An epeiric ramp: low-energy, cool-water carbonate facies in a Tertiary inland sea, Murray Basin, South Australia

The Murray Supergroup records temperate‐water carbonate deposition within a shallow, mesotrophic, Oligo‐Miocene inland sea protected from high‐energy waves and swells of the open ocean by a granitic archipelago at its southern margin. Rocks are very well preserved and exposed in nearly continuous outcrop along the River Murray in South Australia. Most facies are rich in carbonate silt, contain a background assemblage of gastropods (especially turritellids) and infaunal bivalves, and are packaged on a decimetre‐scale defined by firmground and hardground omission surfaces. Bioturbation is pervasive and overprinted, resulting in rare preservation of physical sedimentary structures. Facies are grouped into four associations (large foraminiferan–bryozoan, echinoid–bryozoan, mollusc and clay facies) interpreted to represent shallow‐water (<50 m) deposition under progressively higher trophic resource levels (from low mesotrophy to eutrophy), and restricted marine conditions from relatively offshore to nearshore regions. A large‐scale shift from high‐ to low‐mesotrophic conditions within lower Miocene strata reflects a change in climate from wet to seasonally dry conditions and highlights the influence terrestrially derived nutrients had upon this shallow, land‐locked sea. Overall, low trophic resource levels during periods of seasonally dry climate resulted in a deepening of the euphotic zone, a widespread proliferation of foraminiferan photozoan fauna and a relatively high carbonate productivity. Inshore, heterozoan facies became progressively muddier and restricted towards the shoreline. In contrast, periods of wet climate led to rising trophic resource levels, resulting in a shallowing of the euphotic zone, a decrease in epifaunal and seagrass cover and widespread development of a mostly heterozoan biota dominated by infaunal echinoids. Rates of carbonate production and accumulation were relatively low. The Murray Basin is best described as an epeiric ramp. Wide facies belts developed in a shallow sea on a low‐angled slope reaching many hundreds of kilometres in length. Grainy shoal and back‐barrier facies were absent. Internally generated waves impinged the sea floor in offshore regions and, because of friction along a wide and shallow sea floor, created a low‐energy expanse of waters across the proximal ramp. Storms were the dominating depositional process capable of disrupting the entire sea floor.     

Solar Irradiance Models and Measurements: A Comparison in the 220–240?nm wavelength band

Solar irradiance models that assume solar irradiance variations to be due to changes in the solar surface magnetic flux have been successfully used to reconstruct total solar irradiance on rotational as well as cyclical and secular time scales. Modelling spectral solar irradiance is not yet as advanced, and also suffers from a lack of comparison data, in particular on solar cycle time scales. Here, we compare solar irradiance in the 220–240?nm band as modelled with SATIRE-S and measured by different instruments on the UARS and SORCE satellites. We find good agreement between the model and measurements on rotational time scales. The long-term trends, however, show significant differences. Both SORCE instruments, in particular, show a much steeper gradient over the decaying part of cycle 23 than the modelled irradiance or that measured by UARS/SUSIM.     

Transforming management of tropical coastal seas to cope with challenges of the 21st century

Over 1.3 billion people live on tropical coasts, primarily in developing countries. Many depend on adjacent coastal seas for food, and livelihoods. We show how trends in demography and in several local and global anthropogenic stressors are progressively degrading capacity of coastal waters to sustain these people. Far more effective approaches to environmental management are needed if the loss in provision of ecosystem goods and services is to be stemmed. We propose expanded use of marine spatial planning as a framework for more effective, pragmatic management based on ocean zones to accommodate conflicting uses. This would force the holistic, regional-scale reconciliation of food security, livelihoods, and conservation that is needed. Transforming how countries manage coastal resources will require major change in policy and politics, implemented with sufficient flexibility to accommodate societal variations. Achieving this change is a major challenge – one that affects the lives of one fifth of humanity.     

