Organic matter, putative nannobacteria and the formation of ooids and hardgrounds

Modern ooids from Joulters Cay, when baked at 500 °C, turn various shades of black depending upon the organic content. Mucus-rich laminae occur at quasi-regular intervals of a few micrometres within the cortex. When mucus is still present, it turns black; when it is absent, there is a gap. The cortex consists of two types of aragonite: (1) 'batons' of circular cross-section capped by a single 0·1-μm (100-nm) ball, which can be interpreted as a single nannobacteria cell that precipitated the baton; (2) elongate crystals made of multiple rows of minute balls of about 0·03 μm (30 nm), which may or may not have been small organisms in the size range of viruses. There are also some crystals that show no evidence of organic precipitation. Hardground cementation begins with the formation of a terminal mucus-rich ring on the ooid that bakes black and is crowded with 0·1-μm (100-nm) balls. Some ooids are then joined by a meniscus also made of mucus with aragonite crystals. The final, most abundant hardground cement forms a fur of inorganic aragonite crystals often shaped like plywood sheets, although some 'organic', elongate crystals composed of ≈0·03 μm (≈30 nm) balls are also found in the later cement. For a century, ooids have been known to be closely associated with organic matter; this paper goes further and proposes that the bulk of the ooid may be precipitated by nannobacterial processes. Hardground formation, in the beginning, may also be a microbiological process, but most cementation is accomplished inorganically.     

Addressing Scottish rural fuel poverty through a regional industrial symbiosis strategy for the Scottish forest industries sector

Tackling fuel poverty is central to the delivery of the Scottish Executive’s commitment to social justice. Many Scottish rural households are not linked into the mains gas network and rely on expensive alternatives, despite being surrounded by plentiful supplies of low-cost renewable wood biomass. A regional study was undertaken to establish the potential market for pelletised wood fuel, available as a low-value by-product from the rapidly expanding Scottish forest industry sector. The wider implications of the research findings are analysed by extending the principles of industrial symbiosis from a site-specific to a regional scale. Promoting an indigenous pellet-based wood fuel market for rural Scotland would fulfil important Scottish Executive economic, social and environmental sustainability objectives. Adding off-site social symbiotic elements increases the potential for on-site technical symbiosis in nascent Scottish forest industry clusters. At present, market failure is preventing the realisation of these benefits, and the paper concludes by identifying ways in which market intermediation, through wood fuel energy service companies, might overcome the current barriers to exploiting such symbiosis.     

Context and climate change: an integrated assessment for Barrow, Alaska

An intensive approach to Barrow, Alaska’s adaptations to climate change and variability during recent decades suggests reconsideration of the interconnected roles of science, policy, and decision-making structures. First, profound uncertainties are inherent in unique interactions among the many natural and human factors affecting Barrow’s vulnerability. Science cannot significantly reduce these uncertainties through extensive approaches, but intensive approaches can reconstruct and update local trends, clarify the underlying dynamics, and harvest experience for policy purposes. Second, sound policies to reduce Barrow’s vulnerability to coastal erosion and flooding must incorporate these profound uncertainties and the multiple values of the community. Minimizing vulnerability to climate change is only one of the community’s interests, and must compete with other interests for limited time, attention, funds and other resources. Third, the community itself is in the best position to understand its own context, to decide on sound policies, and to take responsibility for those decisions. In short, local context matters in science, policy, and decision-making structures for adaptation to climate change and variability. Overall, cognitive constraints may be the most important human dimension of climate change. Factoring the global problem into more tractable local problems would make the most of our cognitive capacity.     

Model-based covariance mean variance classification techniques:algorithm development and application to the acoustic classification ofzooplankton

For inversion problems in which the theoretical relationship between observed data and model parameters is well characterized, a promising approach to the classification problem is the application of techniques that capitalize on the predictive power of class-specific models. Theoretical models have been developed for three zooplankton scattering classes (hard elastic-shelled, e.g., pteropods; fluid-like, e.g., euphausiids; and gas-bearing, e.g., siphonophores), providing a sound basis for model-based classification approaches. The covariance mean variance classification (CMVC) techniques classify broad-band echoes from individual zooplankton based on comparisons of observed echo spectra to model space realizations. Three different CMVC algorithms were developed: the integrated score classifier, the pairwise score classifier, and the Bayesian probability classifier; these classifiers assign observations to a class based on similarities in covariance, mean, and variance while accounting for model spare ambiguity and validity. The CMVC techniques were applied to broad-band (~350-750 kHz) echoes acquired from 24 different zooplankton to invert for scatterer class and properties. All three classification algorithms had a high rate of success with high-quality high SNR data. Accurate acoustic classification of zooplankton species has the potential to significantly improve estimates of zooplankton biomass made from ocean acoustic backscatter measurements     

Diet and gill morphology of the East Coast redeye round herring Etrumeus wongratanai off KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

