Coherent structures and flux contribution over an inhomogeneously irrigated cotton field

The turbulence data measured at two levels (i.e., 8.7 and 2.7?m) in the Energy Balance Experiment (EBEX), which was conducted in San Joaquin Valley in California during the period from July 20 to August 24, 2000, are used to study the characteristics of coherent structures over an irrigated cotton field. Patch-to-patch irrigation in the field generated the dry-to-wet horizontal advection and the oasis effects, leading to the development of a stably internal boundary layer (SIBL) in the late mornings or the early afternoons. The SIBL persisted in the rest of the afternoons. Under this circumstance, a near-neutral atmospheric surface layer (ASL) developed during the period with a stratification transition from the unstable to stable conditions during the daytime. Therefore, EBEX provides us with unique datasets to investigate the features of coherent structures that were generated over the patches upstream and passed by our site in the unstable ASL, the near-neutral ASL, and the SIBL. We use an objective detection technique and the conditional average method that is developed based on the wavelet analysis. Our data reveal some consistencies and inconsistencies in the characteristics of coherent structures as compared with previous studies. Ramp-like structures and sweep?Cejection cycles under the daytime SIBL have similar patterns to those under the nocturnal stable ASL. However, some features (i.e., intermittence) are different from those under the nocturnal stable ASL. Under the three stratifications, thermal and mechanical factors in the ASL perform differently in affecting the ramp intensity for different quantities (i.e., velocity components, temperature, and specific humidity), leading to coherent structures that modulate turbulence flow and alter turbulent transfer differently. It is also found that coherent structures contribute about 10?C20% to the total fluxes in our case with different flux contributions under three stratifications and with higher transporting efficiency in sensible heat flux than latent heat and momentum fluxes.     

IFKIS-Hydro: an early warning and information system for floods and debris flows

IFKIS-Hydro is an information and warning system for hydrological hazards in small- and medium-scale catchments. The system collects data such as weather forecasts, precipitation measurements, water level gauges, discharge simulations and local observations of event-specific phenomena. In addition, IFKIS-Hydro incorporates a web-based information platform, which serves as a central hub for the submission and overview of data. Special emphasis is given to local information. This is accomplished particularly by human observers. In medium-scale catchments, discharge forecast models have an increasing importance in providing valuable information. IFKIS-Hydro was developed in several test regions in Switzerland and the first results of its application are available now. The system is constantly extended to additional regions and may become the standard for warning systems in smaller catchments in Switzerland.     

Geological evolution of the West Luzon Basin (South China Sea,Philippines)

Interpretation of deep 2-D multi-channel seismic data sheds insights into the geological evolution of the West Luzon Basin, Philippines. This basin is a sediment-filled trough that is located between the island of Luzon and the outer arc high of the west Luzon subduction zone. High-amplitude, low-frequency reflection bands mark the acoustic basement. The basement, at about 6 s (TWT), is dissected by normal faults with some of them being inverted in a later phase of deformation. The sedimentary successions, overlying the basement are stratified with partly chaotic structures and discontinuous reflectors. Five regional unconformities separate major stratigraphic units. Grid calculations of our seismic data reveal variations in the sedimentation pattern of the basin with a shift of the deposition centre from east to west and backwards during formation. A distinct bottom-simulating reflector is commonly observed. Because the northern boundary of the continental fragments to the South of the West Luzon Basin is unclear we speculate that the basin may be (partly) underlain by continental crust. The continental crust was affected by rifting prior to and during the opening of the South China Sea and the basin was overprinted at a later stage by a forearc structural setting when subduction was initiated.     

CFD modeling of high-pressurized CO2 released from onshore pipeline leakages

Safe pipeline transportation of carbon dioxide is a critical issue in the developing field of carbon capture and storage technology. Inadequate fluid thermo- and regimes for on- and offshore transport through high-pressurized pipelines can induce pipe material obsolescence or even pipeline rupture. In such cases, CO₂ (Carbon dioxide) will be released and dispersed in the ambient medium. The dispersion is influenced by the total amount of released fluid, jet pressure and direction, the released concentrations, leakage hole size, ambient material properties and is also affected by the dynamical conditions of the environmental medium. The goal of this study is the hydrodynamical characterization of carbon dioxide jet expansion and dispersion in the ambient atmosphere in case of onshore pipeline accidental leaks. Numerical simulations were carried out by means of a 3D turbulent CFD (computational fluid dynamics) code which includes multi-component flow treatment. The influence of the jet release pressure and size of the leakage hole on harmful CO₂ concentration distances will be analyzed.     

Heat Transport Processes in the Earth’s Crust

The heat of the Earth derives from internal and external sources. A heat balance shows that most of the heat provided by external sources is re-emitted by long-wavelength heat radiation and that the dominant internal sources are original heat and heat generated by decay of unstable radioactive isotopes. Understanding of the thermal regime of the Earth requires appreciation of properties and mechanisms for heat generation, storage, and transport. Both experimental and indirect methods are available for inferring the corresponding rock properties. Heat conduction is the dominant transport process in the Earth’s crust, except for settings where appreciable fluid flow provides a mechanism for heat advection. For most crustal and mantle rocks, heat radiation becomes significant only at temperatures above 1200°C.

