Intra-interstadial environmental changes in Last Glacial loess revealed by molluscan assemblages from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Amiens-Renancourt 1 (Somme,France)

The Amiens-Renancourt 1 site recently yielded one of the most important Upper Palaeolithic human occupations of northern France by the number of flint artefacts and especially by the presence of Venus figurines. All the material comes from a single archaeological layer located in a tundra gley bracketed by loess units. A multi-proxy study combining a detailed stratigraphy, luminescence and radiocarbon datings and high-resolution (5 cm per sample) grain size and molluscan analyses was therefore carried out to reconstruct and date the associated environmental changes and to determine the exact context of the human occupation. The chronological frame thus established supports the correlations of the archaeology-bearing tundra gley and of an underlying arctic brown soil with Greenland interstadials GI-4 and GI-3. Composition changes in the molluscan population enabled the identification of transitional and optimum phases and sub-phases within these two pedogenetic horizons. A conceptual correlation model linking molluscan phases with millennial-scale variations of Greenland ice-core and Sieben Hengste speleothem climate records is proposed. The Human occupation appears contemporaneous to the end of the stadial–interstadial transition of GI-3. Synchronous in Amiens-Renancourt 1 and Nussloch, subsequent micro-gleys may also result from a regional/global forcing. Such a level of detail is unprecedented in a loess sequence.     

Carbon fluxes through major phytoplankton groups during the spring bloom and post-bloom in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea

The carbon flux through major phytoplankton groups, defined by their pigment markers, was estimated in two contrasting conditions of the Northwestern Mediterranean open ocean ecosystem: the spring bloom and post-bloom situations (hereafter Bloom and Post-bloom, respectively). During Bloom, surface chlorophyll a (Chl a) concentration was higher and dominated by diatoms (53% of Chl a), while during Post-bloom Synechococcus (42%) and Prymnesiophyceae (29%) became dominant. The seawater dilution technique, coupled to high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis of pigments and flow cytometry (FCM), was used to estimate growth and grazing rates of major phytoplankton groups in surface waters. Estimated growth rates were corrected for photoacclimation based on FCM-detected changes in red fluorescence per cell. Given the 30% average decrease in the pigment content per cell between the beginning and the end of the incubations, overlooking photoacclimation would have resulted in a 0.40 d^?1 underestimation of phytoplankton growth rates. Corrected average growth rates (μ_o) were 0.90±0.20 (SD) and 0.40±0.14 d^?1 for Bloom and Post-bloom phytoplankton, respectively. Diatoms, Cryptophyceae and Synechococcus were identified as fast-growing groups and Prymnesiophyceae and Prasinophyceae as slow-growing groups across Bloom and Post-bloom conditions. The higher growth rate during Bloom was due to dominance of phytoplankton groups with higher growth rates than those dominating in Post-bloom. Average grazing rates (m) were 0.58±0.20 d^?1 (SD) and 0.31±0.07 d^?1. The proportion of phytoplankton growth consumed by microzooplankton grazing (m/μ_o) tended to be lower in Bloom (0.69±0.34) than in Post-bloom (0.80±0.08). The intensity of nutrient limitation experienced by phytoplankton indicated by μ_o/μ_n (where μ_n is the nutrient-amended growth rate), was similar during Bloom (0.78) and Post-bloom (0.73). Primary production from surface water (PP) was estimated with ¹⁴C incubations. A combination of PP and Chl a synthesis rate yielded C/Chl a ratios of 34±21 and 168±75 (g:g) for Bloom and Post-bloom, respectively. Transformation of group-specific Chl a fluxes into carbon equivalents confirmed the dominant role of diatoms during Bloom and Synechococcus and Prymnesiophyceae during Post-bloom.     

Coastal Occupations in Tierra del Fuego,Southernmost South America: A Late Holocene Hunter‐Gatherer Context at Marazzi 2

This paper focuses on the late Holocene occupation of hunter‐gatherers at the Marazzi 2 site located on the northwestern steppe of Tierra del Fuego, Chile. Our aim is to understand stratigraphy, formation processes, and pedogenesis with respect to human occupation over the last 3000 years. Based on archaeological excavations on a fluvial terrace of the Torcido River, we integrate soil micromorphology, mineralogy, geochemistry, magnetic susceptibility, and geomorphology, as well as the micro‐ and macrofrequency distributions of archaeological material. A micro‐taphonomical perspective is also applied to anthropogenic components recorded in sedimentary thin sections. We discuss various events in the interplay between soil development and human occupation through time. Marazzi 2 was witness to aggradation and pedogenesis with an episode of surface stability coincident with a phase of more intense human occupation at about 860 BC. Taphonomic analysis suggests that there are multiple occupation events mixed together, probably by biomechanical processes, resulting in a palimpsest with poor temporal resolution.     

