Impact of draining hilly lands on runoff and on‐site erosion: a case study from humid Ethiopia

The use of drainage ditches on farmland has an impact on erosion processes both on‐site and off‐site, though their environmental impacts are not unequivocal. Here we study the runoff response and related rill erosion after installing drainage ditches and assess the effects of stone bunds in north Ethiopia. Three different land management systems were studied in 10 cropland catchments around Wanzaye during the rainy season of 2013: (1) the exclusive use of drainage ditches (locally called feses), (2) the exclusive use of stone bunds, and (3) a mixture of both systems. Stone bunds are an effective soil and water conservation technique, making the land more resistant against on‐site erosion, and allowing feses to be installed at a larger angle with the contour. The mean rill volumes for the 10 studied cropland catchments during the rainy season of 2013 was 3.73 ± 4.20 m³ ha^?1 corresponding to a soil loss of 5.72 ± 6.30 ton ha^?1. The establishment of feses causes larger rill volumes (R = 0.59, N = 10), although feses are perceived as the best way to avoid soil erosion when no stone bunds are present. The use of feses increases event‐based runoff coefficients (RCs) on cropland from c. 5% to values up to 39%. Also, a combination of low stone bund density and high feses density results in a higher RC, whereas catchments with a high stone bund density and low feses density have a lower RC. Peak runoff discharges decrease when stone bund density increases, whereas feses density is positively related to the peak runoff discharge. A multiple linear relation in which both feses and stone bund densities are used as explanatory variable, performs best in explaining runoff hydrograph peakedness (R² = 83%). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of long‐term human impact on avulsion and fan development

This study aims to understand (mainly qualitatively) the long‐term role of human impact on avulsion processes and the development of fluvial (mega‐) fans in semi‐arid environments. In this paper we refer to human impact as the direct influences of actions on the river's hydraulics (i.e. flow regulation, flow diversion and channel engineering). In five case‐studies drawn from the Khuzestan plains in southwest Iran we have analysed the setup and triggering conditions of specific avulsions that occurred in the past (timescale of millennia) and identified the role of human interference in their causation. Our analysis is based on the integration of historical, archaeological, geomorphological and geological data. Through this study we demonstrate that avulsions in the Khuzestan plains are the result of long‐term and complex interplay between multiple human‐induced and natural causes. In similar ways human‐induced actions may play important roles during different phases of avulsion development. The ‘success‘ of an avulsion in the post‐triggering phase may be defined by human‐induced setup causes as well as morphodynamic processes. We suggest that present‐day flood events may be partly inherited from long‐term human alterations of the natural processes. These finding could have implications for any fluvial system (e.g. distributive fluvial systems, deltas) where avulsion plays a major role in their development and research tends to emphasize on natural mechanisms. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality and timing of crowd-based water level class observations

Crowd-based hydrological observations can supplement existing monitoring networks and allow data collection in regions where otherwise no data would be available. In the citizen science project CrowdWater, repeated water level observations using a virtual staff gauge approach result in time series of water level classes (WL-classes). To investigate the quality of these observations, we compared the WL-class data with “real” (i.e., measured) water levels from the same stream at a nearby gauging station. We did this for nine locations where citizen scientists reported multiple observations using a smartphone app and at 12 locations where signposts were set up to ask citizens to record observations on a paper form that could be left in a letterbox. The results indicate that the quality of the data collected with the app was better than for the forms. A possible explanation is that for each app location, a single person submitted the vast majority of the observations, whereas at the locations of the forms almost every observation was made by a different person. On average, there were more contributions between May and September than during the other months. Observations were submitted for a range of flow conditions, with a higher fraction of high flow observations for the locations were data were collected with the app. Overall, the results are encouraging for citizen science approaches in hydrology and demonstrate that the smartphone application and the virtual staff gauge are a promising approach for crowd-based water level class observations.     

Tropical precipitation anomalies and d‐excess evolution during El Niño 2014‐16

The last 2014‐16 El Niño event was among the three strongest episodes on record. El Niño considerably changes annual and seasonal precipitation across the tropics. Here, we present a unique stable isotope data set of daily precipitation collected in Costa Rica prior to, during, and after El Niño 2014‐16, in combination with Lagrangian moisture source and precipitation anomaly diagnostics. δ²H composition ranged from ‐129.4 to +18.1 (‰) while δ¹⁸O ranged from ‐17.3 to +1.0 (‰). No significant difference was observed among δ¹⁸O (P=0.186) and δ²H (P=0.664) mean annual compositions. However, mean annual d‐excess showed a significant decreasing trend (from +13.3 to +8.7 ‰) (P<0.001) with values ranging from +26.6 to ‐13.9 ‰ prior to and during the El Niño evolution. The latter decrease in d‐excess can be partly explained by an enhanced moisture flux convergence across the southeastern Caribbean Sea coupled with moisture transport from northern South America by means of an increased Caribbean Low Level Jet regime. During 2014‐15, precipitation deficit across the Pacific domain averaged 46% resulting in a very severe drought; while a 94% precipitation surplus was observed in the Caribbean domain. Understanding these regional moisture transport mechanisms during a strong El Niño event may contribute to a) better understanding of precipitation anomalies in the tropics and b) re‐evaluate past stable isotope interpretations of ENSO events in paleoclimatic archives within the Central America region.     

