A cephalopod fishery GIS for the Northeast Atlantic: development and application

Cephalopod stocks are of increasing economic importance. Cephalopod fisheries show marked inter-annual fluctuations unrelated to fishery landings and effort. Their population dynamics, particularly recruitment, are thought to be strongly susceptible to changes in environmental conditions. This arises in part from the short life cycle, resulting in poor buffering of the population against changing conditions. These characteristics make traditional approaches to stock assessment and fishery management inappropriate. GIS offers a tool to improve understanding of spatio-temporal trends in abundance and facilitate rational management. A cephalopod fishery geographical information system for Northeast Atlantic waters (CFGIS-NEA) was developed. The system covers the area from 28.0° W to 11.0° E, and 34.5° N to 65.5° N. It was designed for investigating cephalopod resource dynamics in relation to environmental variation. It is based on Unix Arc/Info, and PC ArcView, combined with the statistical software package S-PLUS and supported by a database in Microsoft Access. Environmental data (e.g. sea surface temperature and salinity, sea bottom temperature and salinity, and bathymetric data), cephalopod fishery, survey and biological data, from a variety of sources, were integrated in the GIS as coverages, grids, shapefiles, and tables. Special functions were developed for data integration, data conversion, query, visualisation, analysis and management. User-friendly interfaces were developed allowing relatively inexperienced users to operate the system. The spatial and temporal distribution patterns of cephalopod abundance by species, the spatial and temporal relationships between cephalopod abundance and environmental factors, and the spatial and temporal patterns of cephalopod fishing activity were analysed using a combination of visual (qualitative) and quantitative methods. Predictive empirical models, such as GAMs (generalized additive models), were developed for modelling cephalopod abundance using environmental variables.     

Debris dispersal modeling for the great Sumatra Tsunamis on Banda Aceh and surrounding waters

The Great Sumatra Tsunami on 26 December 2004 generated large amounts of debris and waste throughout the affected coastal region in the Indian Ocean. In Banda Aceh—Indonesia, the tsunami flows were observed carrying a thick muddy sludge that mixed with all kinds of debris from the destroyed buildings, bridges and culverts, vehicles, fallen trees, and other flotsam. This waste and debris was mostly deposited inland, but traveled both onshore and offshore. Numerical dispersal modeling is carried out to simulate the transport of debris and waste produced by the tsunamis during the event. The model solves the Lagrangian form of the transport/dispersion equations using novel particle tracking techniques. Model results show that understanding the pathway and distribution of the suspended materials and flotsam caused by tsunamis is important for a proper hazards mitigation plan and waste management action, and to minimize serious long-term adverse environmental and natural resources consequences.     

Sediment mobility and bed armoring in the St Clair River: insights from hydrodynamic modeling

The lake levels in Lake Michigan‐Huron have recently fallen to near historical lows, as has the elevation difference between Lake Michigan‐Huron compared to Lake Erie. This decline in lake levels has the potential to cause detrimental impacts on the lake ecosystems, together with social and economic impacts on communities in the entire Great Lakes region. Results from past work suggest that morphological changes in the St Clair River, which is the only natural outlet for Lake Michigan‐Huron, could be an appreciable factor in the recent trends of lake level decline. A key research question is whether bed erosion within the river has caused an increase in water conveyance, therefore, contributed to the falling lake level. In this paper, a numerical modeling approach with field data is used to investigate the possibility of sediment movement in the St Clair River and assess the likelihood of morphological change under the current flow regime. A two‐dimensional numerical model was used to study flow structure, bed shear stress, and sediment mobility/armoring over a range of flow discharges. Boundary conditions for the numerical model were provided by detailed field measurements that included high‐resolution bathymetry and three‐dimensional flow velocities. The results indicate that, without considering other effects, under the current range of flow conditions, the shear stresses produced by the river flow are too low to transport most of the coarse bed sediment within the reach and are too low to cause substantial bed erosion or bed scour. However, the detailed maps of the bed show mobile bedforms in the upper St Clair River that are indicative of sediment transport. Relatively high shear stresses near a constriction at the upstream end of the river and at channel bends could cause local scour and deposition. Ship‐induced propeller wake erosion also is a likely cause of sediment movement in the entire reach. Other factors that may promote sediment movement, such as ice cover and dredging in the lower river, require further investigation. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of soil surface components on soil hydrological behaviour in a dry Mediterranean environment (Southern Spain)

