The Harvest Experiment: Monitoring Jason-1 and TOPEX/POSEIDON from a California Offshore Platform

We present calibration results from Jason-1 (2001-) and TOPEX/POSEIDON (1992-) overflights of a California offshore oil platform (Harvest). Data from Harvest indicate that current Jason-1 sea-surface height (SSH) measurements are high by 138 ± 18 mm. Excepting the bias, the high accuracy of the Jason-1 measurements is in evidence from the overflights. In orbit for over 10 years, the T/P measurement system is well calibrated, and the SSH bias is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Also reviewed are over 10 years of geodetic results from the Harvest experiment.     

The Hawaii-2 Observatory

A permanent deep ocean scientific research facility-the Hawaii-2 Observatory (H2O)-was installed on the retired HAW-2 commercial submarine telephone cable in September 1998. H2O consists of a seafloor submarine cable termination and junction box in 5000 m of water located halfway between Hawaii and California. The H2O infrastructure was installed from a large research vessel using the Jason ROV and standard over-the-side gear. The junction box provides two-way digital communication at variable data rates of up to 80 kbit/s using the RS-422 protocol and a total of 400 W of power for both junction box systems and user equipment. Instruments may be connected by an ROV to the junction box at 8 wet-mateable connectors. The H2O junction box is a "smart" design, which incorporates redundancy to protect against failure and allows full control of instrument functionality from shore. Initial instrumentation at the H2O site includes broad-band seismometer and hydrophone packages     

Grassroots innovations in community energy: The role of intermediaries in niche development

Community energy projects are attracting increasing attention as potential sources of innovation to support sustainable energy transitions. Research into ‘grassroots innovations’ like community energy often recognises the difficulties they face in simply surviving let alone in growing or seeding wider change. Strategic niche management theory is potentially helpful here as it highlights the important roles played by ‘intermediary actors’ in consolidating, growing and diffusing novel innovations. This paper presents the first in-depth analysis of intermediary work in the UK community energy sector. New empirical evidence was gathered through interviews with 15 community energy intermediaries and a content analysis of 113 intermediary-produced case studies about community energy projects. Analysis finds intermediaries adopting a variety of methods to try and diffuse generic lessons about context-specific projects, but that trying to coordinate support for local projects that exist amidst very different social and political circumstances is challenging. This is exacerbated by the challenges of building a coherent institutional infrastructure for a sector where aims and approaches diverge, and where underlying resources are uncertain and inconsistent. Applications of relatively simple, growth-oriented approaches like strategic niche management to grassroots innovations need to be reformulated to better recognise their diverse and conflicted realities on the ground.     

Climate change and hydrology at the prairie margin: Historic and prospective future flows of Canada's Red Deer and other Rocky Mountain rivers

The South Saskatchewan River Basin of southern Alberta drains the transboundary central Rocky Mountains region and provides the focus for irrigation agriculture in Canada. Following extensive development, two tributaries, the Oldman and Bow rivers, were closed for further water allocations, whereas the Red Deer River (RDR) remains open. The RDR basin is at the northern limit of the North American Great Plains and may be suitable for agricultural expansion with a warming climate. To consider irrigation development and ecological impacts, it is important to understand the regional hydrologic consequences of climate change. To analyse historic trends that could extend into the future, we developed century‐long discharge records for the RDR, by coordinating data across hydrometric gauges, estimating annual flows from seasonal records, and undertaking flow naturalization to compensate for river regulation. Analyses indicated some coordination with the Pacific decadal oscillation and slight decline in summer and annual flows from 1912 to 2016 (?0.13%/year, Sen's slope). Another forecasting approach involved regional downscaling from the global circulation models, CGCMI‐A, ECHAM4, HadCM3, and NCAR‐CCM3. These projected slight flow decreases from the mountain headwaters versus increases from the foothills and boreal regions, resulting in a slight increase in overall river flows (+0.1%/year). Prior projections from these and other global circulation models ranged from slight decrease to slight increase, and the average projection of ?0.05%/year approached the empirical trend. Assessments of other rivers draining the central and northern Rocky Mountains revealed a geographic transition in flow patterns over the past century. Flows from the rivers in Southern Alberta declined (around ?0.15%/year), in contrast to increasing flows in north‐eastern British Columbia and the Yukon. The RDR watershed approaches this transition, and this study thus revealed regional differentiation in the hydrological consequences from climate change.     

