Wetland hydroperiod classification in the western prairies using multitemporal synthetic aperture radar

Wetlands represent one of the world's most biodiverse and threatened ecosystem types and were diminished globally by about two‐thirds in the 20th century. There is continuing decline in wetland quantity and function due to infilling and other human activities. In addition, with climate change, warmer temperatures and changes in precipitation and evapotranspiration are reducing wetland surface and groundwater supplies, further altering wetland hydrology and vegetation. There is a need to automate inventory and monitoring of wetlands, and as a study system, we investigated the Shepard Slough wetlands complex, which includes numerous wetlands in urban, suburban, and agricultural zones in the prairie pothole region of southern Alberta, Canada. Here, wetlands are generally confined to depressions in the undulating terrain, challenging wetlands inventory and monitoring. This study applied threshold and frequency analysis routines for high‐resolution, single‐polarization (HH) RADARSAT‐2, synthetic aperture radar mapping. This enabled a growing season surface water extent hyroperiod‐based wetland classification, which can support water and wetland resource monitoring. This 3‐year study demonstrated synthetic aperture radar‐derived multitemporal open‐water masks provided an effective index of wetland permanence class, with overall accuracies of 89% to 95% compared with optical validation data, and RMSE between 0.2 and 0.7 m between model and field validation data. This allowed for characterizing the distribution and dynamics of 4 marsh wetlands hydroperiod classes, temporary, seasonal, semipermanent, and permanent, and mapping of the sequential vegetation bands that included emergent, obligate wetland, facultative wetland, and upland plant communities. Hydroperiod variation and surface water extent were found to be influenced by short‐term rainfall events in both wet and dry years. Seasonal hydroperiods in wetlands were particularly variable if there was a decrease in the temporary or semipermanent hydroperiod classes. In years with extreme rain events, the temporary wetlands especially increased relative to longer lasting wetlands (84% in 2015 with significant rainfall events, compared with 42% otherwise).     

Contributions to atmospheric methane by natural seepages on the U.K. continental shelf [Mar. Geol. 137 (1997) 165–189]

Natural gas seepages occur on the United Kingdom's continental shelf and although published reports suggest that they are very rare, the petroleum industry has identified, but not publicly reported, many more. There is also very little data on the flux of gas from seabed seepages, and even less on the contribution of seepages to atmospheric concentrations of gases such as methane.

Potential gas source rocks include Quaternary and Tertiary peats as well as petroliferous source rocks such as the Carboniferous Coal Measures and the Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clays. There are also other organic-rich sediments which are potential source rocks. Together these cover a considerable part of the U.K. continental shelf.

Analogue seismic reflection (pinger) profiles acquired during the British Geological Survey's regional mapping programme have been reviewed to identify water column targets including fish and plumes of gas bubbles. The ability to distinguish targets is critical to an assessment of the distribution of gas seepages. Both theoretical predictions of target identity and the habits of shoaling fish have been investigated in order to identify a method of distinction.

Data from seabed seepages and measurements of seepage rates have been used to establish likely ranges of gas flux rates and the sizes of gas bubbles. The likelihood that a rising bubble will survive and escape into the atmosphere is determined primarily by bubble size and water depth; methane, the principal constituent of seepage gas, is relatively unreactive and sparingly soluble.

The studies have enabled a new estimate of the distribution of gas seepages on the U.K. continental shelf, and of the contribution to atmospheric methane levels. The results suggest that natural gas seepages are significantly more important as a source of methane than had hitherto been established. It is estimated that between 120,000 and 3.5 mtonnes of methane per year come from a continental shelf area of about 600,000 km². This represents between 2% and 40% of the total United Kingdom methane emission. It is suggested that similar contributions arise from other continental shelf areas worldwide, and that geological sources of atmospheric methane are more significant than is generally acknowledged.     