Towards Earth AntineutRino TomograpHy (EARTH)

The programme Earth AntineutRino TomograpHy (EARTH) proposes to build ten underground facilities each hosting a telescope. Each telescope consists of many detector modules, to map the radiogenic heat sources deep in the interior of the Earth by utilising direction sensitive geoneutrino detection. Recent hypotheses target the core-mantle boundary (CMB) as a major source of natural radionuclides and therefore of radiogenic heat. A typical scale of the processes that take place at the CMB is about 200 km. To observe these processes from the surface requires an angular resolution of about 3°. EARTH aims at creating a high-resolution 3D-map of the radiogenic heat sources in the Earth’s interior. It will thereby contribute to a better understanding of a number of geophysical phenomena observed at the Earth’s surface. This condition requires a completely different approach from the monolithic detector systems as e.g. KamLAND. This paper presents, for such telescopes, the boundary conditions set by physics, the estimated count rates, and the first initial results from Monte-Carlo simulations and laboratory experiments. The Monte-Carlo simulations indicate that the large volume telescope should consist of detector modules each comprising a very large number of detector units, with a cross section of roughly a few square centimetres. The signature of an antineutrino event will be a double pulse event. One pulse arises from the slowing down of the emitted positron, the other from the neutron capture. In laboratory experiments small sized, ¹⁰B-loaded liquid scintillation detectors were investigated as candidates for direction sensitive, low-energy antineutrino detection.     

High resolution mapping and classification of oyster habitats in nearshore Louisiana using sidescan sonar

Sidescan sonar holds great promise as a tool to quantitatively depict the distribution and extent of benthic habitats in Louisiana’s turbid estuaries. In this study, we describe an effective protocol for acoustic sampling in this environment. We also compared three methods of classification in detail: mean-based thresholding, supervised, and unsupervised techniques to classify sidescan imagery into categories of mud and shell. Classification results were compared to ground truth results using quadrat and dredge sampling. Supervised classification gave the best overall result (kappa=75%) when compared to quadrat results. Classification accuracy was less robust when compared to all dredge samples (kappa=21–56%), but increased greatly (90–100%) when only dredge samples taken from acoustically homogeneous areas were considered. Sidescan sonar when combined with ground truth sampling at an appropriate scale can be effectively used to establish an accurate substrate base map for both research applications and shellfish management. The sidescan imagery presented here also provides, for the first time, a detailed presentation of oyster habitat patchiness and scale in a productive oyster growing area.     

Distribution of clay minerals in surface sediments of the Aegean Sea: a compilation

Extensive published data sets and some new data on the clay mineral composition of surface sediments in the Aegean Sea, northeastern Mediterranean Sea, have been compiled in order to map the distribution patterns of clay mineral assemblages and to decipher source areas and transport paths. We distinguished six provinces, a Northwest Aegean Province, a Marmara-Dardanelles Province, a West Turkey Province, a Southeast Aegean Province, a Kithira Province and a Central Aegean Province. The clay mineral assemblages in the coastal and shelf areas carry the signature of the riverine sediment discharge from southeast Europe and Turkey, respectively. The southern Aegean Sea is probably influenced by the River Nile discharge and transport of clay minerals by surface currents. The clay minerals in the central Aegean Sea form a mixed assemblage comprising components of the other assemblages. A dispersion and dilution of clay minerals by surface currents is obvious.     

