (especially shortening) in the Serrania del Interior (Neogene cordillera overthrusted above the Guyana craton), (ii) an eastward displacement (relative to fixed south America plate) up to 22 mm/year of benchmarks located north of the El Pilar Fault.     

Ck-Reconstruction of Surfaces from Partial Data

In this paper, we study the problem of constructing a smooth approximant of a surface defined by the equation z = f(x ₁, x ₂), the data being a finite set of patches on this surface. This problem occurs, for example, after geophysical processing such as migration of time-maps or depth-maps. The usual algorithms to solve this problem are picking points on the patches to get Lagrange's data or trying to get local junctions on patches. But the first method does not use the continuous aspect of the data and the second one does not perform well to get a global regular approximant (C ¹ or more). As an approximant of f, a discrete smoothing spline belonging to a suitable piecewise polynomial space is proposed. The originality of the method consists in the fidelity criterion used to fit the data, which takes into account their particular aspect (surface's patches): the idea is to define a function that minimizes the volume located between the data patches and the function, and which is globally C ^k. We first demonstrate the new method on a theoretical aspect and numerical results on real data are given.     

Changes in tidal asymmetry in the German Wadden Sea

Ocean Dynamics - The recent morphological development of the German Wadden Sea (North Sea, Europe) has been characterized by expanding intertidal flats and deepening, narrowing tidal channels at...     

Let-It-Rain: a web application for stochastic point rainfall generation at ungaged basins and its applicability in runoff and flood modeling

We present a web application named Let-It-Rain that is able to generate a 1-h temporal resolution synthetic rainfall time series using the modified Bartlett–Lewis rectangular pulse (MBLRP) model, a type of Poisson stochastic rainfall generator. Let-It-Rain, which can be accessed through the web address http://www.LetItRain.info, adopts a web-based framework combining ArcGIS Server from server side for parameter value dissemination and JavaScript from client side to implement the MBLRP model. This enables any desktop and mobile end users with internet access and web browser to obtain the synthetic rainfall time series at any given location at which the parameter regionalization work has been completed (currently the contiguous United States and Republic of Korea) with only a few mouse clicks. Let-It-Rain shows satisfactory performance in its ability to reproduce observed rainfall mean, variance, auto-correlation, and probability of zero rainfall at hourly through daily accumulation levels. It also shows a reasonably good performance in reproducing watershed runoff depth and peak flow. We expect that Let-It-Rain can stimulate the uncertainty analysis of hydrologic variables across the world.     

Solute and Heat Transport Model of the Henry and Hilleke Laboratory Experiment

SEAWAT is a coupled version of MODFLOW and MT3DMS designed to simulate variable-density ground water flow and solute transport. The most recent version of SEAWAT, called SEAWAT Version 4, includes new capabilities to represent simultaneous multispecies solute and heat transport. To test the new features in SEAWAT, the laboratory experiment of Henry and Hilleke (1972) was simulated. Henry and Hilleke used warm fresh water to recharge a large sand-filled glass tank. A cold salt water boundary was represented on one side. Adjustable heating pads were used to heat the bottom and left sides of the tank. In the laboratory experiment, Henry and Hilleke observed both salt water and fresh water flow systems separated by a narrow transition zone. After minor tuning of several input parameters with a parameter estimation program, results from the SEAWAT simulation show good agreement with the experiment. SEAWAT results suggest that heat loss to the room was more than expected by Henry and Hilleke, and that multiple thermal convection cells are the likely cause of the widened transition zone near the hot end of the tank. Other computer programs with similar capabilities may benefit from benchmark testing with the Henry and Hilleke laboratory experiment.     

Une dépression piézométrique naturelle en hausse au Sahel (Sud-Ouest du Niger)A rising piezometric depression in the Sahel (southwestern Niger)

In southwest Niger, the Continental Terminal water table displays a natural hollow shape about 10 m in depth over an area of 4000 km². A 10-year survey of this hollow aquifer has shown that current recharge is above $\text{20 }\text{mm}\text{yr}{}^{\mathrm{?1}}$. The water table has risen continuously since the 1950–1960s as a result of land clearance. This shows a disequilibrium in the aquifer balance. The long-term recharge rate is estimated by radioisotopes to be around $\text{1 }\text{mm}\text{yr}{}^{\mathrm{?1}}$. This figure fits with the only possible origin of the piezometric depression, i.e. evapotranspiration losses in its centre. To cite this article: G. Favreau et al., C. R. Geoscience 334 (2002) 395–401.