Constraints on sedimentary ages of the Chuanlinggou Formation in the Ming Tombs,Beijing, North China Craton: LA-ICP-MS and SHRIMP U–Pb dating of detrital zircons

Detrital zircons in five sedimentary samples, MC1 to MC5, from the bottom of the Chuanlinggou Formation in the Ming Tombs District, Beijing, were dated with the LA-ICP-MS and SHRIMP U–Pb methods. Age spectra of the five samples show a major peak at 2500 Ma and a secondary peak at 2000 Ma, suggesting their provenances were mainly from the crystalline basement of the North China Craton and the Trans-North China Orogen. The youngest zircon has an age of 1673 ± 44 Ma, indicating that the Chuanlinggou Formation was deposited after this age. From sample MC4 to MC5, lithology changed from a clastic rock (fine-grained sandstone) to a carbonate rock (fine-grained dolomite), suggesting that the depositional basin became progressively deeper. The age spectrum of sample MC5 shows a major peak at 2500 Ma and a secondary peak at 2000 Ma. Sample MC4, which is stratigraphically lower than sample MC5, only had one peak at 2500 Ma. We conclude that there was a transgressive event when sediments represented by MC5 was deposited, and seawater carried ca. 2000 Ma clastic materials to the basin where the Chuanlinggou Formation was deposited, leading to the addition of ca. 2000 Ma detritus. Our research indicates that the source area for the sediments became more extensive with time. We conclude that the Chuanlinggou Formation in the Ming Tombs District was deposited in a low-energy mud flat sedimentary environment in the inter-supra tidal zone because it is mainly composed of silty mudstone and fine-grained sandstone with relatively simple sedimentary structures.     

Seasonal variability of oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in a wetland system of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau,southwest China: a quantitative assessment of groundwater inflow fluxes

The Caohai Wetland serves as an important ecosystem on the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau and as a nationally important nature reserve for migratory birds in China. In this study, surface water, groundwater and wetland water were collected for the measurement of environmental isotopes to reveal the seasonal variability of oxygen and hydrogen isotopes (δ¹⁸O, δD), sources of water, and groundwater inflow fluxes. Results showed that surface water and groundwater are of meteoric origin. The isotopes in samples of wetland water were well mixed vertically in seasons of both high-flow (September) and low-flow (April); however, marked seasonal and spatial variations were observed. During the high-flow season, the isotopic composition in surface wetland water varied from ?97.13 to ?41.73‰ for δD and from ?13.17 to ?4.70‰ for δ¹⁸O. The composition of stable isotopes in the eastern region of this wetland was lower than in the western region. These may have been influenced by uneven evaporation caused by the distribution of aquatic vegetation. During the low-flow season, δD and δ¹⁸O in the more open water with dead aquatic vegetation ranged from ?37.11 to ?11.77‰, and from ?4.25 to ?0.08‰, respectively. This may result from high evaporation rates in this season with the lowest atmospheric humidity. Groundwater fluxes were calculated by mass transfer and isotope mass balance approaches, suggesting that the water sources of the Caohai Wetland were mainly from groundwater in the high-flow season, while the groundwater has a smaller contribution to wetland water during the low-flow season.     

Mechanical behavior and micro-structure of cement kiln dust-stabilized expensive soil

In this study, the effects of cement kiln dust (CKD) on the swelling properties, strength properties, and microstructures of CKD-stabilized expansive soil were investigated. Samples were prepared and stabilized with different CKD content ratios, ranging from 0 to 18% by dry mass. The results obtained show that the maximum swelling pressures decrease exponentially with increases in CKD content. Both the cohesion and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) increase at ratios below 10% CKD and then decrease slightly, above that ratio. CKD can also improve the strength of saturated, expansive soil. There is no visible change of UCS for soil without CKD when cured, while the UCS of a sample with 10% CKD content after curing for 90 days is higher than that after curing for only 1 day. This indicates that CKD can improve the long-term strength of expansive soil. Finally, microstructure analysis reveals that the addition of CKD reduces the montmorillonite content of expansive soil and decreases its swelling properties. The addition of CKD also changes the pore volume distribution, both the size and amount of macro-pores and micro-pores decrease with increase in CKD content. For saturated samples, the size of macro-pores is obviously reduced, while that of micro-pores is slightly increased for both treated and untreated soils. Hydration and saturation processes make the soil structure become dispersive which results in a lower strength, and adding CKD can restrain this process. The suggested optimal CKD content is between 10 and 14% and with a curing time of more than 27 days.     