GAUGE: the GrAnd Unification and Gravity Explorer

The GAUGE (GrAnd Unification and Gravity Explorer) mission proposes to use a drag-free spacecraft platform onto which a number of experiments are attached. They are designed to address a number of key issues at the interface between gravity and unification with the other forces of nature. The equivalence principle is to be probed with both a high-precision test using classical macroscopic test bodies, and, to lower precision, using microscopic test bodies via cold-atom interferometry. These two equivalence principle tests will explore string-dilaton theories and the effect of space–time fluctuations respectively. The macroscopic test bodies will also be used for intermediate-range inverse-square law and an axion-like spin-coupling search. The microscopic test bodies offer the prospect of extending the range of tests to also include short-range inverse-square law and spin-coupling measurements as well as looking for evidence of quantum decoherence due to space–time fluctuations at the Planck scale.     

Bushfire and everyday life: Examining the awareness-action ‘gap’ in changing rural landscapes

In this paper we use the notion of ‘everyday life’ to critically examine an apparent ‘gap’ between bushfire risk awareness and preparedness amongst diverse landholders in rural landscapes affected by amenity-led in-migration in southeast Australia. Landholders were found to bring their own agency to bushfire preparedness in the relationships between everyday procedures, dilemmas, and tradeoffs. Consequently, regardless of landholders’ awareness levels, attitudes towards bushfire and natural resource management influence if, how, and to what extent landowners prepare for bushfires. We argue that not only is the ‘gap’ complex but also paradoxical in that it is both evident in, and constituted by, landholder attitudes and action and simultaneously dissolved in their practices and decision-making in everyday life. Three dilemmas of everyday life in particular were found to underpin these attitudes: costs (in terms of monetary and time values), gender roles, and priorities. Using a mixed-methods research approach, this simultaneous cultural construction and material nature of bushfire in everyday life is mapped out through landholders’ narratives and actions that embody living with fire on the land. The place of bushfire in landholders’ everyday life has direct relevance to recent international discussions of the vulnerability of the growing number of people living in bushfire-prone rural-urban interface areas.     

Role of trace element partition coefficients in models of andesite genesis

Orogenic andesite magmas probably evolve at 1100 to 900°C, have between 1 and 5 wt. % H₂O and f_O2 above the NiNiO buffer during phenocryst precipitation and may be saturated with a second fluid phase prior to eruption. Consequently, many solid/liquid trace element partition coefficients appropriate to andesites are higher than for basalts, perhaps due to the presence of fewer octahedrally coordinated sites in andesite liquids as well as to lower temperatures.Simple quantitative interpretation of trace element concentration data for orogenic andesites in general or for most specific suites is not possible using available partition coefficients. Fractional crystallization models involving magnetite or amphibole or both seem less at odds with available data than do models invoking equilibration with subducted oceanic crust or overlying peridotite. Critical choices between simple models, or identification of supplementary or more complex processes, require a more rigorous data base than presently available.     

Development and use of the Gill UVW anemometer

A three-component anemometer, developed and refined during the past ten years, measures the three orthogonal wind-speed components directly along the instrument's three axes,X, Y, Z. The basic sensor for each of the three components is a light-weight helicoid propeller driving a tiny precision tachometer generator, which develops a D.C. voltage linearly proportional to the rate of turning of the propeller and reversing in polarity when the direction of rotation reverses. Each propeller turns at a rate almost linearly proportional to the instantaneous wind speed and the cosine of the angle subtended by the wind with the axis of the propeller. Propeller sensors have a starting speed of about 0.2 m s^?1; a distance constant of about 1 m; and may be used in winds up to 30 m s^?1. Over 500 of these instruments are now in use at research stations throughout the world.     

Geochemistry of Viti Levu,Fiji, and its evolution as an island arc

Available geochemical and field data suggest that three different periods of igneous activity have occurred on Viti Levu. Rocks of the first period are island arc tholeiites; of the second, a calc-alkaline series; and of the third, shoshonites. Each period has a geochemical distinctiveness. The temporal sequence also corresponds to a spatial zonation analogous to that observed in many currently active island arcs. K₂O and the larger trace elements increase south to north and with time, whereas iron enrichment and Na₂O/K₂O ratios decrease. Initial Sr 87/86 ratios average about 0.7041 in rocks of all periods. If Viti Levu magmas were genetically related to underthrust oceanic crust, as is argued for comparable ones of modern island arcs, then the island must have drifted or been rotated to its present position within the last 5–10 m.y.