Acid-base activity of live bacteria: Implications for quantifying cell wall charge

To distinguish the buffering capacity associated with functional groups in the cell wall from that resulting from metabolic processes, base or acid consumption by live and dead cells of the Gram-negative bacterium Shewanella putrefaciens was measured in a pH stat system. Live cells exhibited fast consumption of acid (pH 4) or base (pH 7, 8, 9, and 10) during the first few minutes of the experiments. At pH 5.5, no acid or base was required to maintain the initial pH constant. The initial amounts of acid or base consumed by the live cells at pH 4, 8, and 10 were of comparable magnitudes as those neutralized at the same pHs by intact cells killed by exposure to gamma radiation or ethanol. Cells disrupted in a French press required higher amounts of acid or base, due to additional buffering by intracellular constituents. At pH 4, acid neutralization by suspensions of live cells stopped after 50 min, because of loss of viability. In contrast, under neutral and alkaline conditions, base consumption continued for the entire duration of the experiments (5 h). This long-term base neutralization was, at least partly, due to active respiration by the cells, as indicated by the build-up of succinate in solution. Qualitatively, the acid-base activity of live cells of the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis resembled that of S. putrefaciens. The pH-dependent charging of ionizable functional groups in the cell walls of the live bacteria was estimated from the initial amounts of acid or base consumed in the pH stat experiments. From pH 4 to 10, the cell wall charge increased from near-zero values to about −4 × 10⁻¹⁶ mol cell⁻¹ and −6.5 × 10⁻¹⁶ mol cell⁻¹ for S. putrefaciens and B. subtilis, respectively. The similar cell wall charging of the two bacterial strains is consistent with the inferred low contribution of lipopolysaccharides to the buffering capacity of the Gram-negative cell wall (of the order of 10%).     

Acid–base activity of microorganisms

In order to distinguish the buffering capacity associated with functional groups in the cell wall from that resulting from metabolic processes, the base or acid consumption of live and dead cells of the Gram-negative bacterium Shewanella putrefaciens was measured as a function of time in a pH stat system. Under neutral (pH 7) to basic (pH 8 and 10) conditions, base neutralization by suspensions of live bacteria beyond 1 h was clearly due to respiratory activity. At pH 4, however, proton neutralization ceased after 50 min due to cell death. Dead cells only produced or consumed protons during the very first minutes after exposure to pH 4, 8 or 10. From the time-dependent acid and base consumption curves of live cells, and the comparison of the acid–base activity of live and dead cells, the charging of ionizable groups in the cell wall was derived. From pH 4 to 10, cell wall charge increases from 0 to about − 4 × 10^− 16 mol cell^− 1.     

Trace-element patterns at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary—Consequences of a large impact

The earlier discovery of high concentrations of iridium and osmium at the very base of the Tertiary in marine pelagic sequences, has led to the hypothesis that the impact of a large projectile on Earth terminated the Mesozoic era.This paper describes the distribution of other trace elements in samples closely spaced around the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. We found an enrichment of Co, Cr, Ni, As, Sb and Se, and a depletion of the rare earth elements (REE), coupled with the anomalously high concentration of Ir and Os. Also, in the enrichment layer, problematic sanidine spherules occur which may be spheres, ablated from the impacting projectile or microtektites.The REE depletion could not only be demonstrated in the basal millimetres of the relatively thick (～ 10 cm) boundary marl bed of the Barranco del Gredero section, Caravaca, Spain, but also in the boundary clay of the Stevns Klint section—the “Fiskeler”—Denmark. In these boundary clay beds are also the highest concentrations of Ir recorded [44 and 86.7 ppb (1 ppb = 10^?9 g/g), respectively].This REE depletion is tentatively connected with the low REE concentration in common meteorites. In that case the basal millimetres are dominated by a meteoritic component and represent a “fall-out” layer of the impact event. This in turn would imply low terrestrial dilution at impact on Earth, suggesting that the projectile might have fallen into the ocean.Identification of the projectile remains speculative; especially the high As, Sb and Se anomalies are problematic. These latter may point to a projectile of uncommon composition, possibly a comet.An integrated scenario of a possible sequence of events is presented, chiefly based on the interpretation of micropaleontological, lithological, geochemical and stable isotope data of the studied sections.The direct and indirect effects of an impact leading to mass extinction constitute a complicated problem and may comprise a sudden temperature rise, a poisoning by cyanide or arsenic, and a few years suppression of sunlight, or preferably, a combination of these effects.