Study on Water Internal Recycle Process and Mechanism in Typical Mountain Areas of Inland Basins,Northwest China: Progress and Challenge

The water resource and its change of mountainous area are very important to the oasis economic system and ecosystem in the arid areas of northwest China. Accurately understanding the water transfer and circulation process among vegetation, soil, and atmosphere over different hydrological units in mountainous areas such as snow and ice, cold desert, forest and grassland is the basic scientific issue of water research in cold and arid regions, which is also the basis of water resource delicacy management and regulation. There are many research results on the hydrological function of different land covers in mountain areas, basin hydrological processes, however, there are only very limited studies on the water internal recycle at basin scale. The quantitative study on the mechanism of water internal recycle is still at the starting stage, which faces many challenges. The key project “Study on water internal recycle processes and mechanism in typical mountain areas of inland basins, Northwest China” funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China will select the Aksu River and Shule River Basin, which have better observation basis, as study area. The internal mechanism of moisture transfer and exchange process of different land cover and atmosphere, the internal mechanism of water cycle in the basin, and water transfer paths in atmosphere will be studied through enhancing runoff plot experiments on different land cover, analyzing the mechanism of water vapor transfer and exchange between different land covers in the watershed by isotope tracing on the water vapor flux of vegetation water, soil moisture and atmospheric moisture, improving the algorithms of remote sensing inversion and ground verification on land surface evapotranspiration on different land cover, and analyzing the water vapor flux from reanalysis data, and the coupling modeling of regional climate model and land surface process model. At last, the effect of different land cover in hydrological process of mountain area, and the impact of land cover on downstream oasis will be systematically analyzed.     

A modified mix-differenced approach for estimating multi-GNSS real-time satellite clock offsets

A modified mixed-differenced approach for estimating multi-GNSS real-time clock offsets is presented. This approach, as compared to the earlier presented mixed-differenced approach which uses epoch-differenced and undifferenced observations, further adds a satellite-differenced process. The proposed approach, based on real-time orbit products and a mix of epoch-differenced and satellite-differenced observations to estimate only satellite clock offsets and tropospheric zenith wet delays, has fewer estimated parameters than other approaches, and thus its implementing procedure is efficient and can be performed and extended easily. To obtain high accuracy, the approach involves three steps. First, the high-accuracy tropospheric zenith wet delay of each station is estimated using mixed-differenced carrier phase observations. Second, satellite clock offset changes between adjacent epochs are estimated using also mixed-differenced carrier phase observations. Third, the satellite clock offsets at the initial epoch are estimated using satellite-differenced pseudorange observations. Finally, the initial epoch clock results and clock offset changes are concatenated to obtain the clock results of the current epoch. To validate the real-time satellite clock results, multi-GNSS post-processing clock products from IGS ACs were selected for comparison. From the comparison, the standard deviations of the GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo systems clock results are approximately 0.1–0.4 ns, except for the BeiDou GEO satellites. The root mean squares are about 0.4–2.3 ns, which are similar to those of other international real-time products. When the clock estimates were assessed based on a pseudo-kinematic PPP procedure, the positioning accuracies in the East, North and Up components reach 5.6, 5.5 and 7.6 cm, respectively, which meet the centimeter level and are comparable to the application of other products.     

Application of generalized Pareto distribution for modeling aleatory variability of ground motion

Natural Hazards - The lognormal distribution is commonly used to characterize the aleatory variability of ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA)....     

基于颗粒识别分析系统的碎屑流堆积物颗粒识别和统计方法研究

碎屑流堆积物颗粒识别和统计是碎屑流灾害的研究重点。文章基于图像处理孔隙（颗粒）及裂隙图像识别与分析系统（PCAS）,以贵州纳雍普洒村崩塌-碎屑流为例,结合纳雍崩塌堆积物粒径实测结果,通过阐释识别过程中阈值、孔喉封闭半径、最小孔隙面积的参数意义,研究PCAS软件在碎屑流颗粒识别与统计中的应用,并提出了颗粒识别时这些参数的选取方法。分析结果表明:（1）PCAS能自动准确地识别碎屑流堆积物颗粒与孔隙,相比人工计数更精细,所识别堆积物各区小颗粒比重较大,0～2 m颗粒粒径各区占比都在50%以上;（2）当阈值为170（像素）时能获得精细的二值图像,颗粒与孔隙得到了准确地区分;（3）不同参数取值下获得堆积物颗粒粒径分布结果不同,碎屑流堆积物颗粒识别宜采用较大的孔喉封闭半径和较小孔隙面积,当二者比值为3/30（像素）时能更好地反应颗粒粒径分布情况;（4）PCAS具有较高的可行性,统计结果显示,各粒径含量变化趋势与人工统计相近,两种统计方法各粒径占比、分布规律基本吻合,说明利用PCAS可以实现对崩塌碎屑流颗粒粒径分布的高效便捷分析。     

非饱和土中水平入渗方程显式求解

在求解非饱和态土中水分入渗问题时,水力函数是体积含水率或者吸力的函数,致使其控制方程呈现出强非线性的特征,进而使得其求解变得十分困难。基于水分在土体介质中流动耗时取极值路径的选择这一假定,引入时间泛函,基于变分法原理将水平入渗问题转化为泛函极值问题。通过求解Euler–Lagrange方程,结合边界条件,得到非线性瞬态水平入渗问题的显式解析解。结合Brooks-Corey型水力函数,显式地求解出该类型非饱和态土的体积含水率发展分布规律。通过计算4种不同类型土体的水平入渗规律,将求解结果与已有结果以及数值结果进行对比,验证了该方法的有效性。结果表明:体积含水率分布与位置距离和湿润峰距离比值呈幂函数关系,指数取决于土-水特征曲线的形状参数;初始条件与边界条件会对体积含水率分布造成不同程度的影响。     

Variations of methane stable isotopic values from an Alpine peatland on the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Acta Geochimica - Isotopic signature is a powerful tool to discriminate methane (CH4) source types and constrain regional and global scale CH4 budgets. Peatlands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau are...