Crustal and upper mantle structure of the northwestern North Island, New Zealand, from seismic refraction data

The crustal and upper mantle structure of the northwestern North Island of New Zealand is derived from the results of a seismic refraction experiment; shots were fired at the ends and middle of a 575 km-long line extending from Lake Taupo to Cape Reinga. The principal finding from the experiment is that the crust is 25 ± 2 km thick, and is underlain by what is interpreted to be an upper mantle of seismic velocity 7.6 ± 0.1 km s⁻¹, that increases to 7.9 km s⁻¹ at a depth of about 45 km. Crustal seismic velocities vary between 5.3 and 6.36 km s⁻¹ with an average value of 6.04 km s⁻¹. There are close geophysical and geological similarities between the north-western North Island of New Zealand and the Basin and Range province of the western United States. In particular, the conditions of low upper-mantle seismic velocities, thin crust with respect to surface elevation, and high heat-flow (70–100 mW m⁻²) observed in these two areas can be ascribed to their respective positions behind an active convergent margin for about the past 20 Myr.     

The disruption of planetary satellites and the creation of planetary rings

The Voyager spacecraft discovered that small moons orbit within all four observed ring systems coincident with the discovery of narrow and dusty rings around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These moons can provide the source for new rings if they are catastrophically disrupted by a comet or large meteoroid impact. This hypothesis for ring origins provides a natural mechanism for the ongoing creation of planetary rings. While it relieves somewhat the problem of explaining the continued existence of rings with apparently short evolutionary lifetimes, it raises the problem of explaining the continued existence of small moons, and the coexistence of moons and rings at comparable locations within the Roche zones of the giant planets. This problem has been studied in some detail recently, and the present work is a review of our current understanding of the processes in satellite disruption that pertain to the creation of planetary rings and the collisional cascade of circumplanetary bodies. Significant progress has been made. Narrow rings are produced by disruption of small moons in numerical simulations, and a self-consistent model of the collisional cascade can explain present-day moon populations. Absolute timescales and initial moon populations remain uncertain due to our poor knowledge of the impactor population and uncertainties in the strength of planetary satellites. More pressing are the qualitative issues that remain to be resolved including the nature of reaccretion of the debris and the origin of Saturn's rings.     

Resolving mechanisms of toxicity while pursuing ecotoxicological relevance?

In this age of modern biology, aquatic toxicological research has pursued mechanisms of action of toxicants. This has provided potential tools for ecotoxicologic investigations. However, problems of biocomplexity and issues at higher levels of biological organization remain a challenge. In the 1980s and 1990s and continuing to a lesser extent today, organisms residing in highly contaminated field sites or exposed in the laboratory to calibrated concentrations of individual compounds were carefully analyzed for their responses to priority pollutants. Correlation of biochemical and structural analyses in cultured cells and tissues, as well as the in vivo exposures led to the production and application of biomarkers of exposure and effect and to our awareness of genotoxicity and its chronic manifestations, such as neoplasms, in wild fishes. To gain acceptance of these findings in the greater environmental toxicology community, “validation of the model” versus other, better-established often rodent models, was necessary and became a major focus. Resultant biomarkers were applied to heavily contaminated and reference field sites as part of effects assessment and with investigations following large-scale disasters such as oil spills or industrial accidents.

Over the past 15 years, in the laboratory, small aquarium fish models such as medaka (Oryzias latipes), zebrafish (Danio rerio), platyfish (Xiphophorus species), fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas), and sheepshead minnow (Cyprinodon variegatus) were increasingly used establishing mechanisms of toxicants. Today, the same organisms provide reliable information at higher levels of biological organization relevant to ecotoxicology. We review studies resolving mechanisms of toxicity and discuss ways to address biocomplexity, mixtures of contaminants, and the need to relate individual level responses to populations and communities.     

Calibration of the high-pressure cohesive strength meter (CSM)

Coastal erosion is an immense economic and social problem that has been receiving increased attention in recent years. A number of devices have been developed to determine the sediment stability in coastal areas: laboratory and field flumes; a range of different erosion devices; shear vanes and fall cone penetrometers. The cohesive strength meter (CSM) erosion device was developed to determine in situ the temporal and spatial variations in the erosion threshold of muddy intertidal sediments. Technological developments have enabled considerable improvements to be made to the original design over the last 15 years.     

2D Fokker–Planck models of rotating clusters

Globular clusters rotate significantly, and with the increasing amount of detailed morphological and kinematical data obtained in recent years on galactic globular clusters many interesting features show up. We show how our theoretical evolutionary models of rotating clusters can be used to obtain fits, which at least properly model the overall rotation and its implied kinematics in full 2D detail (dispersions, rotation velocities). Our simplified equal mass axisymmetric rotating model provides detailed two-dimensional kinematical and morphological data for star clusters. The degree of rotation is not dominant in energy, but also non-negligible for the phase-space distribution function, shape and kinematics of clusters. Therefore, the models are well applicable for galactic globular clusters. Since previously published papers on that matter by us made it difficult to do detailed comparisons with observations, we provide a much more comprehensive and easy-to-use set of data here, which uses as entries dynamical age and flattening of observed cluster and then offers a limited range of applicable models in full detail. The method, data structure and some exemplary comparison with observations are presented. Future work will improve modelling and data base to take a central black hole, a mass spectrum and stellar evolution into account.     

