Morphological changes on meander point bars associated with flow structure at different discharges

This study investigates the impact of flow structure of different discharges on meander point bar morphology. We carried out mobile and terrestrial laser scanning campaigns before and after a flood on two sandy‐bed point bars. Between the scans, the flow structure was examined using an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler at three flow stages. The results indicated that a meander point bar both affects and in turn, is itself modified by the flow at different discharges. The lower flow stages also have a significant effect on point bar morphology, especially on deposition over the bar head. Secondary circulation is responsible for scroll bar formation on the point bar margin beyond the apex. Flow separation at the inner bank, by contrast, does not require secondary circulation, but is dependent on flow depth over the point bar. A sudden increase in depth beyond the point bar top causes decreased stream power over the bar tail. The flow separation and decreased stream power cause a slow flow zone and net deposition over point bar tail. The backwater effect, if evident, may strengthen the process. Thus, filling over the bar tail seems generic for point bars and independent on secondary flow. Chutes and chute bars, scroll bars, bar head filling and bar platform filling, by contrast, require special fluvio‐morphological circumstances discussed in this paper. Whilst this paper confirms that the three‐dimensional flow structure has a major effect on point bar morphology, the flow structure seems to depend on how the point bar affects the flow trajectory which, in turn, depends upon the flow stage. Finally, the shape of the bend and the grain size distribution control the impacts of the flow structure, leading to divergent morphologies of point bars with certain generic features. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthesis of studies of palsa formation underlining the importance of local environmental and physical characteristics

This review presents a synthesis of four decades of palsa studies based on field experiments and observations mainly in Fennoscandia, as well as laboratory measurements. Palsas are peat-covered mounds with a permanently frozen core; in Finnish Lapland, they range from 0.5 to 7 m in height and from 2 to 150 m in diameter. These small landforms are characteristic of the southern margin of the discontinuous permafrost zone. Palsa formation requires certain environmental conditions: long-lasting air temperature below 0°C, thin snow cover, and low summer precipitation. The development and persistence of their frozen core is sensitive to the physical properties of peat. The thermal conductivity of wet and frozen peat is high, and it decreases significantly as the peat dries and thaws. This affects the development of the active layer and makes its response to climate change complex. The insulating properties of dry peat during hot and dry summers moderate the thawing of the active layer on palsas. In contrast, humid and wet weather during the summer causes deep thawing and may destroy the frozen core of palsas. Ice layers in palsas have previously been interpreted as ice segregation features but because peat is not frost-susceptible, the ice layers are now reinterpreted as resulting from ice growth at the base of a frozen core that is effectively floating in a mire.     

River floodplain relocations and the abandonment of Aborigine settlements in the Upper Amazon Basin: A historical case study of San Miguel de Cunibos at the Middle Ucayali River

Lathrap introduced the concept of lateral channel migration of the meandering rivers as a potential factor for human community dynamics in the Upper Amazon. Nevertheless, the dynamics considered by Lathrap is restricted to particular floodplains. He payed no attention to a large scale fluvial phenomenom: the sudden river relocations (avulsion), which also profoundly affected the Upper Amazon cultures. We present here a historical case study analyzing a river floodplain avulsion at the Middle Ucayali River during the late 1700s, causing the abandonment of a settlement called San Miguel de Cunibos and probably leading to the massive migration of the Cunibos Indians. Furthermore, we argue that similar situations have frequently occurred during the human history of the Upper Amazon, and thus these fluvial phenomena should be taken into consideration in future archaeological and ethnohistorical studies. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Locating regional seismic events with global optimization based on interval arithmetic

More than 1000 seismic events in northern Europe at distances of up to 400  km from the detecting network are located using an optimization method in which the global minimum of the traveltime function residuals is searched for using an Interval Arithmetic (IA) method. Epicentres are determined using P waves detected by the Finnish national seismic network: up to 15 stations were used in the analysis. The IA results coincide with locations provided by the University of Helsinki bulletins with a median location bias of 7.6  km.
  A second data set of 59 explosions in the Siilinjärvi mine in central Finland was examined in detail, because the locations of the explosions were known exactly. In this case, the median difference of IA locations was 3.8  km from the average location of mine explosions, while all 59 events were located within 9  km of the 'true' epicentres. The corresponding median error of the University of Helsinki locations was smaller (3.2  km), but some Helsinki locations were well over 10  km from the mine. The convergence towards the global optimum using interval arithmetic was fast when compared with the conventional least-squares approaches for epicentre determinations.     

