Integration of reflection seismic and sediment grain-size data from Lake Khubsugul (Northern Mongolia): a reply to Prokopenko and Kendall

Prokopenko and Kendall (J Paleolimnol doi:, 2008) criticise the work presented in Fedotov et al. (J Paleolimnol 39:335–348, 2008), and instead propose an alternative interpretation for the grain-size evolution recorded in the KDP-01 core, retrieved from the central part of Lake Khubsugul. Their interpretation is based (i) on a seismic-stratigraphic re-interpretation of sparker seismic profile khub012 (which they copied from Fedotov et al. (EOS Trans 87:246–250, 2006)), (ii) on the presupposition that changes in lake level are the dominant control on facies distribution in Lake Khubsugul, and (iii) on the invalidation of our age-depth model. In this reply to their comment, we demonstrate that they interpreted seismic artefacts and geometries caused by changes in profile orientation as true stratigraphic features and that the lake-level reconstruction they derive from this interpretation is therefore incorrect. We also demonstrate that their grain-size predictions, which they consider to be predominantly driven by changes in lake level, are inconsistent with the measured sulphate concentration, which is a demonstrated proxy of lake level in Lake Khubsugul, and with the measured grain-size record. Finally, we point out that even if there would be a problem with the age-depth model, this problem would not affect the part of the sedimentary sequence discussed in Fedotov et al. (J Paleolimnol 39:335–348, 2008).     

Artificial light at night: implications for early life stages development in four temperate freshwater fish species

Flora and fauna have both evolved under a natural cycle of light and dark. But especially in urban areas, the night is now increasingly disturbed by artificial light. Many traits and behaviours in fish are triggered by a circadian clock, for example hatching and swim bladder inflation, which predominantly take place at dusk or night. As lighting becomes brighter and extends farther into rural areas, the distinction between day and night becomes increasingly blurred. Therefore, the loss of diurnal trigger by artificial light at night was hypothesized having deleterious effects on these traits and impact fish reproduction. To assess these effects, eggs of four native freshwater fishes, Eurasian perch Perca fluviatilis, roach Rutilus rutilus, bleak Alburnus alburnus and chub Leuciscus cephalus, were incubated under two different light conditions: a photoperiod of 14 h light:10 h darkness (LD) and continuous illumination (LL). The time to hatch and swim bladder inflation was recorded. The species showed inconsistent reactions to the light treatments. In roach and bleak, the time to 50% hatch was longer in LL, whereas continuous lighting had an accelerating effect in chub. Incubation in LL elongated the hatching period in perch and roach and, in perch, the onset of darkness seemed to trigger hatching. The swim bladder inflation was significantly promoted by continuous light in chub and bleak but was not affected in roach. In conclusion, nocturnal artificial illumination could have an effect on hatching and initial swim bladder filling by masking the day–night-change and thereby diminish the trigger effect. However, the reactions were species specific and the increase in variation indicated a lack of diurnal triggering, whilst a general deleterious effect of artificial light at night has not been identified on early life stages.     

Impacts of Climatic Factors on Runoff Coefficients in Source Regions of the Huanghe River

Runoff coefficients of the source regions of the Huanghe River in 1956–2000 were analyzed in this paper. In the 1990s runoff of Tangnaihai Hydrologic Station of the Huanghe River experienced a serious decrease, which had at- tracted considerable attention. Climate changes have important impact on the water resources availability. From the view of water cycling, runoff coefficients are important indexes of water resources in a particular catchment. Kalinin baseflow separation technique was improved based on the characteristics of precipitation and streamflow. After the separation of runoff coefficient (R/P), baseflow coefficient (Br/P) and direct runoff coefficient (Dr/P) were estimated. Statistic analyses were applied to assessing the impact of precipitation and temperature on runoff coefficients (including Dr/P, Br/P and R/P). The results show that in the source regions of the Huanghe River, mean annual baseflow coefficient was higher than mean annual direct runoff coefficient. Annual runoff coefficients were in direct proportion to annual pre- cipitation and in inverse proportion to annual mean temperature. The decrease of runoff coefficients in the 1990s was closely related to the decrease in precipitation and increase in temperature in the same period. Over different sub-basins of the source regions of the Huanghe River, runoff coefficients responded differently to precipitation and temperature. In the area above Jimai Hydrologic Station where annual mean temperature is –3.9oC, temperature is the main factor in- fluencing the runoff coefficients. Runoff coefficients were in inverse relation to temperature, and precipitation had nearly no impact on runoff coefficients. In subbasin between Jimai and Maqu Hydrologic Station Dr/P was mainly affected by precipitation while R/P and Br/P were both significantly influenced by precipitation and temperature. In the area be-tween Maqu and Tangnaihai hydrologic stations all the three runoff coefficients increased with the rising of annual precipitation, while direct runoff coefficient was inversely proportional to temperature. In the source regions of the Huanghe River with the increase of average annual temperature, the impacts of temperature on runoff coefficients be-come insignificant.     