Stomach content analyses and measurements of gillraker morphology were used to assess the diet and feeding ecology of the East Coast redeye round herring Etrumeus wongratanai and provide data for comparisons with other small pelagic fishes off South Africa. Samples were collected by jigging from a kayak off Scottburgh, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), over the period July 2013–May 2014. In total, 66 stomachs (containing 4 407 prey items) and 66 gill arches were examined. Stomach content analyses indicated that East Coast redeye round herring, at the time of sampling, fed on large (1 500–2 500?µm) particles, with ～2 500?µm particles making the greatest contribution to dietary carbon. The species feeds on larger particles than do anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus and sardine Sardinops sagax, but on particles of a similar size to those consumed by West Coast redeye round herring Etrumeus whiteheadi. There were significant differences in mean gillraker gaps between East Coast redeye round herring and both sardine and anchovy, but not between East Coast and West Coast redeye round herring. The differences in gillraker gaps between East Coast redeye round herring, sardine and anchovy are indicative of resource partitioning through differential feeding, based on zooplankton size. The data suggest that there is no resource partitioning between East and West coast redeye round herring, indicating that competition is likely to occur between them. However, such competition is minimised by limited spatial overlap between these two species.     

Characteristics of acoustic propagation to the eastern vertical line array receiver during the summer 1996 New England shelfbreak PRIMER experiment

During July and August of 1996, the summer component of the New England shelfbreak front PRIMER experiment was fielded in the Mid-Atlantic Bight, at a site due south of Martha's Vineyard, MA. This study produced acoustic transmission data from a network of moored sources and receivers in conjunction with very-high-resolution oceanography measurements. This paper analyzes receptions at the northeast array receiver from two 400 Hz acoustic tomography sources, with the transmission paths going from the continental slope onto the continental shelf. These data, along with forward acoustic-propagation modeling based on moored oceanographic data, SeaSoar hydrography measurements, and bottom measurements, reveal many new and interesting aspects of acoustic propagation in a complicated slope-shelf environment. For example, one sees that both the shelfbreak front and tidally generated soliton internal wave packets produce stronger mode coupling than previously expected, leading to an interesting time-and-range-variable population of the acoustic normal modes. Additionally, the arrival time wander and the signal spread of acoustic pulses show variability that can be attributed to the presence of a frontal meander and variability in the soliton field. These and other effects are discussed in this paper, with an emphasis on creating a strong connection between the environmental measurements and the acoustic field characteristics.     

Spatial and temporal variations in acoustic propagation characteristics at the New England shelfbreak front

The spatial and temporal variability of the acoustic field in the region of a strong coastal shelfbreak front are examined, using the high-resolution environmental data from the 1996-1997 New England shelfbreak PRIMER experiment to provide input to acoustic propagation models. Specifically, the "SeaSoar" undulating conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) probe across-shelf transects provide 1-km along-track resolution, including the front, during the spring, summer, and winter seasons. These data allow one to study the diurnal and seasonal temporal variation of the acoustic field, as well as the varying spatial structure of the field. Using the RAM parabolic equation code, across-shelf acoustic field structure at 200, 400, and 1000 Hz is studied for various source depths. A number of interesting propagation effects are noted, the most interesting of which are the inhibition of strong acoustic-bottom interaction by the warm shelf water beneath the shelfbreak front and the existence of small-scale ducts near the front, due to offshore transport. Data from the vertical line arrays deployed as part of PRIMER offer partial validation of the predictions made. Specifically, it is seen that the mean received levels are in reasonable accord with propagation calculations made using locally measured bottom properties and the SeaSoar water-column measurements.     

Optimal modal beamforming of bandpass signals using an undersizedsparse vertical hydrophone array: theory and a shallow-water experiment

Conventional methods for modal beamforming of underwater acoustic signals using a vertical-line hydrophone array (VLA) can suffer significant degradation in resolution when the array is geometrically deficient, i.e., consists of sparsely spaced elements and spans the water column partially or is poorly navigated. Designed for estimating the coefficients of the normal modes, these conventional methods include the direct projection (DP) of the data on the calculated mode shapes and least-squares (LS) fitting of the mode sum to the data. The degradation, in the form of modal cross talk or sidelobes, is a result of an undersampling in depth. This cross talk may be mitigated with the application of proper space-time filter constraints in the case of a pulse transmission. In this paper, a generalized least-squares (GLS) mode beamformer, capable of incorporating physical space-time constraints on the propagation of sound, is presented. The formulation is based on the well-known theorem of Gauss and Markov. Initialized by a model prediction of the basic arrival structure of the normal modes and incorporating, iteratively, refined estimates of the statistics of the modal fluctuations, this GLS technique strives to boost the resolution of a geometrically deficient VLA. The improvement is demonstrated using the VLA data collected during a shallow-water tomography experiment in the Barents Sea. The superiority of the GLS method over the conventional DP and LS methods is evident, providing a high-quality time series of modal arrivals as a function of geophysical time, which, in turn, reveals the dominant time scales of the oceanic processes associated with the Barents Sea Polar Front