Short-term water quality variable prediction using a hybrid CNN–LSTM deep learning model

Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment - Water quality monitoring is an important component of water resources management. In order to predict two water quality variables, namely...     

Real-time envelope cross-correlation detector: application to induced seismicity in the Insheim and Landau deep geothermal reservoirs

We develop and test a real-time envelope cross-correlation detector for use in seismic response plans to mitigate hazard of induced seismicity. The incoming seismological data are cross-correlated in real-time with a set of previously recorded master events. For robustness against small changes in the earthquake source locations or in the focal mechanisms we cross-correlate the envelopes of the seismograms rather than the seismograms themselves. Two sequenced detection conditions are implemented: After passing a single trace cross-correlation condition, a network cross-correlation is calculated taking amplitude ratios between stations into account. Besides detecting the earthquake and assigning it to the respective reservoir, real-time magnitudes are important for seismic response plans. We estimate the magnitudes of induced microseismicity using the relative amplitudes between master event and detected event. The real-time detector is implemented as a SeisComP3 module. We carry out offline and online performance tests using seismic monitoring data of the Insheim and Landau geothermal power plants (Upper Rhine Graben, Germany), also including blasts from a nearby quarry. The comparison of the automatic real-time catalogue with a manually processed catalogue shows, that with the implemented parameters events are always correctly assigned to the respective reservoir (4 km distance between reservoirs) or the quarry (8 km and 10 km distance, respectively, from the reservoirs). The real-time catalogue achieves a magnitude of completeness around 0.0. Four per cent of the events assigned to the Insheim reservoir and zero per cent of the Landau events are misdetections. All wrong detections are local tectonic events, whereas none are caused by seismic noise.     

Deep Structure and Dynamics of Passive Continental Margin from Shelf to Ocean of the Northern South China Sea

To study the deep dynamic mechanism leading to the difference in rifting pattern and basin structure from shelf to oceanic basin in passive continental margin,we constructed long geological sections across the shelf,slope and oceanic basin using new seismic data.Integrated gravity-magnetic inversion and interpretation of these sections were made with the advanced dissection method.Results show that the basement composition changes from intermediate-acid intrusive rocks in the sheff to intermediate-basic rocks in the slope.The Moho surface shoals gradually from 31 km in the sheff to 22.5 km in the uplift and then 19 km in the slope and finally to 13 km in the oceanic basin.The crust thickness also decreases gradually from 30 km in the northern fault belt to 9 km in the oceanic basin.The crustal stretching factor increases from the shelf toward the oceanic basin,with the strongest extension under the sags and the oceanic basin.The intensity of mantle upwelling controlled the style of basin structures from sheff to oceanic basin.In the Zhu 1 depression on the shelf,the crust is nearly normal,the brittle and cold upper crust mainly controlled the fault development;so the combinative grabens with single symmetric graben are characteristic.In the slope,the crust thinned with a large stretching factor,affected by the mantle upwelling.The ductile deformation controlled the faults,so there developed an asymmetric complex graben in the Baiyun (白云) sag.     

On the magnetic phases of natural pyrrhotites

Summary The magnetic phases of natural pyrrhotites were studied by the method of powder patterns, the chemism of the magnetic phases by means of the electron microprobe method, and the crystal phases by etching the polished sections. The method of powder patterns distinguished the ferrimagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases in the transition-type pyrrhotites. The method of absorbed electrons lead to the discovery that both phases have a different chemical composition and that the ferrimagnetic phase has a lower denisty and an average atomic number. The linear and point-by-point analysis disclosed that the ferrimagnetic phase has a lower weight content of Fe and a higher weight content of S than the antiferromagnetic phase. Both the magnetic phases displayed different properties when etched, and therefore they not only have a different chemical composition, but also a different crystal structure. The necessity of studying the image of the absorbed electrons and the image of the etched surface of the polycrystalline samples of pyrrhotites of the transition type separately on individual grains was pointed out.     

The intensity of the earth's magnetic field in the past derived from the archaeomagnetic data

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Dedicated to Academician Alois Zátopek on His 65th Birthday     

Meteorological microseisms and stratospheric warmings

Summary The meteorological microseisms recorded at Prague are found to be essentially independent of the occurrence of the major midwinter stratospheric warmings. This finding contributes to studying the downward propagation mechanism of some extraterrestrial influences.