Holocene colluvial chronology in a sub‐arctic esker landscape at Kuttanen,Finnish Lapland: kettleholes as geo‐ecological archives of interactions amongst fire,vegetation, soil,climate and geomorphological instability

Excavations were made in the colluvial deposits of seven kettleholes in a sandy esker at Kuttanen, northwestern Finnish Lapland. The Holocene history of forest fires and the associated colluvial activity initiated on the slopes of the kettleholes were reconstructed based on 131 radiocarbon dates from charcoal layers. These dates were supplemented by luminescence dating of colluvial sand layers. The first forest fires occurred ～9000 years ago following the immigration of Pinus sylvestris about 1000 years after deglaciation. Evidence of forest fires and colluvial activity increased with the density of the pine forest, reaching a maximum during the Holocene Thermal Maximum between ～8000 and 4000 cal. a BP, declining thereafter to a minimum in the last ～500 years. This multimillennial‐scale pattern corresponds with forest fires being triggered by lightning strikes during the warmest summer weather of the Holocene, which also produced heavy rain and slope wash from convective storms. The 50 forest fires identified over the Holocene indicate a long cycle in fire frequency of 1 in ～200 years, which appears to reflect the average successional recovery time of the forest. Complex interactions amongst vegetation, fire and climate may account for little or no association between 23 centennial‐ to millennial‐scale clusters of forest fires/colluvial events and Holocene temperature or precipitation anomalies. Buried podzols indicate five phases of soil formation and hence low levels of landscape disturbance. The kettleholes and their colluvial deposits therefore provide a unique geo‐ecological archive that has led to new insights into the geo‐ecological interactions that affect environmental change in the sub‐arctic landscape.     

Age differences between Rb---Sr whole rock and U---Pb zircon ages of syn- and postorogenic Svecokarelian granitoids in Sottunga, SW Finland

The U---Pb age on pooled data of zircnos from the postorogenic Svecokarelian Mosshaga granite is 1788 ± 11 Ma (2 σ). The corresponding Rb---Sr whole rock age is 1742 ± 34 Ma (2 σ). The Mosshaga granite intrudes a synorogenic granodiorite, which has a U---Pb zircon age of 1889 ± 10 Ma and a Rb---Sr whole rock age of 1850 ± 28 Ma. The age differences between the U---Pb zircon ages and Rb---Sr whole rock ages are concluded to be geologically significant. It is shown that the Mosshaga pluton cooled rapidly and as a consequence the Rb---Sr isotopic system closed at a time very close to the crystallization of the zircons. A commonly observed feldspar and biotite alteration in Svecokarelian granitoids indicates migration of Rb and Sr isotopes in the whole rock system which may lead to apparently younger Rb---Sr ages.     

State of disequilibrium between 238U, 234U, 226Ra and 222Rn in groundwater from bedrock

Approximately one thousand drilled wells were investigated for their natural radioactivity. The determinations of ²³⁸U, ²³⁴U, ²²⁶Ra and ²²²Rn from 310 samples showed a high state of radioactive disequilibrium between the members of the uranium series present in water. The ${}^{238}\text{U}{}^{226}\text{Ra}$ activity ratio usually fell in the range 1–20 and the ${}^{238}\text{U}{}^{222}\text{Rn}$ activity ratio in the range 1–20 × 10^?4, the highest activity ratios being from samples with an elevated uranium content. The ${}^{234}\text{U}{}^{238}\text{U}$ activity ratio varied between 0.76 and 4.67, the most frequent values showing a 60% excess of ²³⁴U in the samples. Most of the ${}^{234}\text{U}{}^{238}\text{U}$ activity ratios near unity were found in samples with a high uranium content. Several drilled wells with anomalously high uranium contents were found in southern Finland. The average ²²⁶Ra and ²²²Rn contents of these wells were not exceptionally high, which suggests high mobility of uranium in groundwater from the areas involved.     

Nudging the Impasse? Lessons From the Nationwide Online Wolf Management Forum in Finland

During the early 2010s, Finnish wolf (Canis lupus) policy reached an impasse. Unfavorable conservation status, intensifying wolf–human conflict, civil disobedience, legislative confusion, and administrative frustration characterized the situation. As part of a participatory updating process for the Finnish national wolf management plan in 2014, we organized a nationwide wolf management forum to explore how e-participation could be used to nurture deliberation for improved wolf policy. We present our interactive method and the resulting wolf territory-based solutions to the wolf problems that the participants of a nationwide online forum identified. The theoretical and practical significance of our work is that we ascribe value to the functional features of these solutions as modifications to the action environment, shared by people and wolves. In this vein, we discuss the role of e-deliberation on the path toward an institutional fit, and we consider how local decision making could help to implement promising wolf territory-level policy interventions.     

The effect of storms on Finnish dairy farms: electrical outage statistics and the effect on milk production

Natural Hazards - Due to technological advancement, agricultural production is increasingly dependent on electricity. At the same time, power delivery infrastructures are challenged by extreme...