Effects of heat/water flow interaction on compacted bentonite: Preliminary results

Compacted bentonite blocks have been heated and hydrated in a stainless steel cell in order to simulate, in the laboratory, the conditions of the clay barrier in a high-level radioactive waste repository. Temperature distributions at different times, rate of hydration, final water content and dry density have been measured. Some chemical parameters, as electrical conductivity in an aqueous extractable amorphous silica, have also been obtained. For the periods of time considered (up to 2500 h), the hydration process is not affected by the thermal gradient, the high suction of the bentonite being the critical factor in the initial water uptake of the clay barrier. A remarkable saline environment has been detected near the heater, due to salt migration towards dried areas. This phenomenon should be taken into account in further investigations of the mechanical and geochemical behaviour of the clay barrier.     

Drainage morphometry and its influence on hydrology in an semi arid region: using SRTM data and GIS

An attempt has been made to study drainage morphometry and its influence on hydrology of Peddavanka watershed, South India. Drainage networks for the sub-basins were derived from topographical map (1:50,000) and Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data used for preparing elevation, slope and aspects maps. Geographical information system (GIS) was used in evaluation of linear, areal and relief aspects of morphometric parameters. The study reveals that SRTM DEM and GIS-based approach in evaluation of drainage morphometric parameters and their influence on hydrological characteristics at watershed level is more appropriate than the conventional methods. The mean Bifurcation ratio (R _b) of the entire basin is 3.88 which indicate that the drainage pattern is not much influenced by geological structures. VIII sub-basin have high elongation ratio (R _e), basin relief (B _h), Ruggedness number (Rn) and time of concentration (T _c). It indicates that the erosion and peak discharges are high in these basins. Therefore, the construction of the check dams and earth dams will help in reducing peak discharge on the main channel. These studies are very useful for implementing rainwater harvesting and watershed management.     

Temperature response to future urbanization and climate change

This study examines the impact of future urban expansion on local near-surface temperature for Sydney (Australia) using a future climate scenario (A2). The Weather Research and Forecasting model was used to simulate the present (1990–2009) and future (2040–2059) climates of the region at 2-km spatial resolution. The standard land use of the model was replaced with a more accurate dataset that covers the Sydney area. The future simulation incorporates the projected changes in the urban area of Sydney to account for the expected urban expansion. A comparison between areas with projected land use changes and their surroundings was conducted to evaluate how urbanization and global warming will act together and to ascertain their combined effect on the local climate. The analysis of the temperature changes revealed that future urbanization will strongly affect minimum temperature, whereas little impact was detected for maximum temperature. The minimum temperature changes will be noticeable throughout the year. However, during winter and spring these differences will be particularly large and the increases could be double the increase due to global warming alone at 2050. Results indicated that the changes were mostly due to increased heat capacity of urban structures and reduced evaporation in the city environment.     

Postglacial history of alpine vegetation,fire, and climate from Laguna de Río Seco,Sierra Nevada,southern Spain

The Sierra Nevada of southern Spain is a landscape with a rich biological and cultural heritage. The range was extensively glaciated during the late Pleistocene. However, the postglacial paleoecologic history of the highest range in southern Europe is nearly completely unknown. Here we use sediments from a small lake above present treeline – Laguna de Río Seco at 3020 m elevation – in a paleoecological study documenting over 11,500 calendar years of vegetation, fire and climate change, addressing ecological and paleoclimatic issues unique to this area through comparison with regional paleoecological sequences. The early record is dominated by Pinus pollen, with Betula, deciduous Quercus, and grasses, with an understory of shrubs. It is unlikely that pine trees grew around the lake, and fire was relatively unimportant at this site during this period. Aquatic microfossils indicate that the wettest conditions and highest lake levels at Laguna de Río Seco occurred before 7800 cal yr BP. This is in contrast to lower elevation sites, where wettest conditions occurred after ca 7800. Greater differences in early Holocene seasonal insolation may have translated to greater snowpack and subsequently higher lake levels at higher elevations, but not necessarily at lower elevations, where higher evaporation rates prevailed. With declining seasonality after ca 8000 cal yr BP, but continuing summer precipitation, lake levels at the highest elevation site remained high, but lake levels at lower elevation sites increased as evaporation rates declined. Drier conditions commenced regionally after ca 5700 cal yr BP, shown at Laguna de Río Seco by declines in wetland pollen, and increases in high elevation steppe shrubs common today (Juniperus, Artemisia, and others). The disappearance or decline of mesophytes, such as Betula from ca 4000 cal yr BP is part of a regional depletion in Mediterranean Spain and elsewhere in Europe from the mid to late Holocene. On the other hand, Castanea sativa increased in Laguna de Río Seco record after ca 4000 cal yr BP, and especially in post-Roman times, probably due to arboriculture. Though not as important at high than at low elevations, fire occurrence was elevated, particularly after ca 3700 years ago, in response to regional human population expansion. The local and regional impact of humans increased substantially after ca 2700 years ago, with the loss of Pinus forest within the mountain range, increases in evidence of pasturing herbivores around the lake, and Olea cultivation at lower elevations. Though human impact was not as extensive at high elevation as at lower elevation sites in southern Iberia, this record confirms that even remote sites were not free of direct human influence during the Holocene.     

