Assessment of connectivity in a water‐stressed wetland (Kaabar Tal) of Kosi‐Gandak interfan,north Bihar Plains,India

Landscape elements respond to the processes acting on them, and this response connects with neighboring landscape units. The propagation, superposition, and interference of these responses are functions of the connectivity among the landscape units. Such landscape units are referred to as ‘Connectivity Response Units’ or CRUs that are in turn influenced by topography and landuse/landcover (LULC). The CRUs are obtained by the application of diffusion‐kernel based smoothing technique over the connectivity potential maps. A framework has been designed using the CRUs to understand the impacts of changing LULC on the connectivity structure in a relatively flat terrain under pre‐ and post‐monsoon scenarios. The proposed framework has been applied to a water‐stressed wetland occurring in an interfan setting in north Bihar plains, eastern India. It has also been demonstrated that CRUs can be used as a viable option for understanding the seasonal and temporal dynamics of connectivity structure in and around such wetlands and for guiding a rehabilitation strategy for such fragile ecosystems. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tectonic control on exhumation and seismicity in the Garhwal‐Kumaun Himalaya,NW‐India

Despite similar geological and tectonic setting along the Himalayan orogen, distinct thermochronological/exhumational and seismicity variability exists between the Kumaun and the Garhwal regions of the NW‐ Himalaya. The processes responsible for such variability are still debated. To understand this, published thermochronological ages from several traverses across the Higher Himalayan Crystalline (HHC) and Lesser Himalayan Crystalline (LHC) have been correlated with the seismicity pattern in both Garhwal and Kumaun segments. The seismicity pattern coincides with the zone of rapid uplift and exhumation. The profiles of seismicity across the Kumaun and the Garhwal regions agree with the existence of the Main Himalayan Thrust (MHT) underlying the regions and reflect its geometry and architecture. Slip along the MHT is responsible for occurrence of seismicity on decade time‐scale and exhumation pattern on Myr time‐scale of the Himalaya.     

Slope stability of bioreactor landfills during leachate injection: Effects of geometric configurations of horizontal trench systems

In bioreactor landfills, different configurations of closely spaced horizontal trench (HT) systems are often considered as leachate recirculation systems to achieve uniform and rapid distribution of moisture in municipal solid waste (MSW). In this study, a numerical two-phase flow modelling was adopted to study the effects of geometric configuration of HT systems on the moisture distribution in MSW, and the stability of a simplified bioreactor landfill slope during continuous and intermittent leachate recirculation. Transient variations in pore water and capillary pressures in MSW were assessed, and slope stability analyses were performed using strength reduction technique. MSW was considered as heterogeneous and anisotropic with varied unit weight and saturated hydraulic conductivity. The results demonstrated that geometric configurations of HT systems significantly affected the moisture distribution, generation and distribution of pore water and capillary pressures in MSW, and considerably influenced the mechanical stability of bioreactor landfill slope. It was concluded that staggered configuration of closely spaced HT systems with intermittent sequences of leachate recirculation and subsequent gravity drainage in alternate shallow and deep HT layers should be adopted as they produce uniform moisture distribution and ensure the mechanical stability of landfill slope due to low induced pore pressures near side slope. Overall, this study presents a significant contribution to the understanding of the basic mechanisms controlling the geotechnical stability of bioreactor landfills during leachate operations. Furthermore, the capability of the adopted commercial code was verified with complexities related to bioreactors behaviour. However, further research is needed to validate the model based on field monitoring data at actual bioreactor landfills.     

Resonance in a geo-centric synchronous satellite under the gravitational forces of the Sun,the Moon and the Earth including it’s equatorial ellipticity

Resonances in a geo-centric synchronous satellite under the gravitational forces of the Sun, the Moon and the Earth including it’s equatorial ellipticity have been investigated. The resonance at two points resulting from the commensurability between the mean motion of the satellite and Γ (angle measured from the minor axis of the Earth’s equatorial ellipse to the projection of the satellite on the plane of the equator) is analyzed. The amplitude and the time period of the oscillation have been determined by using the procedure of Brown and Shook. We have observed that the amplitude and the time period of the oscillation decrease as Γ increases in the first quadrant. The radial deviation (Δr) and the tangential deviation (r _c Δθ) have been determined. Here r _c represents the synchronous altitude. The effects of the arithmetic sum of amplitudes λ _i involved in the perturbation equations on orbital inclination 0^°≤α ₀≤90^° are shown. It is observed that $\sum_{i = 1}^{46} \lambda_{i}$ increases as α ₀ increases. We have also determined the displacement ΔD (called drift) due to the oscillatory terms under the summation sign involved in the equations of motion of the satellite. We have observed that the value of ΔD is less than 0.5^°.     

