The effect of hedgerow wild-margins on topsoil hydraulic properties,and overland-flow incidence,magnitude and water-quality

Overland and shallow-subsurface flows from agricultural catchments are believed to contribute towards flood-risk and water-quality degradation across the globe. Hedgerows are commonplace agricultural features that may disrupt these rapid hydrological pathways. Research into the hydrological functioning of hedgerows is very limited however, with no field-based quantitative comparison of overland-flows within hedgerows versus other land-uses. This research is the first globally to observe changes in overland-flow incidence, volume and water-quality, alongside topsoil hydraulic and physico-chemical properties, induced by a hedgerow and adjoining wild-margin within a grassland landscape. Observations were conducted within two replicated paired-plots between a hedgerow wild-margin and a bordering pasture, within Cumbria, UK. Compared to adjacent pasture, hedge-margins significantly reduced topsoil dry bulk-density and increased porosity, and significantly increased the topsoil median permeability by a factor of 22–27. Overland-flow models, based on direct observations, highlight that hedge-margins are slower to produce overland-flows than pastures, requiring an equal or greater amount of saturation before the onset of overland-flow generation. Hedge-margins resultantly produced less overland-flow volume, likely due to increased infiltration, percolation and/or evapotranspiration. Soil saturation models, also based on direct observations, confirm pastures saturate faster than hedge-margins, with hedge-margins having extremely variable dynamics in relation to precipitation, whereas pastures have more moderate and consistent dynamics. Overland-flow water-quality from ‘wash-off’ experiments highlight that hedge-margins may store substantially more nitrate (70–260%), nitrate-nitrite (640–650%), and loose sediment (540–3970%) on the ground surface compared to pastures; although further experimentation is needed to determine contaminant mobilization potential.     

A threatened world city: the benefits of protecting London from the sea

This paper describes the options appraisal undertaken in the UK within the major TE2100 project to investigate the future of protecting London from flooding from the sea. An economic analysis, within a Benefit-Cost framework complemented by Multi-Criteria Analysis, shows that improving the existing flood defences and, in 2070, constructing a new Thames Barrier downstream from the existing one are the “front runner” options for tackling the increase in flood risk that is anticipated in the future. Both sensitivity and scenario analysis have little effect on option choice. Uncertainties inevitably remain, however, when looking so far ahead, but it is clear that continuing to protect this area from the sea is highly cost-beneficial. Also the very high standard of protection now, and the robustness of the existing flood defence assets, mean that major new interventions will not be needed for some time (i.e. until c. 2070). We therefore have time to monitor the situation, carefully plan measures to maintain and enhance the existing defences, and to seek to restrain the growth of risk in the Estuary and in London through carefully designed and implemented resilience-building flood plain management measures. Rather than having to rush to new engineering works, because we have not anticipated what is needed but are forced to respond hastily to a “crisis” situation, the adaptive approach that is now possible is a key legacy of the TE2100 project.     

Architecture of a Palaeoproterozoic Rift System: Evidence from the Fiery Creek Dome region,Mt Isa terrane

The Mt Isa Rift Event is a Palaeoproterozoic intracontinental extension event that defines the beginning of sedimentation into the Isa Superbasin in the Western Fold Belt, Mt Isa terrane. In the mildly deformed Fiery Creek Dome region, on the northwest flanks of the Mt Isa Rift, elements of the Mt Isa Rift Event rift architecture are preserved without being intensely overprinted by later deformation. In this region two discrete generations of northwest‐dipping normal faults have been identified. Early generation normal faults were active during the deposition of fluvial and immature conglomerate and sandstone of the Bigie Formation. Renewed rifting and the development of late‐generation normal faults occurred during deposition of shallow‐marine sandstone and siltstone of the lower Gunpowder Creek Formation. Differential uplift between tilt blocks formed an array of spatially and temporally discontinuous synrift unconformities on the crests of uplifted tilt blocks. Applying the domino model yields ～28% crustal extension for the entire Mt Isa Rift Event. Northwest‐striking transverse faults facilitated differential displacement along normal faults and formed boundaries to normal fault segments, creating smaller depositional compartments along half‐graben axes. Three large domes were formed during laccolith emplacement. These domes produced palaeogeographical highs that divided the region into sub‐basins and were a source for the coarse fluvial synrift sequences deposited during the early Mt Isa Rift Event. The basin architecture in the Fiery Creek Dome region is consistent with northwest‐southeast‐directed extension.     