Various researchers have studied the spatial pattern of soil surface components such as vegetation, rock fragments, bare soil, litter and surface crusts, as a key factor of hydrological behaviour in Mediterranean settings with heterogeneous patches of vegetation cover and strong human impact. The studies indicate that there is a mosaic of patches that generate run-off or infiltrate overland flow, distributed in various ways along hillslopes. Few of these studies, however, have looked at areas underlain by metamorphic rocks such as phyllites or schists. This study analysed the temporal and spatial variability of the effects of soil surface components on hydrological processes in a small dry Mediterranean catchment underlain by metamorphic rocks. A systematic sampling of multiple sites throughout a hydrological year was carried out.We related the hydrological behaviour of soil surface components to 1) their position along the hillslope, 2) the distance of existing vegetation tussocks from the line of run-off, 3) rainfall intensity and 4) the main physical/chemical soil properties affecting infiltration processes. Statistical analysis was used to check the validity of the relationships. The results show that soil surface components have highly variable effects, in both space and time, on soil hydrological behaviour. These effects particularly depend on the location along the line of maximum slope and the intensity of preceding rainfall, whose interaction defines soil hydrological status. These results are similar to those for other Mediterranean settings with different lithology, in that the succession of contributing patches are hydrologically interconnected along a hillslope. The variables used and the grouping of explanatory variables through principal component analyses were found to be suitable for discussing the spatial distribution of soil surface components in the hydrologically dynamic environment of the study area.     

Development of deformable connection for earthquake‐resistant buildings to reduce floor accelerations and force responses

This paper presents the development of a deformable connection that is used to connect each floor system of the flexible gravity load resisting system (GLRS) with the stiff lateral force resisting system (LFRS) of an earthquake‐resistant building. It is shown that the deformable connection acts as a seismic response modification device, which limits the lateral forces transferred from each floor to the LFRS and allows relative motion between the GLRS and LFRS. In addition, the floor accelerations and the LFRS story shears related to the higher‐mode responses are reduced. The dispersion of peak responses is also significantly reduced. Numerical simulations of the earthquake response of a 12‐story reinforced concrete shear wall example building with deformable connections are used to define an approximate feasible design space for the deformable connection. The responses of the example building model with deformable connections and the example building model with rigid‐elastic connections are compared. Two configurations of the deformable connection are studied. In one configuration, a buckling restrained brace is used as the limited‐strength load‐carrying hysteretic component of the deformable connection, and in the other configuration, a friction device is used. Low damping laminated rubber bearings are used in both configurations to ensure the out‐of‐plane stability of the LFRS and to provide post‐elastic stiffness to the deformable connection. Important experimental results from full‐scale tests of the deformable connections are presented and used to calibrate numerical models of the connections. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Space- and Time-Dependent Probabilities for Earthquake Fault Systems from Numerical Simulations: Feasibility Study and First Results

In weather forecasting, current and past observational data are routinely assimilated into numerical simulations to produce ensemble forecasts of future events in a process termed “model steering”. Here we describe a similar approach that is motivated by analyses of previous forecasts of the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities (WGCEP). Our approach is adapted to the problem of earthquake forecasting using topologically realistic numerical simulations for the strike-slip fault system in California. By systematically comparing simulation data to observed paleoseismic data, a series of spatial probability density functions (PDFs) can be computed that describe the probable locations of future large earthquakes. We develop this approach and show examples of PDFs associated with magnitude M > 6.5 and M > 7.0 earthquakes in California.