山东省肥城断块岩溶水系统地下水水化学特征及演化分析

地下水是肥城地区最主要的供水水源,近年来受到工农业生产、煤矿开采、闭坑、矿井排水等人类活动影响,肥城地区地下水动力场及化学场都发生了变化,为查明地下水的环境质量状况,文章在研究水文地质调查和样品采集分析基础上,综合运用数理统计方法、水化学方法（Piper三线图、Gibbs模型、矿物饱和指数、离子比例分析）等,探讨肥城断块地下水水化学特征及演化规律。结果表明：（1）研究区地下水均呈弱碱性,$ {\mathrm{C}\mathrm{a}}^{2+} $、$ {\mathrm{M}\mathrm{g}}^{2+} $、$ {{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{3}}^{-} $和$ {\mathrm{S}\mathrm{O}}_{4}^{2-} $为主要离子,主要来源于方解石、白云石及石膏溶解;矿物饱和指数表明方解石和白云石绝大多数处于饱和状态,石膏和岩盐矿物呈溶解未饱和状态。（2）区内岩溶水化学类型主要为$ {\mathrm{H}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{3}-\mathrm{C}\mathrm{a}\left(\mathrm{M}\mathrm{g}\right) $型,其次为$ {\mathrm{H}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{3}·{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{O}}_{4}-\mathrm{C}\mathrm{a} $型和$ {\mathrm{H}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{3}·\mathrm{C}\mathrm{l}-\mathrm{C}\mathrm{a} $型。孔隙水主要为$ {\mathrm{S}\mathrm{O}}_{4}·{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{3}-\mathrm{C}\mathrm{a} $型、局部出现$ {\mathrm{S}\mathrm{O}}_{4}{·\mathrm{N}\mathrm{O}}_{3}-\mathrm{C}\mathrm{a} $型。河流水化学类型相对复杂,包括$ {\mathrm{S}\mathrm{O}}_{4}·{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{3}-\mathrm{C}\mathrm{a}·\mathrm{N}\mathrm{a} $型、$ \mathrm{C}\mathrm{l}·{\mathrm{S}\mathrm{O}}_{4}-\mathrm{C}\mathrm{a}·\mathrm{N}\mathrm{a} $型等。（3）区内地下水中$ {\mathrm{C}\mathrm{l}}^{-} $、$ {\mathrm{S}\mathrm{O}}_{4}^{2-} $和$ {\mathrm{N}\mathrm{O}}_{3}^{-} $含量相比1999年、2013年显著升高。裂隙水及岩溶水水质整体较好,局部呈点状变差,孔隙水及河水水质普遍较差,影响区域地下水水质的主要因素有化肥施用、禽畜养殖、生活污水下渗以及煤矿排水等。     

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley as a risk area

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley, granted the status of a World Heritage site, is well known for its unique inner narrow valley of Quaternary age with its historical legacy of numerous medieval castles and old towns. Less known is that this has always been a risk area of floods and gravitative mass movements. Up to the recent past, mainly ice floods caused enormous damage. The inhabitants of the valley were well aware that they lived in a risk area, but they had learned to handle the flood hazard. With the demise of ice floods over the last 40 years, due to climate change and because of the additional heating of the river water by power plants, the awareness of flood hazards has been much diminished, in contrast to that of potential damage by rockfalls and landslides which were also much feared in the past, though at the local level only. Still in the people’s memory is the Kaub catastrophe of March 10, 1876, when 28 persons were killed by a landslide. Nowadays, even minor rockfalls are a major threat, as they will affect the much-used traffic lines on both banks of the river, in particular the railroads. Therefore, since 2002, on behalf of German Rail (Deutsche Bahn, DB), all problematic slopes have been protected by costly steel-ring nets, although they are an aesthetic problem by UNESCO standards. The feeling of absolute safety created among the public is only subjective, though, as planners are well aware of. Moreover, the impact of modern climate change on slope stability is nearly unknown. Therefore, it is still necessary to develop a risk map for the narrow valley, with emphasis on gravitational hazards.     

Temporal and spatial dynamical simulation of groundwater characteristics in Minqin Oasis

Application scope of geostatistics has been gradually extended from original geologic field to soil science and ecological field, etc. and its successful application results have been widely demonstrated. But little information is reported as to the direct use of geostatistical method to work out the distribu- tion map of groundwater characteristics. In this paper the semivariogram of geostatistics, in combina- tion with GIS, was used to quantitatively study the spatial variation characteristics of groundwater table depth and mineralization degree and their relation to the landuse changes. F test of the used spherical model reached a very significant level, and the theoretical model can well reflect the spatial structural characteristics of groundwater table depth and mineralization degree and achieve an ideal result. This shows that the application of the method in the dynamical simulation of groundwater is feasible. And this paper also provides useful reference for the application of geostatistics in the study of the dy- namical variations of groundwater resources in the oasis.     

