The transformation and export of phosphorus from Wetlands

There is widespread acceptance of the phosphorus retention capability of wetlands even though research findings are often inconclusive and contradictory. The results of a one year phosphorus budget study indicate that internal wetland processes may transform sediment bound phosphorus to plant available orthophosphorus. While total phosphorus imports were nearly double the total phosphorus exports for the study wetland, orthophosphorus exports were 22 per cent greater than imports. This study supports the recent finding that wetlands have limited capability to retain orthophosphorus and indicates that wetlands may even increase the export of orthophosphorus. The generally accepted nutrient retention function of wetlands and their possible role in eutrophication is thus questionable.     

Hill stability and distance curves for the general three-body problem

The notion of Hill stability is extended from the circular restricted 3-body problem to the general three-body problem; it is even extended to systems of positive energy and the Hill's curves with their corresponding forbidden zones are generalized.Hill stable systems of negative energy present a hierarchy: they have a close binary that can be neither approached nor disrupted by the third body. This phenomenon becomes particularly clear with the distance curves presentation.The three limiting cases, restricted, planetary and lunar are analysed as well as some real stellar cases.     

Small-scale seismic heterogeneity and mantle structure

George Helffrich discusses the links between seismology and geochemistry in the Bullerwell Lecture 2005, delivered at the annual meeting of the European Union of Geosciences in Vienna.     

Remote sensing- and GIS-based runoff modeling with the effect of land-use changes (a case study of Cochin corporation)

A study was conducted to estimate the runoff in urbanized zone using Soil Conservation Services Curve Number (SCS-CN) method through remote sensing and GIS techniques. In this study, the region was identified as Cochin Corporation (Kerala State, India) with an aerial extent of 96.44 km². The spatial and non-spatial data were collected from different sources, and the thematic layers of soil hydrologic group and land-use maps were prepared and overlaid with one other. The overlaid output results were assigned by curve numbers with respect to soil and land-use categories, and the CN map was prepared with the help of Visual Basic (VB) language in ArcGIS platform. Through supervised classifications, 13 different land-use classes were identified from Quickbird data for the year of 2005 and 2010. The most prominent land-use classes were water bodies, residential, mixed crops, commercial and industrial, and 3 types of soil hydrologic groups were identified namely A, B, and C categories. The B group is most prominent occupying 60 km² of the study area. The CN map shows the ranges that 92–100 is the major CN area with high runoff potential zone of the study region. At the final stage, the runoff was estimated by the maximum successive rainfall received in this study area in two different years—2005 and 2010 along with their land-use pattern. The runoff model is applied for temporal variation in land-use change, and impact of runoff was studied. The study area showed significant changes in land-use pattern between 2005 and 2010 particularly in the land-use change from agricultural into industrial, commercial, and residential (high density). The area covered by the highest runoff depth with the range of 92–100 CN values increased from 43.87 to 45.32 km² from 2005 to 2010. The volume of runoff was increased from 135.56 to 141.49 Mm³ from 2005 to 2010 due to the land-use change pattern.     

Rate of strike-slip motion on the Amanos Fault (Karasu Valley, southern Turkey) constrained by K–Ar dating and geochemical analysis of Quaternary basalts

The left-lateral Amanos Fault follows a 200-km-long and up to 2-km-high escarpment that bounds the eastern margin of the Amanos mountain range and the western margin of the Karasu Valley in southern Turkey, just east of the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea. Regional kinematic models have reached diverse conclusions as to the role of this fault in accommodating relative motion between either the African and Arabian, Turkish and African, or Turkish and Arabian plates. Local studies have tried to estimate its slip rate by K–Ar dating Quaternary basalts that erupted within the Amanos Mountains, flowed across it into the Karasu Valley, and have since become offset. However, these studies have yielded a wide range of results, ranging from 0.3 to 15 mm a⁻¹, which do not allow the overall role and significance of this fault in accommodating crustal deformation to be determined. We have used the Cassignol K–Ar method to date nine Quaternary basalt samples from the vicinity of the southern part of the Amanos Fault. These basalts exhibit a diverse chemistry, which we interpret as a consequence varying degrees of partial melting of their source combined with variable crustal contamination. This dating allows us to constrain the Quaternary slip rate on the Amanos fault to 1.0 to 1.6 mm a⁻¹. The dramatic discrepancies between past estimates of this slip rate are partly due to technical difficulties in K–Ar dating of young basalts by isotope dilution. In addition, previous studies at the key locality of Hacılar have unwittingly dated different, chemically distinct, flow units of different ages that are juxtaposed. This low slip rate indicates that, at present, the Amanos Fault takes up a small proportion of the relative motion between the African and Arabian plates, which is transferred southward to the Dead Sea Fault Zone. It also provides strong evidence against the long-standing view that its slip continues offshore to the southwest along a hypothetical left-lateral fault zone located south of Cyprus.