Ranking of Placer Gold Prospects in Chile Through Analytic Hierarchy Process

Chile has a rich, but poorly known history of placer gold mining. At present, this sector is almost nonexistent and there are some restrictions for its revival: disperse and partial information on existing resources and limited technical expertise to assess the potential of placer gold mine sites. This paper presents the background, methodology and results of the prioritization process of known prospects of this kind in Chile. This research was part of a publicly funded project aimed to incentivize the development of this industry. The ranking was carried out using the analytic hierarchy process, which allowed to include different quantitative and qualitative variables related to the economic potential, technical aspects, contextual viability and socioeconomic factors in the analysis. The results show that, despite the increasing relevance of environmental and community issues in mining development, the business potential and the economic/technical aspects are the main factors in the early selection of a site to advance in exploration and development activities. Both variables represented around 40% and 37% of weights in the final selection, respectively. In contrast, contextual viability and local socioeconomic impacts only accounted for the remaining 23%. This study also shows that the inclusion of experts with different backgrounds in the process enriches the analysis and does not significantly distort the final outcome of the prioritization. Finally, the relevance of using MCDM tools when assessing the attractiveness of mine sites for their development is highlighted, particularly when public funds for subsequent exploration activities are committed.

     

Risk Management for Petroleum Reservoir Production: A Simulation-Based Study of Prediction

We consider numerical solutions of the Darcy and Buckley–Leverett equations for flow in porous media. These solutions depend on a realization of a random field that describes the reservoir permeability. The main content of this paper is to formulate and analyze a probability model for the numerical coarse grid solution error. We explore the extent to which the coarse grid oil production rate is sufficient to predict future oil production rates. We find that very early oil production data is sufficient to reduce the prediction error in oil production by about 30%, relative to the prior probability prediction.     

Statewide Estimates of Undiscovered Deposits of Gold,Silver, Copper,Lead, and Zinc

Estimates of the number of undiscovered deposits on a statewide basis offer a different perspective on the nation's undiscovered resources of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc. Mean estimates of the number of undiscovered deposits statewide were extracted from the estimates of undiscovered deposits nationwide. More than 50 undiscovered deposits are estimated to occur in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Estimating the number of undiscovered deposits statewide serves as a measure of a state's total remaining mineral resources in known conventional deposit types.     

Flow and form in rehabilitation of large-river ecosystems: An example from the Lower Missouri River

On large, intensively engineered rivers like the Lower Missouri, the template of the physical habitat is determined by the nearly independent interaction of channel form and flow regime. We evaluated the interaction between flow and form by modeling four combinations of modern and historical channel form and modern and historical flow regimes. The analysis used shallow, slow water (shallow-water habitat, SWH, defined as depths between 0 and 1.5 m, and current velocities between 0 and 0.75 m/s) as an indicator of habitat that has been lost on many intensively engineered rivers and one that is thought to be especially important in rearing of young fishes. Two-dimensional hydrodynamic models for modern and historical channels of the Lower Missouri River at Hermann, Missouri, indicate substantial differences between the two channels in total availability and spatial characteristics of SWH. In the modern channel, SWH is maximized at extremely low flows and in overbank flows, whereas the historical channel had substantially more SWH at all discharges and SWH increased with increasing discharge. The historical channel form produced 3–7 times the SWH area of the modern channel regardless of flow regime. The effect of flow regime is evident in increased within-year SWH variability with the natural flow regime, including significant seasonal peaks of SWH associated with spring flooding. Comparison with other reaches along the Lower Missouri River indicates that a) channel form is the dominant control of the availability of habitat even in reaches where the hydrograph is more intensively altered, and b) rehabilitation projects that move toward the historical condition can be successful in increasing topographic diversity and thereby decreasing sensitivity of the availability of habitat to flow regime. The relative efficacy of managing flow and form in creating SWH is useful information toward achieving socially acceptable rehabilitation of the ecosystem in large river systems.     

TRACKING THE BABY BOOM,THE BABY BUST,AND THE ECHO GENERATIONS: HOW AGE COMPOSITION REGULATES US MIGRATION*

US regional and state migration data from the 1940s–80s, when members of the baby boom generation aged into their years of peak labor force mobility, suggest ways in which changing age composition regulates geographical mobility and interregional migration. Labor supply pressure plays a key role in the dynamics of the national migration system. A “delayed mobility” effect in the 1980s similar to the delayed fertility of the baby boom cohorts appears to be a result of the depressed rates of mobility experienced by members of this generation when they flooded regional labor markets with record numbers of entrants in the 1970s. Recent temporal shifts in age-specific volumes of interregional migration help predict the future pace of migration based upon the projected age distribution of the nation.     

City of the Spectacle: White Night Melbourne and the politics of public space

Public policy frequently is utilised as a medium to facilitate or restrict access to public space, and to privilege economic priorities. In this context urban arts festivals are used as a means to generate dominant narratives of place and use of public space. Urban arts festivals generate spaces of spectacle and wonder, and are often used as marketing strategies to revitalise urban economies and differentiate cities one from another on the global stage, engendering a commodification of place. The present paper explores this tension through an examination of the role of urban arts festivals in spatial politics. White Night Melbourne is the first Australian iteration of the Nuit Blanche International, an international network of all-night arts festivals. It is used as a case study to explore the impact of an urban arts festival on the spatial politics of Melbourne. A theoretical basis is established using the frame of Guy Debord's ([1967] 1994) The Society of the Spectacle, as well as the concepts of ‘assemblage’ and ‘expressivity’.     

Use of terrestrial photogrammetry for monitoring and measuring bank erosion

This paper examines the use of terrestrial photogrammetry as a technique for measuring bank erosion in a rapidly changing fluvial environment. It has been recognized that there are a number of advantages when applying photogrammetric techniques to geomorphological situations. In this study the enhancement of spatial sampling combined with the ability to capture additional information, such as soil moisture, on film, is of particular importance in enabling the identification of specific processes involved in bank erosion as well as detailed volumetric analysis of losses. Metric terrestrial photography was taken of the river bank on several dates, and data were abstracted by the use of analytical photogrammetry. This enabled the generation of digital terrain models from which morphological and volumetric changes could be assessed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.