Chronology building using objective identification of annual signals in trace element profiles of stalagmites

Determination of annual lamination provides important additional constraints to radiometric dates on speleothems, both for dating the duration of specific growth intervals and optimizing growth models. In the absence of visible laminae, however, speleothem age models are reliant upon curve fitting through discretely dated points and are therefore inherently more uncertain than annual chronologies from laminae. Given that the impact of seasonality on speleothems is expected to be strong enough to generate an annual pulse in trace element chemistry regardless of whether or not visible or fluorescent growth laminae are visible, we demonstrate the potential for deriving high-resolution stalagmite chronologies from non-laminated samples using annual chemical variations in stalagmites from two Alpine caves (Obir, Austria and Ernesto, NE Italy). Trace element data were obtained by ion microprobe analyses for H, P, Mg, Na, Sr and Ba and the annual signal was sought using spectral and wavelet analysis. An automated chemical peak-counting software tool was developed in MATLAB^©. It counts significant annual peaks using criteria of minimum amplitude in relation to the local standard deviation of signal variation and minimum separation between peaks determined by the thickness of the preceding layers. Verification of the tool using visibly laminated samples suggests the software is a reliable and accurate method of chronology building, with hit ratios greater than 0.93 and less than 0.75% false alarm occurrences. Used in conjunction with other dating methods such as radiocarbon, U–Th and sulphur peak dating, the automated chemical laminae chronology-building approach provides a more meaningful alternative to simple age-depth curve fitting for non-laminated samples.     

Controls on event runoff coefficients in the eastern Italian Alps

Analyses of event runoff coefficients provide essential insight on catchment response, particularly if a range of catchments and a range of events are compared by a single indicator. In this study we examine the effect of climate, geology, land use, flood types and initial soil moisture conditions on the distribution functions of the event runoff coefficients for a set of 14 mountainous catchments located in the eastern Italian Alps, ranging in size from 7.3 to 608.4 km². Runoff coefficients were computed from hourly precipitation, runoff data and estimates of snowmelt. A total of 535 events were analysed over the period 1989–2004. We classified each basin using a “permeability index” which was inferred from a geologic map and ranged from “low” to “high permeability”. A continuous soil moisture accounting model was applied to each catchment to classify ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ initial soil moisture conditions. The results indicate that the spatial distribution of runoff coefficients is highly correlated with mean annual precipitation, with the mean runoff coefficient increasing with mean annual precipitation. Geology, through the ‘permeability index’, is another important control on runoff coefficients for catchments with mean annual precipitation less than 1200 mm. Land use, as indexed by the SCS curve number, influences runoff coefficient distribution to a lesser degree. An analysis of the runoff coefficients by flood type indicates that runoff coefficients increase with event snowmelt. Results show that there exists an intermediate region of subsurface water storage capacity, as indexed by a flow–duration curve-based index, which maximises the impact of initial wetness conditions on the runoff coefficient. This means that the difference between runoff coefficients characterised by wet and dry initial conditions is negligible both for basins with very large storage capacity and for basins with small storage capacity. For basins with intermediate storage capacities, the impact of the initial wetness conditions may be relatively large.     

Biotic drivers of river and floodplain geomorphology – New molecular methods for assessing present‐day and past biota

Geomorphology has increasingly considered the role of biotic factors as controls upon geomorphic processes across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Where timescales are long (centennial and longer), it has been possible to quantify relationships between geomorphic processes and vegetation using, for example, the pollen record. However, where the biotic agents are fauna, longer term reconstruction of the impacts of biological activity upon geomorphic processes is more challenging. Here, we review the prospect of using environmental DNA as a molecular proxy to decipher the presence and nature of faunal influences on geomorphic processes in both present and ancient deposits. When used appropriately, this method has the potential to improve our understanding of biotic drivers of geomorphic processes, notably fauna, over long timescales and so to reconstruct how such drivers might explain the landscape as we see it today. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Landscape variations in stream water SO4 and δSSO4 in a boreal stream network

Despite reduced anthropogenic deposition during the last decades, deposition sulphate may still play an important role in the biogeochemical cycles of S and many catchments may act as net sources of S that may remain for several decades. The aim of this study is to elucidate the temporal and spatial dynamics of both SO₄²⁻ and δ³⁴S_SO4 in stream water from catchments with varying percentage of wetland and forest coverage and to determine their relative importance for catchment losses of S. Stream water samples were collected from 15 subcatchments ranging in size from 3 to 6780 ha, in a boreal stream network, northern Sweden. In forested catchments (<2% wetland cover) S-SO₄²⁻ concentrations in stream water averaged 1.7 mg L⁻¹ whereas in wetland dominated catchments (>30% wetland cover) the concentrations averaged 0.3 mg L⁻¹. A significant negative relationship was observed between S-SO₄²⁻ and percentage wetland coverage (r² = 0.77, p < 0.001) and the annual export of stream water SO₄²⁻ and wetland coverage (r² = 0.76, p < 0.001). The percentage forest coverage was on the other hand positively related to stream water SO₄²⁻ concentrations and the annual export of stream water SO₄²⁻ (r² = 0.77 and r² = 0.79, respectively). The annual average δ³⁴S_SO4 value in wetland dominated streams was +7.6‰ and in streams of forested catchments +6.7‰. At spring flood the δ³⁴S_SO4 values decreased in all streams by 1‰ to 5‰. The δ³⁴S_SO4 values in all streams were higher than the δ³⁴S_SO4 value of +4.7‰ in precipitation (snow). The export of S ranged from 0.5 kg S ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ (wetland headwater stream) to 3.8 kg S ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ (forested headwater stream). With an average S deposition in open field of 1.3 kg S ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ (2002-2006) the mass balance results in a net export of S from all catchments, except in catchments with >30% wetland. The high temporal and spatial resolution of this study demonstrates that the reducing environments of wetlands play a key role for the biogeochemistry of S in boreal landscapes and are net sinks of S. Forested areas, on the other hand were net sources of S.