Spectrophotometric determination of pH in seawater off Taiaroa Head,Otago, New Zealand: Full-spectrum modelling and prediction of pCO2 levels

Accurate measurement of seawater pH has long been sought by marine chemists (for example: [Dickson, A.G. 1993a. The measurement of sea water pH. Marine Chemistry, 44, 131–142, Dickson, A.G. 1993b. pH buffers for sea water media based on the total hydrogen ion concentration scale. Deep-Sea Research, 40, 107–118; Zhang, 1996; Tapp, M., Hunter, K.A., Currie, K. and Macaskill, B. 2000. Apparatus of continuous-flow underway spectrophotometric measurement of surface water pH. Marine Chemistry 72(2–4), 193–202; Friis, K., Koetzinger, A., Wallace, D.W.R. 2004. Spectrophotometric pH measurement in the ocean: Requirements, design and testing of an autonomous charge-coupled device detector system. Limnology and Oceanography: Methods 2, 126–136]. Recently, such attempts have taken on greater significance as anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions may create rapidly changing oceanic pH. Spectrophotometric techniques have been accepted generally as the best for determination of seawater pH. Here we report a new technique using thymol blue as the indicator dye and fitting the entire spectrum from 400 to 900 nm rather than measuring the absorbance values at only two or three points in the spectrum. This full-spectrum modelling enables a reduction in signal to noise over other techniques. In the laboratory, we find with seawater samples a pH precision increase of five-fold “within” a sample and seven-fold “between” samples when comparing the full spectrum to the three-point method of analysis [Zhang, H., Byrne, R.H. 1996. Spectrophotometric pH measurements of surface seawater at in-situ conditions: absorbance and protonation behaviour of thymol blue. Marine Chemistry 52, 17–25].     

New specimens of a fossil ostrich from the Miocene of Kenya

Fossilised hind limb bones from the late Middle Miocene (approximately 14 million-year-old [MYA]) Fort Ternan, Kadianga West and Ngorora localities in Western Kenya indicate the presence of a new representative of the ostrich genus Struthio. These new fossils represent some of the oldest known records for Struthio yet described, slightly younger than Struthio coppensi, from the Lower Miocene of Namibia. Because the four sub-species of the modern-day ostrich (Struthio camelus camelus, Struthio camelus australis, Struthio camelus massaicus, and Struthio camelus molybdophanes) inhabit the plains of Africa, and as recently as the 1940s, a fifth sub-species was also present in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia (Struthio camelus syriacus), records of Struthio from Kenya and Namibia testify to the much wider distribution of these cursorial birds in the relatively recent past. This is further supported by the very high frequency of ostrich eggshell fragments found across Africa and Eurasia, which vastly outweighs the amount of skeletal material uncovered over the last century.     

Crystallization history of rhyolites at Long Valley, California, inferred from combined U-series and Rb-Sr isotope systematics

In this study, we present ⁸⁷Rb/⁸⁶Sr and ²³⁰Th/²³⁸U isotope analyses of glasses and phenocrysts from postcaldera rhyolites erupted between 150 to 100 ka from the Long Valley magmatic system. Both isotope systems indicate complex magma evolution with preeruptive mineral crystallization and magma fractionation, followed by extended storage in a silicic magma reservoir. Glass analyses yield a Rb-Sr isochron of 257 ± 39 ka, which can be explained by a feldspar-fractionation event ∼150 ky before eruption. Individual feldspar-glass pairs confirm this age result. A mineral ²³⁰Th-²³⁸U isochron in a low-silica rhyolite from the Deer Mountain Dome defines an age of 236 ± 1 ka, but the glass and whole rock do not lie on the isochron. U-Th fractionation of the rocks is controlled by the accessory minerals zircon and probably allanite, which crystallized at 250 ± 3 ka and 187 ± 9 ka, respectively. All major mineral phases contain accessory mineral phases; therefore, the mineral isochron represents a mixture of zircon and allanite populations. A precision of ±1 ka for the mixing array implies that the minor phases must have crystallized within this timescale. Longer periods of crystal growth would cause the mixing array to be less well defined. U-series data from other low- and high-silica rhyolites indicate younger accessory mineral crystallization events at ∼200 and 140 ka, probably related to the thermal evolution of the magma reservoir. These crystallization events are, however, only documented by the accessory minerals and had no further influence on bulk magma compositions. We interpret the indistinguishable age results from both isotope systems (∼250 ka) to record the fractionation of small magma batches by filter pressing from a much larger underlying magma volume, followed by physical isolation and extended storage at the top of the magma reservoir for up to 150 ky.     

