Late Quaternary vegetation changes around Lake Rutundu,Mount Kenya,East Africa: evidence from grass cuticles,pollen and stable carbon isotopes

Woody, subalpine shrubs and grasses currently surround Lake Rutundu, Mount Kenya. Multiple proxies, including carbon isotopes, pollen and grass cuticles, from a 755‐cm‐long core were used to reconstruct the vegetation over the past 38 300 calendar years. Stable carbon‐isotope ratios of total organic carbon and terrestrial biomarkers from the lake sediments imply that the proportion of terrestrial plants using the C₄ photosynthetic pathway was greater during the Late Pleistocene than in the Holocene. Pollen data show that grasses were a major constituent of the vegetation throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The proportion of grass pollen relative to the pollen from other plants was greatest at the last glacial maximum (LGM). Grass cuticles confirm evidence that C₄ grass taxa were present at the LGM and that the majority followed the cold‐tolerant NADP‐MEC₄ subpathway. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prospects for the William Herschel Telescope

René Rutten, Director of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, sets the scene for future developments in international astronomy on La Palma.     

FluBiDi – a model to estimate flood based on runoff: validation using extreme and natural basin conditions

FluBiDi is a two-dimensional model created to simulate real events that can take days and months, as well as short events (minutes or hours) and inclusive laboratory tests. To verify the robustness of FluBiDi, it was tested using a previous study with both designed and real digital elevation models. The results highlight good agreement between the models (i.e. Mike Flood, SOBEK, ISIS 2D, and others) tested and FluBiDi (around 90% for a specific instant and 95% for the complete time simulation). In the simulated hydrographs, the discharge peak value, time to peak, and water level results were accurate, reproducing them with an error of less than 5%. The velocity differences observed in a couple of tests in FluBiDi were associated with very short periods of time (seconds). However, FluBiDi is highly accurate for simulating floods under real topographical conditions with differences of around 2 cm when water depth is around 150 cm. The average water depth and velocities are precise, and the model describes with high accuracy the pattern and extent of floods. FluBiDi has the capability to be adjusted to different types of events and only requires limited input data.     

Comment on the “Analysis of the State of Stress During the 1997 Earthquake Swarm in Western Bohemia” by A. Slancová and J. Horálek (Studia geoph. et geod. 44(2000), 272–291)

Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica -     

Numerical simulation of the diurnal cycle of rainfall in SW Amazon basin during the 1999 rainy season: the role of convective trigger function

In continental areas, the maximum rainfall simulated with the Brazilian developments on the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (BRAMS) occurs around 4?h earlier than the one observed with rain gauges. This work presents the successful implementation of a new convective trigger function (CTF) in the convective parameterization scheme used in BRAMS that corrects this misfit between model and observations. The importance of the CTF formulation on the diurnal cycle of rainfall over the Amazon Basin is reflected by the following numbers: Over Rondonia (SW Amazonia), the original version of BRAMS simulates the maximum rainfall at 1400 UTC (1000 LST), with the new CTF maximum shifting to 1800?UTC (1400?LST), while the S-band radar rainfall maximum is at 1900?UTC (1500?LST). This is attributed to two factors: (1) the new CTF is now coupled to the sensible and latent heat fluxes at surface; (2) during the early morning, the convective available potential energy is reduced.