Soil moisture potential and water content in the unsaturated zone within the arid Ejina Oasis in Northwest China

Three soil profiles were selected in the Ejina Oasis, northwest China, to determine water content profiles and evolution of soil moisture potentials in the unsaturated zone within the arid area. The total soil moisture potentials have been monitored for about 3 months in 2001 at different depths in the soil profiles. The occurrence and movement of water in the unsaturated zone was analyzed using the zero flux plane (ZFP) method. It is shown that convergent ZFPs and divergent ZFPs may occur at depths between 0.5 and 3.0 m, and that the depth of the ZFPs was controlled by the root zone of plants growing on the land surface. Profiles of the total soil moisture potentials were observed to be coincident with those of the water contents at the three experimental sites. The total soil moisture potential showed a slight increasing trend and the ZFPs tend to vanish from summer to winter as the water extraction by roots decreased. Evapotranspiration through vegetation has an important bearing on the water content and the total potential in the unsaturated zone.     

西风带研究动态

本文较为详细地介绍了影响我国气候的重要因子——西风带的一些国内外最新研究动态,这些研究动态和研究成果将对山西省的气候研究起到积极作用。     

陕西省信用联社市县级计算机网络防雷工程设计分析

“山西省卫星农网”依托其省、市、县三级专门服务于农业的信息交流平台,能够及时地让农户了解国家和地方的农业政策及办事程序等,成为农户和政府间的信息桥梁,为广大农村提供准确的各类气象信息,有效地指导了农业生产,大大地减小了天气灾害损失。山西卫星农网作为山西省规模较大的农业专业网站,其影响和作用正逐步地发挥出来。     

Possible Impacts of the Arctic Oscillation on the Interdecadal Variation of Summer Monsoon Rainfall in East Asia

The influences of the wintertime AO (Arctic Oscillation) on the interdecadal variation of summer monsoon rainfall in East Asia were examined. An interdecadal abrupt change was found by the end of the 1970s in the variation of the AO index and the leading principal component time series of the summer rainfall in East Asia, The rainfall anomaly changed from below normal to above normal in central China, the southern part of northeastern China and the Korean peninsula around 1978. However,the opposite interdecadal variation was found in the rainfall anomaly in North China and South China.The interdecadal variation of summer rainfall is associated with the weakening of the East Asia summer monsoon circulation. It is indicated that the interdecadal variation of the AO exerts an influence on the weakening of the monsoon circulation. The recent trend in the AO toward its high-index polarity during the past two decades plays important roles in the land-sea contrast anomalies and wintertime precipitation anomaly. The mid- and high-latitude regions of the Asian continent are warming, while the low-latitude regions are cooling in winter and spring along with the AO entering its high-index polarity after the late 1970s. In the meantime, the precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau and South China is excessive, implying an increase of soil moisture. The cooling tendency of the land in the southern part of Asia will persist until summer because of the memory of soil moisture. So the warming of the Asian continent is relatively slow in summer. Moreover, the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean which are located southward and eastward of the Asian land, are warming from winter to summer. This suggests that the contrast between the land and sea is decreased in summer. The interdecadal decrease of the land-sea heat contrast finally leads to the weakening of the East Asia summer monsoon circulation.     

Mineralogy and geochemistry of a Late Permian coal in the Dafang Coalfield, Guizhou, China: influence from siliceous and iron-rich calcic hydrothermal fluids

This paper describes the influence of siliceous and iron-rich calcic low-temperature hydrothermal fluids (LTHF) on the mineralogy and geochemistry of the Late Permian No. 11 Coal (anthracitic, R_r=2.85%) in the Dafang Coalfield in northwestern Guizhou Province, China. The No. 11 Coal has high contents of vein ankerite (10.2 vol.%) and vein quartz (11.4 vol.%), with formation temperatures of 85 and 180 °C, respectively, indicating that vein ankerite and vein quartz were derived from low-temperature calcic and siliceous hydrothermal fluids in two epigenetic episodes. The vein quartz appears to have formed earlier than vein ankerite did, and at least three distinct stages of ankerite formation with different Ca/Sr and Fe/Mn ratios were observed.The two types of mineral veins are sources of different suites of major and trace metals. Scanning electron microscope and sequential extraction studies show that, in addition to Fe, Mg, and Ca, vein ankerite is the dominant source of Mn, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn in the coal, and the contents of these five elements are as high as 0.09% and 74.0, 33.6, 185, and 289 μg/g, respectively. In contrast, vein quartz is the main carrier mineral for platinum-group elements (PGEs) Pd, Pt, and Ir in the coal, and the contents of Pd, Pt, and Ir are 1.57, 0.15, and 0.007 μg/g, respectively. Sequential extraction showed a high PGE content in the silicate fraction, up to 10.4 μg/g Pd, 1.23 μg/g Pt, and 0.05 μg/g Ir, respectively. It is concluded that the formation of ankerite and quartz and the anomalous enrichment of trace elements in the No. 11 Coal in the Dafang Coalfield, Guizhou, result from the influx of calcic and siliceous low-temperature hydrothermal fluids.     

Analysis of the environmental sensitivities of a typical dynamic epikarst system at the Nongla monitoring site, Guangxi, China

Nongla, a typical karst dynamic system (KDS) monitoring site, is located at Nongla Village, Mashan County, Guangxi, China. The data from a Greenspan CTDP300 multichannel data logger indicates that the KDS is highly sensitive to environmental changes. Multi-day and diurnal physico-chemical composition of epikarst spring water is quite different under different climatic conditions. During a day with no rainfall, water temperature and air temperature have similar variations. Electrical conductivity (EC) has good positive correlation with pH value and water temperature. During rainstorms, the physico-chemical composition of the spring water is initially strongly effected by dilution, pH and EC drop rapidly. However, half to one hour later, EC returns to normal and the CO₂ effects will be the dominant physical effect. This is due to the high fissure rates and high permeability in the epikarst zone. Dilution effects were observed during the entire rainstorm event,whereas, it only acts during the earliest period of light rain. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the water–rock–CO₂ combination as a whole system to explain the hydrochemical behavior of epikarst processes.     

The influence of coupled physical swelling and chemical reactions on deformable geomaterials

Coupled thermo‐hydro‐mechanical‐chemical modelling has attracted attention in past decades due to many contemporary geotechnical engineering applications (e.g., waste disposal, carbon capture and storage). However, molecular‐scale interactions within geomaterials (e.g., swelling and dissolution/precipitation) have a significant influence on the mechanical behaviour, yet are rarely incorporated into existing Thermal‐Hydro‐Mechanical‐Chemical (THMC) frameworks. This paper presents a new coupled hydro‐mechanical‐chemical constitutive model to bridge molecular‐scale interactions with macro‐physical deformation by combining the swelling and dissolution/precipitation through an extension of the new mixture‐coupling theory. Entropy analysis of the geomaterial system provides dissipation energy, and Helmholtz free energy gives the relationship between solids and fluids. Numerical simulation is used to compare with the selected recognized models, which demonstrates that the swelling and dissolution/precipitation processes may have a significant influence on the mechanical deformation of the geomaterials.