Recent Rapid Regional Climate Warming on the Antarctic Peninsula

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that mean global warming was 0.6 ± 0.2 °C during the 20th century and cited anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases as the likely cause of temperature rise in the last 50 years. But this mean value conceals the substantial complexity of observed climate change, which is seasonally- and diurnally-biased, decadally-variable and geographically patchy. In particular, over the last 50 years three high-latitude areas have undergone recent rapid regional (RRR) warming, which was substantially more rapid than the global mean. However, each RRR warming occupies a different climatic regime and may have an entirely different underlying cause. We discuss the significance of RRR warming in one area, the Antarctic Peninsula. Here warming was much more rapid than in the rest of Antarctica where it was not significantly different to the global mean. We highlight climate proxies that appear to show that RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula is unprecedented over the last two millennia, and so unlikely to be a natural mode of variability. So while the station records do not indicate a ubiquitous polar amplification of global warming, the RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula might be a regional amplification of such warming. This, however, remains unproven since we cannot yet be sure what mechanism leads to such an amplification. We discuss several possible candidate mechanisms: changing oceanographic or changing atmospheric circulation, or a regional air-sea-ice feedback amplifying greenhouse warming. We can show that atmospheric warming and reduction in sea-ice duration coincide in a small area on the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, but here we cannot yet distinguish cause and effect. Thus for the present we cannot determine which process is the probable cause of RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula and until the mechanism initiating and sustaining the RRR warming is understood, and is convincingly reproduced in climate models, we lack a sound basis for predicting climate change in this region over the coming century.     

A multi‐proxy record of changing environments from ca. 30 000 to 9000 cal. a BP: Onepoto maar palaeolake,Auckland, New Zealand

We present a high‐resolution record of lacustrine sedimentation spanning ca. 30 000 to 9000 cal. a BP from Onepoto maar, northern North Island, New Zealand. The multi‐proxy record of environmental change is constrained by tephrochronology and accelerator mass spectrometric ¹⁴C ages and provides evidence for episodes of rapid environmental change during the Last Glacial Coldest Period (LGCP) and Last Glacial–Interglacial Transition (LGIT) from northern New Zealand. The multi‐proxy palaeoenvironmental record from Onepoto indicates that the LGCP was cold, dry and windy in the Auckland region, with vegetation dominated by herb and grass in a beech forest mosaic between ca. 28 500 and 18 000 cal. a BP. The LGCP was accompanied by more frequent fires and influx of clastic sediment indicating increased erosion during the LGCP, with a mid‐LGCP interstadial identified between ca. 25 000 and 23 000 cal. a BP. Rapid climate amelioration at ca. 18 000 cal. a BP was accompanied by increased terrestrial biomass exemplified by the expansion of lowland podocarp forest, especially Dacrydium cupressinum. Increasing biomass production is reversed briefly by LGIT perturbations which are apparent in many of the proxies that span ca. 14 000–10 500 cal. a BP, suggesting generally increased wetness and higher in situ aquatic plant productivity with reduced terrestrial organic matter and terrigenous detrital influx. Furthermore, conditions at that time were probably warmer and frosts rare based on the increasing importance of Ascarina. The subsequent early Holocene is characterised by podocarp conifer forest and moist mild conditions. Postglacial sea‐level rise breached the crater rim and deposited 36 m of estuarine mud after ca. 9000 cal. a BP. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.