Muscovite dehydration melting: Reaction mechanisms,microstructures, and implications for anatexis

Dehydration melting of muscovite in metasedimentary sequences is the initially dominant mechanism of granitic melt generation in orogenic hinterlands. In dry (vapour-absent) crust, muscovite reacts with quartz to produce K-feldspar, sillimanite, and monzogranitic melt. When water vapour is present in excess, sillimanite and melt are the primary products of muscovite breakdown, and any K-feldspar produced is due to melt crystallization. Here we document the reaction mechanisms that control nucleation and growth of K-feldspar, sillimanite, and silicate melt in the metamorphic core of the Himalaya, and outline the microstructural criteria used to distinguish peritectic K-feldspar from K-feldspar grains formed during melt crystallization. We have characterized four stages of microstructural evolution in selected psammitic and pelitic samples from the Langtang and Everest regions: (a) K-feldspar nucleates epitaxially on plagioclase while intergrowths of fibrolitic sillimanite and the remaining hydrous melt components replace muscovite. (b) In quartzofeldspathic domains, K-feldspar replaces plagioclase by K⁺–Na⁺ cation exchange, while melt and intergrowths of sillimanite+quartz form in the aluminous domains. (c) At 7–8 vol.% melt generation, the system evolves from a closed to open system and all phases coarsen by up to two orders of magnitude, resulting in large K-feldspar porphyroblasts. (d) Preferential crystallization of residual melt on K-feldspar porphyroblasts and coarsened quartz forms an augen gneiss texture with a monzogranitic-tonalitic matrix that contains intergrowths of sillimanite+tourmaline+muscovite+apatite. Initial poikiloblasts of peritectic K-feldspar trap fine-grained inclusions of quartz and biotite by replacement growth of matrix plagioclase. During subsequent coarsening, peritectic K-feldspar grains overgrow and trap fabric-aligned biotite, resulting in a core to rim coarsening of inclusion size. These microstructural criteria enable a mass balance of peritectic K-feldspar and sillimanite to constrain the amount of free H₂O present during muscovite dehydration. The resulting modal proportion of K-feldspar in the Himalayan metamorphic core requires vapour-absent conditions during muscovite dehydration melting and leucogranite formation, indicating that the generation of large volumes of granitic melts in orogenic belts is not necessarily contingent on an external source of fluids.     

Shadow mechanism and the opposition effect of brightness of atmosphereless celestial bodies

We consider the Irvine-Yanovistkii modification of the shadow model developed by Hapke for the opposition effect of brightness. The relation between the single scattering albedo ω and the transparency coefficient of particles κ is suggested to be used in the form κ = (1 ? ω) ⁿ , which allows the number of unknowns in the model to be reduced to two parameters (the packing density of particles g and ω) and the single-scattering phase function χ(α). The analysis of spectrophotometric measurements of the moon and Mars showed that the data on the observed opposition effect and the changes in the color index with the phase angle α well agree if the values of n = 0.25 and g = 0.4 (the moon) and 0.6 (Mars) are assumed in calculations. When being applied to asteroids of several types, this method also yielded a satisfactory agreement. For the E-type asteroids, the sets of parameters are [g = 0.6, ω = 0.6, A _g = 0.21, and q = 0.83] or [g = 0.3, ω = 0.4, A _g = 0.15, and q = 0.71] under the Martian single-scattering phase function; for the M-type asteroids, it is [g = 0.4, ω ≤ 0.1, A _g ≤ 0.075, and q ≤ 0.42] under the lunar single-scattering phase function; for the S-type asteroids, it is [g = 0.4, ω = 0.4, A _g = 0.28, and q = 0.49] under the lunar single-scattering phase function; and for the C-type asteroids, it is [g = 0.6, ω ≤ 0.1, A _g ≤ 0.075, and q = 0.43] under the modified lunar single-scattering phase function. The polarization measurements fulfilled by Gehrels et al. (1964) for the bright feature on the lunar surface, Copernicus (L = -20°08′, φ = +10°11′), at a phase angle α = 1.6° revealed the deviations in the position of the polarization plane from that typical for the negative branch. They were 22° and 12° in the G and I filters, respectively. At the same time, the deviation was within the error (±3°) in the U filter and for the dark feature Plato (L = -10°32′, φ = +51°25′), which can be caused by the coherent mechanism of the formation of the polarization peak.     

