Altimetry-Derived Gravity Predictions of Bathymetry by the Gravity-Geologic Method

The gravity-geologic method (GGM) was implemented for 2′ by 2′ bathymetric determinations in a 1.6° longitude-by-1.0° latitude region centered on the eastern end of the Shackleton Fracture Zone in the Drake Passage, Antarctica. The GGM used the Bouguer slab approximation to process satellite altimetry-derived marine free-air gravity anomalies and 6,548 local shipborne bathymetric sounding measurements from the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute to update the surrounding off-track bathymetry. The limitations of the Bouguer slab for modeling the gravity effects of variable density, rugged bathymetric relief at distances up to several kilometers, were mitigated by establishing ‘tuning’ densities that stabilized the GGM predictions. Tests using two-thirds of the shipborne bathymetric measurements to estimate the remaining third indicated that the tuning densities minimized root-mean-square deviations to about 29 m. The optimum GGM bathymetry model honoring all the ship observations correlated very well with widely available bathymetry models, despite local differences that ranged up to a few kilometers. The great analytical simplicity of GGM facilitates accurately and efficiently updating bathymetry as new gravity and bathymetric sounding data become available. Furthermore, the availability of marine free-air gravity anomaly data ensures that the GGM is more effective than simply extrapolating or interpolating ship bathymetry coverage into unmapped regions.     

Structural inversion and its controls : examples from the Alpine foreland and the French Alps

Abstract

Positive structural inversion involves the uplift of rocks on the hanging-walls of faults, by dip slip or oblique slip movements. Controlling factors include the strike and dip of the earlier normal faults, the type of normal faults — whether they were listric or rotated blocks, the time lapsed since extension and the amount of contraction relative to extension. Steeply dipping faults are difficult to invert by dip slip movements; they form buttresses to displacement on both cover detachments and on deeper level but gently inclined basement faults. The decrease in displacement on the hanging-walls of such steep buttresses leads to the generation of layer parallel shortening, gentle to tight folds — depending on the amount of contractional displacement, back-folds and back-thrust systems, and short-cut thrust geometries — where the contractional fault slices across the footwall of the earlier normal fault to enclose a “floating horse”. However, early steeply dipping normal faults readily form oblique to strike slip inversion structures and often tramline the subsequent shortening into particular directions.

Examples are given from the strongly inverted structures of the western Alps and the weakly inverted structures of the Alpine foreland. Extensional faulting developed during the Triassic to Jurassic, during the initial opening of the central Atlantic, while the main phases of inversion date from the end Cretaceous when spreading began in the north Atlantic and there was a change of relative motion between Europe and Africa. During the mid-Tertiary well over 100 km of Alpine shortening took place; Alpine thrusts, often detached along, or close to, the basement-cover interface, stacking the late Jurassic to Cretaceous sediments of the post-extensional subsidence phase. These high level detachments were joined and breached by lower level faults in the basement which, in the external zones of the western Alps, generally reactivated and rotated the earlier east dipping half-graben bounding faults. The external massifs are essentially uplifted half-graben blocks. There was more reactivation and stacking of basement sheets in the eastern part of this external zone, where the faults had been rotated into more gentle dips above a shallower extensional detachment than on the steeper faults to the west.

There is no direct relationship between the weaker inversion of the Alpine foreland and the major orogenic contraction of the western Alps; the inversion structures of southern Britain and the Channel were separated from the Alps by a zone of rifting from late Eocene to Miocene which affected the Rhone, Bresse and Rhine regions. Though they relate to the same plate movements which formed the Alps, the weaker inversion structures must have been generated by within plate stresses, or from those emanating from the Atlantic rather than the Tethyan margin.     

Autotomy in porcelain crabs is an effective escape mechanism from rockfish predation

Porcelain crabs possess a ‘hair‐trigger’ propensity to autotomize their chelipeds (claws), and laboratory studies have demonstrated that this ability is highly effective in avoiding predation from other crabs. However, porcelain crabs are also subject to predation from fishes, which use a very different means of capture. In this study, we investigated whether autotomy in porcelain crabs is also effective against predation by fishes. To do this, we examined stomach‐contents data from four common species of kelp‐forest rockfishes and determined the frequency of disassociated chelipeds (those with no associated bodies) in porcelain crabs and in brachyuran crabs, which do not readily autotomize their chelipeds. We found that disassociated chelipeds of porcelain crabs were six times as common as those of brachyuran crabs (35% of the remains of all porcelain crabs versus 6% of the remains of all brachyuran crabs). We interpret this difference to be evidence that, through autotomy, porcelain crabs escaped ingestion of their entire bodies, and thus certain mortality, at a higher rate than did brachyuran crabs. We conclude that autotomy constituted an effective escape strategy from rockfish predation. This evidence, in conjunction with previous studies, suggests that autotomy of chelipeds in porcelain crabs is an effective anti‐predatory strategy against phylogenetically disparate predatory groups.     