Robe’s restricted problem of 2+2 bodies with one of the primaries an oblate body

In this problem, one of the primaries of mass \(m^{*}_{1}\) is a rigid spherical shell filled with a homogeneous incompressible fluid of density ρ ₁. The smaller primary of mass m ₂ is an oblate body outside the shell. The third and the fourth bodies (of mass m ₃ and m ₄ respectively) are small solid spheres of density ρ ₃ and ρ ₄ respectively inside the shell, with the assumption that the mass and the radius of the third and the fourth body are infinitesimal. We assume that m ₂ is describing a circle around \(m^{*}_{1}\) . The masses m ₃ and m ₄ mutually attract each other, do not influence the motions of \(m^{*}_{1}\) and m ₂ but are influenced by them. We also assume that masses m ₃ and m ₄ are moving in the plane of motion of mass m ₂. In the paper, equilibrium solutions of m ₃ and m ₄ and their linear stability are analyzed. There are two collinear equilibrium solutions for the system. The non collinear equilibrium solutions exist only when ρ ₃=ρ ₄. There exist an infinite number of non collinear equilibrium solutions of the system, provided they lie inside the spherical shell. In a system where the primaries are considered as earth-moon and m ₃,m ₄ as submarines, the collinear equilibrium solutions thus obtained are unstable for the mass parameters μ,μ ₃,μ ₄ and oblateness factor A. In this particular case there are no non-collinear equilibrium solutions of the system.     

Anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility and rock magnetic applications in the Deccan volcanic province based on some case studies

Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) as a tool has been explored here to investigate the nature of petrofabrics in Deccan Volcanic Province (DVP) of west-central Indian region by representative sampling in typical pahoehoe and rubbly pahoehoe lava flows, dykes within flows, shear zone and the impact crater units. The rock magnetic analysis indicate varying degree of concentration of titanomagnetite compositions dominated by multi domain (MD) to pseudo single domain (PSD) grains favoring shape anisotropy of minerals that form primary fabrics. The pahoehoe type lava flows shows planar oblate fabrics without any preferred orientation of principle susceptibility axis (K₁) depicting crystal settling (of magnetic grains) as chief mechanism of fabric development. The rubbly pahoehoe type lava flow exhibit prolate fabrics with well clustered maximum susceptibility axis within horizontal to sub-horizontal planes depicting their response to viscosity shear. The dykes show well clustered K₁ parallel to it’s plane locked during rapid contractional cooling. The sampling at Lonar impact crater was unable to trace any clear fabric due to impact/shock induced deformation and rather preserve the primary fabrics. Further, the shear zone depict random fabrics demanding more detailed and systematic sampling in both the cases. The present investigation infer that the magnetic mineralogy and magnetic fabric variations in the DVP are controlled by the flow mechanism and style of cooling that is characteristic of the given flow unit or dyke and any secondary or superimposed fabric needs to be examined by critical sampling strategy. While more detailed attempts are required to establish the AMS as a tool to record various aspects including the flow dynamics and rate of effusion in the vast terrain of DVP; the present approach is useful to characterize and correlate the lava flow units and dyke occurrences.     

Abundance and Ecology of Endemic Asterorotalia trispinosa from the Western Bay of Bengal: Implications for its Application as a Paleomonsoon Proxy

A total of 97 surface sediment samples were collected from the continental shelf and slope of the western Bay of Bengal to assess the potential application of Asterorotalia trispinosa as a paleomonsoon proxy. The relative abundance of living as well as total (living and dead) A. trispinosa ranges from being absent to a maximum of ~31%. The highest abundance of A. trispinosa is close to the outfall region of the Ganga-Brahmaputra Rivers and decreases away from the river mouths. Contrary to that, A. trispinosa is rare in front of both the Cauvery and Pennar river outfall regions, in the central part of the western Bay of Bengal. The living A. trispinosa abundance is the lowest in between two major river systems, viz. Ganga-Brahmaputra-Mahanadi and Krishna-Godavari. The relative abundance of both the total and living A. trispinosa is strongly positively correlated with ambient seawater temperature, and negatively correlated with %Corg and salinity. Based on the spatial distribution, we conclude that A. trispinosa is stenohaline in nature, rather than euryhaline, and further that the increased relative abundance of A. trispinosa indicates warmer and only marginally hyposaline environment. Even though the ecological preference of A. trispinosa suggests it as a potential paleomonsoon proxy, the restricted distribution implies limited application.     

Despeckle and geographical feature extraction in SAR images by wavelet transform

This paper presents a method to despeckle Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image, and then extract geographical features in it. In this research work, speckle is reduced by multiscale analysis in wavelet domain. In terms of geographical feature preservation the result shows that the method is better compared to spatial domain filters, such as Lee, Kuan, Frost, Ehfrost, Median, Gamma filters. The geographical features such as roads, airport runways, rivers and other ribbon-like shape structures are detected by the new wavelet-based method as proposed by Yuan Yan Tang. Experimental results show that the proposed method extracts geographical features of different width as well as different gray levels.     

Recent foraminifers from the inner shelf of the central West Coast,India: A reappraisal using factor analysis

Setty and Nigam (1980) had described 72 species of benthonic foraminifers from 25 inner shelf stations off central West Coast of India and the results showed somewhat patchy and anamolous distributions. This paper presents the results ofQ-mode factor analysis, which was applied to reduce the number of variables into assemblages. The analysis reveals 4 important foraminiferal assemblages.Ammonia beccarii—Ammonia annectens assemblage,Nonion boueanum—Florilus scaphum assemblage.Trochammina inflata assemblage andBulimina exilis assemblage. They can be related to freshwater run-off and organic matter contents of the sediment.