Statistical properties of seismicity of fault zones at different evolutionary stages

We perform a systematic parameter space study of the seismic response of a large fault with different levels of heterogeneity, using a 3-D elastic framework within the continuum limit. The fault is governed by rate-and-state friction and simulations are performed for model realizations with frictional and large scale properties characterized by different ranges of size scales. We use a number of seismicity and stress functions to characterize different types of seismic responses and test the correlation between hypocenter locations and the employed distributions of model parameters. The simulated hypocenters are found to correlate significantly with small L values of the rate-and-state friction. The final sizes of earthquakes are correlated with physical properties at their nucleation sites. The obtained stacked scaling relations are overall self-similar and have good correspondence with properties of natural earthquakes.     

Objectives and requirements of unmanned rover exploration of the Moon

The scientific value of unmanned rovers for continued lunar exploration is considered in light of Apollo findings which suggest that the Moon's surface is more heterogeneous than expected. A set of major questions and investigations involving composition, internal structure, and thermal history are presented that form a scientific rationale for use of unmanned rovers in the post-Apollo period of lunar exploration. Visual, petrologic, chemical and geophysical measurements that are essential for an unmanned rover traverse over previously unexplored lunar terrain are discussed. Unmanned rovers are well-suited for low-cost, low-risk preliminary reconnaissance where measurement of a few definitive parameters over a wide area is more important than obtaining a wide array of detailed results at a given site.     

Premelting and calcium mobility in gehlenite (Ca2Al2SiO7) and pseudowollastonite (CaSiO3)

 Premelting effects in gehlenite (Ca₂Al₂SiO₇) have been studied by Raman spectroscopy and calorimetry, and in gehlenite and pseudowollastonite (CaSiO₃) by electrical conductivity. The enthalpy of premelting of gehlenite is 17.3 kJ mol⁻¹ and represents 9% of the reported enthalpy of fusion, which is in the range of the reported fraction of other minerals. The Raman and electrical conductivity experiments at high temperatures, for gehlenite and pseudowollastonite, show that the premelting effects of both compositions are associated with enhanced dynamics of calcium atoms near the melting point. This conclusion agrees with the results obtained for other minerals like diopside, but contrasts with those found for sodium metasilicate in which the weaker bonding of sodium allows the silicate framework to distort near the melting temperature and deform in such a way to prefigure the silicate entities present in the melt. Received: 30 April 2002 / Accepted: 7 August 2002 Acknowledgements We thank Y. Linard for help with DSC measurements and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. This work has been partly supported by the EU Marie-Curie fellowship contract no. HPMF-CT-1999-00329, the CNRS-Carnegie Institution of Washington program PICS no.192, and the NSF grants EAR-9614432 and EAR-9901886 to B.O.M.     

Influence of the mean period of ground motion on the inelastic dynamic response of single and multi degree of freedom systems

This paper focuses on examining the effects of frequency content of the ground motion on the inelastic demands imposed on both single degree of freedom (SDF) and multi degree of freedom (MDF) steel‐framed systems. A detailed literature review is conducted to identify the indicator that best represents the frequency content of ground motion. The mean period (T_m) of ground motion is selected owing to its ability to distinguish between various spectral shapes of ground motion, and its relationship with magnitude, distance and site characteristics. Inelastic displacement demands on SDF systems for target ductility levels are first studied in the light of T_m, using a suite of 128 ground motion records. The study is then extended to MDF systems with the help of incremental dynamic analysis by employing the same ground motion ensemble to assess the influence of T_m on various engineering demand parameters. The results obtained indicate that, for SDF systems, the amplification of displacements occurs when the period ratio between elastic period (T_e) and T_m is lower than unity. For MDF systems, the results demonstrate that the influence of higher modes on the base shear and maximum storey drift profile becomes more pronounced, as T_m approaches the higher mode periods of the structure. These observations, for both SDF and MDF systems, tend to be more evident for higher levels of inelasticity. The significance of the results, with particular reference to European seismic design procedures, is highlighted. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.