Winds and tides of Ligeia Mare,with application to the drift of the proposed time TiME (Titan Mare Explorer) capsule

We use two independent General Circulation Models (GCMs) to estimate surface winds at Titan’s Ligeia Mare (78° N, 250° W), motivated by a proposed mission to land a floating capsule in this ～500 km hydrocarbon sea. The models agree on the overall magnitude (～0.5–1 m/s) and seasonal variation (strongest in summer) of windspeeds, but details of seasonal and diurnal variation of windspeed and direction differ somewhat, with the role of surface exchanges being more significant than that of gravitational tides in the atmosphere. We also investigate the tidal dynamics in the sea using a numerical ocean dynamics model: assuming a rigid lithosphere, the tidal amplitude is up to ～0.8 m. Tidal currents are overall proportional to the reciprocal of depth—with an assumed central depth of 300 m, the characteristic tidal currents are ～1 cm/s, with notable motions being a slosh between Ligeia’s eastern and western lobes, and a clockwise flow pattern.We find that a capsule will drift at approximately one tenth of the windspeed, unless measures are adopted to augment the drag areas above or below the waterline. Thus motion of a floating capsule is dominated by the wind, and is likely to be several km per Earth day, a rate that will be readily measured from Earth by radio navigation methods. In some instances, the wind vector rotates diurnally such that the drift trajectory is epicyclic.     

Hybridization of partial least squares and neural network models for quantifying lunar surface minerals

The goal of this study is to develop an efficient and accurate model for using visible–near infrared reflectance spectra to estimate the abundance of minerals on the lunar surface. Previous studies using partial least squares (PLS) and genetic algorithm–partial least squares (GA–PLS) models for this purpose revealed several drawbacks. PLS has two limitations: (1) redundant spectral bands cannot be removed effectively and (2) nonlinear spectral mixing (i.e., intimate mixtures) cannot be accommodated. Incorporating GA into the model is an effective way for selecting a set of spectral bands that are the most sensitive to variations in the presence/abundance of lunar minerals and to some extent overcomes the first limitation. Given the fact that GA–PLS is still subject to the effect of nonlinearity, here we develop and test a hybrid partial least squares–back propagation neural network (PLS–BPNN) model to determine the effectiveness of BPNN for overcoming the two limitations simultaneously. BPNN takes nonlinearity into account with sigmoid functions, and the weights of redundant spectral bands are significantly decreased through the back propagation learning process. PLS, GA–PLS and PLS–BPNN are tested with the Lunar Soil Characterization Consortium dataset (LSCC), which includes VIS–NIR reflectance spectra and mineralogy for various soil size fractions and the accuracy of the models are assessed based on R² and root mean square error values. The PLS–BPNN model is further tested with 12 additional Apollo soil samples. The results indicate that: (1) PLS–BPNN exhibits the best performance compared with PLS and GA–PLS for retrieving abundances of minerals that are dominant on the lunar surface; (2) PLS–BPNN can overcome the two limitations of PLS; (3) PLS–BPNN has the capability to accommodate spectral effects resulting from variations in particle size. By analyzing PLS beta coefficients, spectral bands selected by GA, and the loading curve of the latent variable with the largest weight in PLS–BPNN, we conclude that spectral information incorporated into the three models is directly derived from the diagnostic absorption bands associated with the individual minerals. It is concluded that the PLS–BPNN model should be applicable to both Clementine UV–VIS–NIRs and Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M³) data.     