A Long-Term Decrease of the Mid-Size Segmentation Lengths Observed in the He <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">ii</Emphasis> (30.4 nm) Solar EUV Emission

Power spectra of segmentation-cell length (a dominant length scale of EUV emission in the transition region) from full-disk He?ii extreme ultraviolet (EUV) images observed by the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during periods of quiet-Sun conditions for a time interval from 1996 to 2015 were analyzed. The spatial power as a function of the spatial frequency from about 0.04 to 0.27 (EIT) or up to 0.48 (AIA) Mm^?1 depends on the distribution of the observed segmentation-cell dimensions – a structure of the solar EUV network. The temporal variations of the spatial power reported by Didkovsky and Gurman (Solar Phys. 289, 153, 2014) were suggested as decreases at the mid-spatial frequencies for the compared spectra when the power curves at the highest spatial frequencies of 0.5 pix^?1 were adjusted to match each other. This approach has been extended in this work to compare spectral ratios at high spatial frequencies expressed in the solar spatial frequency units of Mm^?1. A model of EIT and AIA spatial responses allowed us to directly compare spatial spectral ratios at high spatial frequencies for five years of joint operation of EIT and AIA, from 2010 to 2015. Based on this approach, we represent these ratio changes as a long-term network transformation that may be interpreted as a continuous dissipation of mid-size network structures to the smaller-size structures in the transition region. In contrast to expected cycling of the segmentation-cell dimension structures and associated spatial power in the spectra with the solar cycle, the spectra demonstrate a significant and steady change of the EUV network. The temporal trend across these structural spectra is not critically sensitive to any long-term instrumental changes, e.g. degradation of sensitivity, but to the change of the segmentation-cell dimensions of the EUV network structure.     

Climatic and geographic factors affect ecosystem multifunctionality through biodiversity in the Tibetan alpine grasslands

Ecosystem multifunctionality(EMF), the simultaneous provision of multiple ecosystem functions, is often affected by biodiversity and environmental factors. We know little about how the interactions between biodiversity and environmental factors affect EMF. In this case study, a structural equation model was used to clarify climatic and geographic pathways that affect EMF by varying biodiversity in the Tibetan alpine grasslands. In addition to services related to carbon, nitrogen, and water cycling, forage supply, which is related to plantproductivity and palatability, was included in the EMF index. The results showed that 72% of the variation in EMF could be explained by biodiversity and other environmental factors. The ratio of palatable richness to all species richness explained 8.3% of the EMF variation. We found that air temperature, elevation, and latitude all affected EMF, but in different ways. Air temperature and elevation impacted the aboveground parts of the ecosystem, which included plant height, aboveground biomass, richness of palatable species, and ratio of palatable richness to all species richness. Latitude affected EMF by varying both aboveground and belowground parts of the ecosystem, which included palatable speciesrichness and belowground biomass. Our results indicated that there are still uncertainties in the biodiversity–EMF relationships related to the variable components of EMF, and climatic and geographic factors. Clarification of pathways that affect EMF using structural equation modeling techniques could elucidate the mechanisms by which environmental changes affect EMF.     

Resolving the landfill siting impasse: modelling technocratic and indigenous perspectives using GIS multicriteria approach

Increase in waste generation calls for an effective waste management as this has become a necessity for environmental sustainability. Several methods are adopted in managing waste, which include waste reduction, reuse, thermal treatment, recycling and landfilling. The landfill method is recognised as the most used of all the waste management methods in developing countries such as Ghana. However, the selection of a suitable landfill site is very difficult and tedious. This is because it involves a consideration of many factors such as environmental, topographic, economic, socio-cultural and civil engineering. This research sought to identify a suitable landfill site by applying GIS multicriteria and weighted overlay approach in the Bongo District of Northern Ghana. The analysis relied on criteria and weights provided by the technocrats and the indigenes in the district as a way of demonstrating how landfill siting impasse can be resolved by incorporating the various stakeholders. The results obtained provided clear areas for landfill sites in the study area from the technocratic and the indigenous perspectives. However, the technocratic perspective failed to include an important cultural criterion, sacred groves, as a factor. The indigenous perspective also compromised on the factor related to nearness to residential areas, and is equally not sufficient on its own. The optimal landfill sites, which meets the expectations of both the technocrats and indigenes, was identified. This perspective has produced technically favourable and socio-culturally acceptable landfill site. However, it is recommended an environmental impact assessment (EIA) be conducted to identify the full environmental and social cost of the site. It is concluded that in landfill site selection much attention be given to cultural factors in the same way as the technical factors.