A comparative study of geothermal and meteorological records of climate change in Kamchatka

To reconstruct the recent climate history in Kamchatka, a series of repeated precise temperature logs were performed in a number of boreholes located in a broad east-west strip (between 52 and 54°N) in the central part of Kamchatka west of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski. Within three years more than 30 temperature logs were performed in 10 holes (one up to six logs per hole) to the depth of up to 400 metres. Measured temperature gradients varied in a broad interval 0 to 60 mK/m and in some holes a sizeable variation in the subsurface temperatures due to advective heat transport by underground water was observed. Measured data were compared with older temperature profiles obtained in the early eighties by Sugrobov and Yanovsky (1993). Even when older data are of poorer precision (accuracy of about 0.1 K), they presented valuable information of the subsurface temperature conditions existing 20–25 years ago. Borehole observations and the inverted ground surface temperature histories (GSTHs) used for the paleoclimate reconstruction were complemented with a detailed survey of meteorological data. Namely, the long-term surface air temperature (SAT) and precipitation records from Petropavlovsk station (in operation since 1890) were used together with similar data from a number of local subsidiary meteo-stations operating in Central Kamchatka since 1950. Regardless of extreme complexity of the local meteorological/climate conditions, diversity of borehole sites and calibration of measuring devices used during the whole campaign, the results of the climate reconstruction supported a general warming of about 1 K characteristic for the 20th century, which followed an inexpressive cooler period typical for the most of the 19th century. In the last three to four decades the warming rate has been locally increasing up to 0.02 K/year. It was also shown that the snow cover played a dominant role in the penetration of the climate “signal” to depth and could considerably smooth down the subsurface response to the changes occurred on the surface.     

南极GPS数据质量分析

以多路径误差和电离层延迟为评价指标,利用TEQC软件和QCVIEW软件对南极埃默里冰架、内陆冰盖、纳拉峡海湾、拉斯曼丘陵的实测GPS数据以及部分IGS站点的数据进行了数据质量分析,得到结论： 1)在同一站点上,L2上的多路径误差总比L1上的多路径误差要大;2)在南极不同环境下的多路径误差不同;3)纬度和太阳活动剧烈程度是影响南极地区GPS数据电离层延迟大小的两个重要因素。     

Persistent organic pollutants and histological lesions in Mayan catfish Ariopsis assimilis from the Bay of Chetumal, Mexico

Livers of catfish (Ariopsis assimilis) from the Bay of Chetumal were analyzed for organochlorine compounds and hydrocarbons as part of a study to diagnose the environmental health of the Bay after a catfish mass mortality that occurred in 1996. The presence of histological lesions in several organs of the fish as result of chemical exposure was also evaluated. The concentrations of organic pollutants found in the Bay may be considered high if compared to the levels reported for sites affected by chemical pollution. High prevalences of cellular alteration histopathologies were found in liver, including hepatic tumors. The presence of some lesions may be related statistically to environmental pollution in the Bay, specially with chlorinated compounds.     

Applying essentially non‐oscillatory interpolation to controlled‐source electromagnetic modelling*

Modelling and inversion of controlled‐source electromagnetic (CSEM) fields requires accurate interpolation of modelled results near strong resistivity contrasts. There, simple linear interpolation may produce large errors, whereas higher‐order interpolation may lead to oscillatory behaviour in the interpolated result. We propose to use the essentially non‐oscillatory, piecewise polynomial interpolation scheme designed for piecewise smooth functions that contains discontinuities in the function itself or in its first or higher derivatives. The scheme uses a non‐linear adaptive algorithm to select a set of interpolation points that represent the smoothest part of the function among the sets of neighbouring points. We present numerical examples to demonstrate the usefulness of the scheme. The first example shows that the essentially non‐oscillatory interpolation (ENO) scheme better captures an isolated discontinuity. In the second example, we consider the case of sampling the electric field computed by a finite‐volume CSEM code at a receiver location. In this example, the ENO interpolation performs quite well. However, the overall error is dominated by the discretization error. The other examples consider the comparison between sampling with essentially non‐oscillatory interpolation and existing interpolation schemes. In these examples, essentially non‐oscillatory interpolation provides more accurate results than standard interpolation, especially near discontinuities.     

Estimation of the effect of protective piers on wind wave parameters in the Sevastopol Bay

An effectiveness of the storm wave attenuation by protective piers in the Sevastopol Bay of the Black Sea is studied on the basis of numerical simulation using the SWAN spectral model. Analyzed are the parameters of waves generated by winds of four main directions as well as by the southern cyclone during the storm on November 11, 2007. It is obtained that waves from the northwest part of the Black Sea penetrate most intensively into the Sevastopol Bay in case of western wind and, to a lesser degree, in case of northern and southern winds. A protective effect of the piers is observed in the west part of the bay only and the wave attenuation near the southern coast is more significant than near the northern one. The area of the southern coast directly behind the southern pier is completely protected from the storm waves and, as moving away from the pier, the danger of intensive wave effect on the coast is kept.