Chemical pathway analysis of the Martian atmosphere: CO2-formation pathways

The chemical composition of a planetary atmosphere plays an important role for atmospheric structure, stability, and evolution. Potentially complex interactions between chemical species do not often allow for an easy understanding of the underlying chemical mechanisms governing the atmospheric composition. In particular, trace species can affect the abundance of major species by acting in catalytic cycles. On Mars, such cycles even control the abundance of its main atmospheric constituent CO₂. The identification of catalytic cycles (or more generally chemical pathways) by hand is quite demanding. Hence, the application of computer algorithms is beneficial in order to analyze complex chemical reaction networks. Here, we have performed the first automated quantified chemical pathways analysis of the Martian atmosphere with respect to CO₂-production in a given reaction system. For this, we applied the Pathway Analysis Program (PAP) to output data from the Caltech/JPL photochemical Mars model. All dominant chemical pathways directly related to the global CO₂-production have been quantified as a function of height up to 86 km. We quantitatively show that CO₂-production is dominated by chemical pathways involving HO_x and O_x. In addition, we find that NO_x in combination with HO_x and O_x exhibits a non-negligible contribution to CO₂-production, especially in Mars’ lower atmosphere. This study reveals that only a small number of chemical pathways contribute significantly to the atmospheric abundance of CO₂ on Mars; their contributions to CO₂-production vary considerably with altitude. This analysis also endorses the importance of transport processes in governing CO₂-stability in the Martian atmosphere. Lastly, we identify a previously unknown chemical pathway involving HO_x, O_x, and HO₂-photodissociation, contributing 8% towards global CO₂-production by chemical pathways using recommended up-to-date values for reaction rate coefficients.     

A soil moisture monitoring network to assess controls on runoff generation during atmospheric river events

Soil moisture is a key modifier of runoff generation from rainfall excess, including during extreme precipitation events associated with Atmospheric Rivers (ARs). This paper presents a new, publicly available dataset from a soil moisture monitoring network in Northern California's Russian River Basin, designed to assess soil moisture controls on runoff generation under AR conditions. The observations consist of 2-min volumetric soil moisture at 19 sites and 6 depths (5, 10, 15, 20, 50, and 100 cm), starting in summer 2017. The goals of this monitoring network are to aid the development of research applications and situational awareness tools for Forecast-Informed Reservoir Operations at Lake Mendocino. We present short analyses of these data to demonstrate their capability to characterize soil moisture responses to precipitation across sites and depths, including time series analysis, correlation analysis, and identification of soil saturation thresholds that induce runoff. Our results show strong inter-site Pearson's correlations (>0.8) at the seasonal timescale. Correlations are strong (>0.8) during events with high antecedent soil moisture and during drydown periods, and weak (<0.5) otherwise. High event runoff ratios are observed when antecedent soil moisture thresholds are exceeded, and when antecedent runoff is high. Although local heterogeneity in soil moisture can limit the utility of point source data in some hydrologic model applications, our analyses indicate three ways in which soil moisture data are valuable for model design: (1) sensors installed at 6 depths per location enable us to identify the soil depth below which evapotranspiration and saturation dynamics change, and therefore choose model soil layer depths, (2) time series analysis indicates the role of soil moisture processes in controlling runoff ratio during precipitation, which hydrologic models should replicate, and (3) spatial correlation analysis of the soil moisture fluctuations helps identify when and where distributed hydrologic modelling may be beneficial.     

Relative effects of local and landscape factors on wetland algal biomass over a salinity gradient

Wetlands in south-eastern Australia and other arid regions of the world are experiencing increases in salinity due to dryland salinization and climate change. We investigated changes in wetland ecological function, measured as phytoplankton and benthic algal Chl a, over a large salinity gradient (0.047–226 mS cm⁻¹) and in relation to several local water chemistry variables that may be important predictors of algal biomass. We investigated the relative importance of landscape variables that may affect input pollution and hydrology of wetlands at four spatial scales (100, 500, 1,000 and 5000 m). We explored the strength and form of the relationships between algal biomass and local and landscape predictors with emphasis on the effects of local and landscape salinity. We found local variables were more important than landscape variables in influencing algal biomass. We also found salinity of wetlands was not a good predictor of phytoplankton biomass but it did predict benthic algal biomass.     

Gyro-Synchrotron Radiation from Microquasars?

Gyro-synchrotron radiation occurs when the harmonic number, i.e. the ratio of observing frequency to cyclotron frequency is low, ? 100, and for low energy electrons, when the radiation is no longer predominantly beamed in the direction of the motion of radiating electrons. The circular motion of the electrons gives rise to high levels of circular polarization. In this paper we calculate the levels of circular polarization expected from a jet given the likely conditions in microquasars, and find that the properties of the circular polarization observed in GRS 1915+105 and SS433 can be easily explained.