Development and application of a catchment scale diffuse nitrate modelling tool

Water pollution from diffuse sources is a problem of increasing concern. Efforts to control diffuse pollution have been confined mainly to agricultural land and forests. Little attention has been paid to sources of diffuse pollution from urban areas. A diffuse nitrate modelling tool (DNMT) has been developed for modelling the fate of nitrate in urban areas. This tool works at the catchment scale and has a modular structure that consists of three components: the hydrological module, the nitrogen cycle module and the nitrate transport module. The hydrological model describes the possible flow pathways. The nitrogen cycle model accounts for the mass balance of nitrate and calculates the amount of nitrate for potential loss. The nitrate transport module simulates the movement of nitrate within and from the soil to the receiving water. This paper demonstrates the development of the tool and its application in the White Cart Water catchment. This implementation of the tool shows that it has a good capability for simulating the fate of nitrate in urban catchments. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trends,rhythms and events in Plio-Pleistocene African climate

We analyzed published records of terrigenous dust flux from marine sediments off subtropical West Africa, the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and the Arabian Sea, and lake records from East Africa using statistical methods to detect trends, rhythms and events in Plio-Pleistocene African climate. The critical reassessment of the environmental significance of dust flux and lake records removes the apparent inconsistencies between marine vs. terrestrial records of African climate variability. Based on these results, major steps in mammalian and hominin evolution occurred during episodes of a wetter, but highly variable climate largely controlled by orbitally induced insolation changes in the low latitudes.     

Preserving the unpreservable: a lost world rediscovered at Christian Malford, UK

The small village of Christian Malford, Wiltshire (UK) is known to palaeontologists the world over because of the chance discovery of an astonishing fossil bonanza in the mid-nineteenth century. Pits in the Jurassic Oxford Clay yielded thousands of specimens of exquisitely preserved ammonites, fish and crustaceans, but became most famous for squid-like cephalopods and belemnites (collectively termed coleoids) with fossilized soft-parts. The precise location of the find has remained obscure, until now, and a new attempt is underway to understand the ancient environment that triggered this unusual preservation.     

Ccd Photometry of the Neglected Contact Binaries V344 Lac and V1191 Cyg

New photoelectric and CCD observations of the eclipsing contact binary systems V344 Lac and V1191 Cyg are presented and analyzed. All available times of minimum light were used to study period changes of the systems and determine up-to-date ephemerides. The orbital period of V1191 Cyg is found to be increasing at a very fast rate. The photometric elements were determined using the new light curve, radial-velocity curve and broadening function fitting code ROCHE.     

The Irish Variscides: problems, perspectives and some solutions

A review is presented of interpretations made to date of the Irish Variscides, and the various models of Late Palaeozoic crustal evolution. An examination is then made of the factors controlling Variscan strain in Ireland, including lithological competence, basement fabric and basement-cover thickness. From this, the difficulties of recognizing Variscan 'fronts' and 'fold belts' are emphasized.
In order to determine whether all putative Variscan strain is indeed Variscan. in age, new time-temperature data (vitrinite reflectance; apatite fission track populations) are discussed, along with offshore data. A case is then presented for recognizing quite distinct episodes of both Variscan and post-Variscan heating and deformation. Some of the implications for the Variscides to the east are briefly examined, and the suitability of a regional 'escape tectonics' model is tested.     

THE CONTINENTAL MANTLE

Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics 1990, 184 pp., £45.00 (hbk) ISBN 019–854496–0 Oxford University Press, Oxford     

Meteoroid rotation and fireball flickering: a case study of the Innisfree fireball

Some 5 per cent of bright meteors show rapid, quasi-periodic brightness variations. It is argued that this effect, observationally known as flickering, is a manifestation of the rotational modulation of surface mass loss through ablation of a non-spherical meteoroid. We develop a set of time-dependent, single-body ablation equations that include the effect of cross-section area modulation. We present a discussion of the effects that the rotation of a non-spherical meteoroid has on the resultant meteor light curve, and we look in depth at the data related to the fireball associated with the fall of the Innisfree meteorite. We find that the parent object to the Innisfree meteorite was spinning at a rotation frequency of 2.5 Hz when it encountered the Earth's upper atmosphere. We also find that the Innisfree parent body had an initial mass of about 20 kg and that the ratio of its semiminor and semimajor axes was about 0.5.     

Stress evaluation in offshore regions of Norway

A review has been undertaken of all available information on crustal stresses in Norwegian continental shelf and North Sea. The data have principally come from the results of borehole breakouts, supplemented by focal mechanisms. A simple model of a soft linear inclusion was developed to explain the rapid changes in stress orientation in the Central Graben area. This example indicates that the stress field is affected locally by the geological or structural environment.