The WASP project in the era of robotic telescope networks

We present the current status of the WASP project, a pair of wide angle photometric telescopes, individually called Super‐WASP. SuperWASP‐I is located in La Palma, and SuperWASP‐II at Sutherland in South Africa. SW‐I began operations in April 2004. SW‐II is expected to be operational in early 2006. Each SuperWASP instrument consists of up to 8 individual cameras using ultra‐wide field lenses backed by high‐quality passively cooled CCDs. Each camera covers 7.8 × 7.8 sq degrees of sky, for nearly 500 sq degrees of total sky coverage. One of the current aims of the WASP project is the search for extra‐solar planet transits with a focus on brighter stars in the magnitude range ∼8 to 13. Additionally, WASP will search for optical transients, track Near‐Earth Objects, and study many types of variable stars and extragalactic objects. The collaboration has developed a custom‐built reduction pipeline that achieves better than 1 percent photometric precision. We discuss future goals, which include: nightly on‐mountain reductions that could be used to automatically drive alerts via a small robotic telescope network, and possible roles of the WASP telescopes as providers in such a network. Additional technical details of the telescopes, data reduction, and consortium members and institutions can be found on the web site at: http://www.superwasp.org/. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

The characteristics of asymmetric pedestrian behavior: A preliminary study using passive smartphone location data

Understanding the movements of people is essential for the design and management of urban areas. This article presents a novel approach to understanding the asymmetry in route choice (i.e., the degree to which people choose different walking routes for their outbound and return journeys). The study utilizes a large volume of traces of individual routes, captured using a smartphone application. The routes are aggregated to a regular grid, and matrix statistics are developed to estimate the aggregate degree of route asymmetry for different types of route (shortest, longest, weekday, weekend, etc.). The results suggest that people change their route approximately 15% of the time. Although this varied little when observing trips made at the weekend or on a weekday, people taking journeys that deviated substantially from the shortest possible path were 6 percentage points less likely to change their routes than those taking journeys that were closest to the shortest path (14 and 20% asymmetry, respectively). The absolute length also impacted on the asymmetry of journeys, but not as substantially. This result is important because, for the first time, it reports a correlation between deviation from shortest route and aggregate pedestrian choice.     

Post-orogenic (<1500 Ma) thermal history of the Palaeo-Mesoproterozoic, Mt. Isa province, NE Australia

We present hornblende, white mica, biotite and alkali feldspar ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar data from Paleo-Mesoproterozoic rocks of the Mt. Isa Inlier, Australia, which reveal a previously unrecognised post-orogenic, non-linear cooling history of part of the Northern Australian Craton. Plateau and total fusion ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar ages range between 1500 and 767 Ma and record increases in regional cooling rates of up to 4 °C/Ma during 1440–1390 and 1260–1000 Ma. Forward modelling of the alkali feldspar ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar Arrhenius parameters reveals subsequent increases in cooling rates during 600–400 Ma. The cooling episodes were driven by both erosional exhumation at average rates of 0.25 km/Ma and thermal relaxation following crustal heating and magmatic events. Early Mesoproterozoic cooling is synchronous with exhumation and shearing in the Arunta Block and Gawler Craton. Late Mesoproterozoic cooling could have either been driven by increased rates of exhumation, or a result of thermal relaxation following a heat pulse that was synchronous with dyke emplacement in the Arunta, Musgrave and Mt. Isa province, as well as Grenville-aged orogenesis in the Albany–Fraser Belt. Latest Neoproterozoic–Cambrian cooling and exhumation was probably driven by the convergence of part of the East Antarctic Shield with the Musgrave Block and Western Australia (Petermann Ranges Orogeny), as well as collisional tectonics that produced the Delamerian–Ross Orogen. Major changes in the stress field and geothermal gradients of the Australian plate that are synchronous with the assembly and break-up of parts of Rodinia and Gondwana resulted in shearing and repeated brittle reactivation of the Mt. Isa Inlier, probably via the displacement of long-lived basement faults within the Northern Australian Craton.     