Provenance of Holocene beach sand in the Western Iberian margin: the use of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test for the deciphering of sediment recycling in a modern coastal system

Detrital zircons from Holocene beach sand and igneous zircons from the Cretaceous syenite forming Cape Sines (Western Iberian margin) were dated using laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry. The U–Pb ages obtained were used for comparison with previous radiometric data from Carboniferous greywacke, Pliocene–Pleistocene sand and Cretaceous syenite forming the sea cliff at Cape Sines and the contiguous coast. New U–Pb dating of igneous morphologically simple and complex zircons from the syenite of the Sines pluton suggests that the history of zircon crystallization was more extensive (ca 87 to 74 Ma), in contrast to the findings of previous geochronology studies (ca 76 to 74 Ma). The U–Pb ages obtained in Holocene sand revealed a wide interval, ranging from the Cretaceous to the Archean, with predominance of Cretaceous (37%), Palaeozoic (35%) and Neoproterozoic (19%) detrital‐zircon ages. The paucity of round to sub‐rounded grains seems to indicate a short transportation history for most of the Cretaceous zircons (ca 95 to 73 Ma) which are more abundant in the beach sand that was sampled south of Cape Sines. Comparative analysis using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistical method, analysing sub‐populations separately, suggests that the zircon populations of the Carboniferous and Cretaceous rocks forming the sea cliff were reproduced faithfully in Quaternary sand, indicating sediment recycling. The similarity of the pre‐Cretaceous ages (>ca 280 Ma) of detrital zircons found in Holocene sand, as compared with Carboniferous greywacke and Pliocene–Pleistocene sand, provides support for the hypothesis that detritus was reworked into the beach from older sedimentary rocks exposed along the sea cliff. The largest percentage of Cretaceous zircons (<ca 95 Ma) found in Holocene sand, as compared with Pliocene–Pleistocene sand (secondary recycled source), suggests that the Sines pluton was the one of the primary sources that became progressively more exposed to erosion during Quaternary uplift. This work highlights the application of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov method in comparison of zircon age populations used to identify provenance and sediment recycling in modern and ancient detrital sedimentary sequences.     

Searching for Added Value in Simulating Climate Extremes with a High-Resolution Regional Climate Model over Western Canada

We evaluate the capacity of a regional climate model to represent observed extreme temperature and precipitation events and also examine the impact of increased resolution, in an effort to identify added value in this respect. Two climate simulations of western Canada (WCan) were conducted with the Canadian Regional Climate Model (version 4) at 15 (CRCM15) and 45?km (CRCM45) horizontal resolution driven at the lateral boundaries by data from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 40-year Reanalysis (ERA-40) for the period 1973–1995. The simulations were evaluated using the spline-interpolated dataset ANUSPLIN, a daily observational gridded surface temperature and precipitation product with a nominal resolution of approximately 10?km. We examine a range of climate extremes, comprising the 10th and 90th percentiles of daily maximum (TX) and minimum (TN) temperatures, the 90th percentile of daily precipitation (PR90), and the 27 core Climate Daily Extremes (CLIMDEX) indices.

Both simulations exhibit cold biases compared with observations over WCan, with the bias exacerbated at higher resolution, suggesting little added value for temperature overall. There are instances, however, of regional improvement in the spatial pattern of temperature extremes at the higher resolution of CRCM15 (e.g., the CLIMDEX index for the annual number of days when TX?>?25°C). The high-resolution simulations also reveal similarly localized features in precipitation (e.g., rain shadows) that are not resolved at the 45?km resolution. With regard to precipitation extremes, although both simulations generally display wet biases, CRCM15 features a reduced bias in PR90 in all seasons except winter. This improvement occurs despite the fact that spatial and interannual variability of PR90 in CRCM15 is significantly overestimated relative to both CRCM45 and ANUSPLIN. We posit that these characteristics are the result of demonstrable differences between corresponding topographical datasets used in the gridded observations and CRCM, the resulting errors propagated to physical variables tied to elevation and the beneficial effect of subsequent spatial averaging. Because topographical input is often discordant between simulations and gridded observations, it is argued that a limited form of spatial averaging may contribute added value beyond that which has already been noted in previous studies with respect to small-scale climate variability.     

An open source GIS‐based Planning Support System: Application to the land use plan of La Troncal,Ecuador

Planning Support Systems (PSS) comprise a wide variety of geo‐technological tools related to GIS and spatial modeling aimed at addressing land planning processes. This article describes the OpenRules system, a PSS based on a previous system called RULES. Among OpenRules new features are its architecture, based exclusively on free and open source software, and its applicability to all land use types, including rural and urban uses. In addition, OpenRules incorporates an unlimited number of land evaluation factors and a new objective in land use spatial allocation. OpenRules has been programmed in Java and implemented as a module of the free GIS software gvSIG, with full integration between the GIS and the decision support tools. Decision support tools include multicriteria evaluation, multiobjective linear programming and heuristic techniques, which support three basic stages of land use planning processes, namely land suitability evaluation, land use area optimization and land use spatial allocation. The application of OpenRules to the region of La Troncal, Ecuador, demonstrates its capability to generate alternative and coherent solutions through a scientific and justified procedure at low cost in terms of time and resources.     

A new method for specular and diffuse pseudorange multipath error extraction using wavelet analysis

Multipath remains one of the major challenges in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning because it is considered the dominant source of ranging errors, which can be classified into specular and diffuse types. We present a new method using wavelets to extract the pseudorange multipath in the time domain and breaking it down into the two components. The main idea is an analysis-reconstruction approach based on application of both continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The proposed procedure involves the use of L1 code-minus-carrier (CMC) observable where higher-frequency terms are isolated as residuals. CMC residuals are analyzed by applying the CWT, and we propose the scalogram as a technique for discerning time–frequency variations of the multipath signal. Unlike Fourier transform, the potential of the CWT scalogram for examining the non-stationary and multifrequency nature of the multipath is confirmed as it simultaneously allows fine detection and time localization of the most representative frequencies of the signal. This interpretation of the CWT scalogram is relevant when choosing the levels of reconstruction with DWT, allowing accurate time domain extraction of both the specular and diffuse multipath. The performance and robustness of the method and its boundary applicability are assessed. The experiment was carried out using a receiver of Campania GNSS Network. The results are given in which specular multipath error is achieved using DWT level 7 approximation component and diffuse multipath error is achieved using DWT level 6 denoised detail component.