新疆伊犁吐拉苏地区的线性构造及控矿特征

采用多种数值图像进行线性构造解译，其中DEM和NOAA主要用于区域尺度，TM用于勘探区尺度，地面磁法数据用于靶区范围的解译分析。研究认为该区线性构造与金矿床的空间分布关系密切，表现为：（1）区域尺度的一级控矿构造为NEE、NE和NW向构造的交汇部位；吐拉苏地区的一级控矿构造为WNW和NNW及NE方向构造的交汇部位；（2）吐拉苏地区的次级控矿构造为NNE和环形构造的交汇部位；（3）靶区的一级控矿构造为NE、SN和环形构造。线性构造异常分析结果显示，当线性构造的优益度大于40时，有较大的成矿可能性。     

RE J1034+396: the origin of the soft X-ray excess and quasi-periodic oscillation

The X-ray quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) seen in RE J1034+396 is so far unique amongst active galactic nuclei (AGN). Here, we look at another unique feature of RE J1034+396, namely its huge soft X-ray excess, to see if this is related in any way to the detection of the QPO. We show that all potential models considered for the soft energy excess can fit the 0.3–10 keV X-ray spectrum, but the energy dependence of the rapid variability (which is dominated by the QPO) strongly supports a spectral decomposition where the soft excess is from low-temperature Comptonization of the disc emission and remains mostly constant, while the rapid variability is produced by the power-law tail changing in normalization. The presence of the QPO in the tail rather than in the disc is a common feature in black hole binaries (BHBs), but low-temperature Comptonization of the disc spectrum is not generally seen in these systems. The main exception to this is GRS 1915+105, the only BHB which routinely shows super-Eddington luminosities. We speculate that the super-Eddington accretion rates lead to a change in disc structure, and that this also triggers the X-ray QPO.     

Emergent characteristics of rockfall inventories captured at a regional scale

High-resolution rockfall inventories captured at a regional scale are scarce. This is partly owing to difficulties in measuring the range of possible rockfall volumes with sufficient accuracy and completeness, and at a scale exceeding the influence of localized controls. This paucity of data restricts our ability to abstract patterns of erosion, identify long-term changes in behaviour and assess how rockfalls respond to changes in rock mass structural and environmental conditions. We have addressed this by developing a workflow that is tailored to monitoring rockfalls and the resulting cliff retreat continuously (in space), in three-dimensional (3D) and over large spatial scales (>10⁴ m). We tested our approach by analysing rockfall activity along 20.5 km of coastal cliffs in North Yorkshire (UK), in what we understand to be the first multi-temporal detection of rockfalls at a regional scale. We show that rockfall magnitude–frequency relationships, which often underpin predictive models of erosion, are highly sensitive to the spatial extent of monitoring. Variations in rockfall shape with volume also imply a systemic shift in the underlying mechanisms of detachment with scale, leading us to question the validity of applying a single probabilistic model to the full range of rockfalls observed here. Finally, our data emphasize the importance of cliff retreat as an episodic process. Going forwards, there will a pressing need to understand and model the erosional response of such coastlines to rising global sea levels as well as projected changes to winds, tides, wave climates, precipitation and storm events. The methodologies and data presented here are fundamental to achieving this, marking a step-change in our ability to understand the competing effects of different processes in determining the magnitude and frequency of rockfall activity and ultimately meaning that we are better placed to investigate relationships between process and form/erosion at critical, regional scales. © 2020 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Iron oxides in comet 81P/Wild 2

Abstract– We have used synchrotron Fe‐XANES, XRS, microRaman, and SEM‐TEM analyses of Stardust track 41 slice and track 121 terminal area slices to identify Fe oxide (magnetite‐hematite and amorphous oxide), Fe‐Ti oxide, and V‐rich chromite (Fe‐Cr‐V‐Ti‐Mn oxide) grains ranging in size from 200 nm to ～10 μm. They co‐exist with relict FeNi metal. Both Fe‐XANES and microRaman analyses suggest that the FeNi metal and magnetite (Fe₂O₃FeO) also contain some hematite (Fe₂O₃). The FeNi has been partially oxidized (probably during capture), but on the basis of our experimental work with a light‐gas gun and microRaman analyses, we believe that some of the magnetite‐hematite mixtures may have originated on Wild 2. The terminal samples from track 121 also contain traces of sulfide and Mg‐rich silicate minerals. Our results show an unequilibrated mixture of reduced and oxidized Fe‐bearing minerals in the Wild 2 samples in an analogous way to mineral assemblages seen in carbonaceous chondrites and interplanetary dust particles. The samples contain some evidence for terrestrial contamination, for example, occasional Zn‐bearing grains and amorphous Fe oxide in track 121 for which evidence of a cometary origin is lacking.