Agricultural activities impact on groundwater nitrate pollution

Concern over agricultural diffuse pollution sources in integrated water quality management has been growing recently. High nitrogen fertilizers application rates may increase the potential groundwater pollution. These effects were investigated in Andimeshk and Susa plains that cover an area of 1100 km² between the Dez and Karkhe rivers in north of Khozestan-Iran. This region divided to 4 sub-regions A, B, C, and D. Additionally 168 groundwater samples were collected from 42 water wells during the months April, May, August, and September of 2004. The Hackspectrophotometer nitrate test was used to measure the NO₃ ^? concentration in water samples. Information about further nitrate data was obtained. A questionnaire procedure was used for collection N-fertilizers application rate data in studied area. The results demonstrated that all of the groundwater samples have NO₃ ^t- concentration below the EPA MCL (44.27 mg/l) and WHO guideline (50 mg/l). The mean nitrate concentrations are 16.1, 19.5, 13.3, and 7.9 mg/l in sub-regions A, B, C, and D respectively. There are different amount of N-fertilizers applied in sub-regions A, B, C, and D. Correlation between NO₃t- concentrations and N-fertilizers rate suggests a inverse correlation between Nfertilizers application rate and ground waters nitrate concentrations in studied area (r=?0.69).     

Seismic hazard analysis and local site effect of the 2017 Mw 7.3 Sarpol-e Zahab,Iran, earthquake

Natural Hazards - A strong earthquake occurred on November 12, 2017, in Sarpol-e Zahab city, western Iran, with the moment magnitude ( $$M_{{\text{w}}}$$ ) of 7.3 and a focal depth of...     

On lattice reduction algorithms for solving weighted integer least squares problems: comparative study

Decorrelation or reduction theory deals with identifying appropriate lattice bases that aid in accelerating integer search to find the optimal integer solution of the weighted integer least squares problem. Orthogonality defect has been widely used to measure the degree of orthogonality of the reduced lattice bases for many years. This contribution presents an upper bound for the number of integer candidates in the integer search process. This upper bound is shown to be a product of three factors: (1) the orthogonality defect, (2) the absolute value of the determinant of the inverse of the generator matrix of the lattice, and (3) the radius of the search space raised to the power of the dimension of the integer ambiguity vector. Four well-known decorrelation algorithms, namely LLL, LAMBDA, MLAMBDA, and Seysen, are compared. Many simulated data with varying condition numbers and dimensions as well as real GPS data show that the Seysen reduction algorithm reduces the condition number much better than the other algorithms. Also, the number of integer candidates, before and after the reduction process, is counted for all algorithms. Comparing the number of integer candidates, condition numbers, and orthogonality defect reveals that reducing the condition number and the orthogonality defect may not necessarily result in decreasing the number of integer candidates in the search process. Therefore, contrary to the common belief, reducing the orthogonality defect and condition number do not always result in faster integer least squares estimation. The results indicate that LAMBDA and MLAMBDA perform much better in reducing the number of integer candidates than the other two algorithms, despite having a larger orthogonality defect and condition number in some cases. Therefore, these two algorithms can speed up the integer least squares estimation problem in general and the integer ambiguity resolution problem in particular.     

Robust Automatic Reduction of Multibeam Bathymetric Data Based on M-estimators

Multibeam echosounders have commonly been employed for a wide range of applications including offshore survey, navigation, hydrogeology, and oceanography. Because the tremendous volume of the bathymetric data is demanding for some purposes and requires significant storage space, the data reduction plays a prominent role in practice. Additionally, the multibeam soundings are inevitably contaminated with sporadic outliers, and as such, the data cleaning can be challenging especially in shallow waters. We present a speedily robust method for reliably reducing the volume of the bathymetric data within grid cells. In this respect, robust M-estimators are recursively applied to the data in a patch-wise manner to alleviate the undesirable effects of the outlying observations. Accordingly, the reduced bathymetry is automatically made unaffected by the possible outliers once their equivalent weights have been downweighted. The performance of the presented method has been demonstrated by synthetic datasets and an experimental dataset collected by an ATLAS FS 20/100 kHz shallow-water multibeam echosounder in the offshore waters of Kish wharf. The reliability, efficiency, and capability of the proposed method have been verified, which makes it quite possible to meet the IHO requirements for special-order seafloor mapping.     

A Poroelastic Description of Permeability Evolution

Pore pressure changes in a geothermal reservoir, as a result of injection and/or production of water, result in changes of stress acting on the reservoir rock and, consequently, changes in the mechanical and transport properties of the rock. Bulk modulus and permeability were measured at different pressures and temperatures. An outcropping equivalent of Rotliegend reservoir rock in the North German Basin (Flechtinger sandstone) was used to perform hydrostatic tests and steady state fluid flow tests. Permeability measurements were conducted while cycling confining pressure; the dependence of permeability on stress was determined at a constant downstream pressure of 1 MPa. Also, temperature was increased stepwise from 30 to 140 °C and crack porosity was calculated at different temperatures. Although changes in the volumes of cracks are not significant, the cracks control fluid flow pathways and, consequently, the permeability of the rock. A new model was derived which relates microstructure of porosity, the stress–strain curve, and permeability. Porosity change was described by the first derivative of the stress–strain curve. Permeability evolution was ascribed to crack closure and was related to the second derivative of the stress–strain curve. The porosity and permeability of Flechtinger sandstone were reduced by increasing the effective pressure and decreased after each pressure cycle.     

Predicting ambient concentrations of NO<Subscript>2</Subscript> in a gas refinery located in South Pars Gas Complex

In this study, AERMOD dispersion model has been applied for predicting the values of ambient concentrations of NO₂ emissions due to the stacks of fourth gas refinery located in South Pars Gas Complex in Asaluyeh, Iran. First, the values of NO₂ emissions from the stacks and the amounts of ambient concentrations of NO₂ in nine monitoring stations have been measured in four seasons in 2013. Then, dispersion of NO₂ emissions has been predicted by using AERMOD model in the region with the domain area of 10 × 10 km², in average times of 1 h. Finally, the simulated and observed values of ambient NO₂ concentrations in the nine receptors have been compared. Comparison of 1-h concentrations of the observed and predicted results with the international ambient standard levels shows that NO₂ concentrations are higher than the standard value. The results show that AERMOD model can be used effectively for predicting the amounts of pollutants’ concentrations in the study area.     

Developing a spatio-temporal model of risk management for earthquake life detection rescue team

Crisis management is a time-critical and collaborative activity that requires rapid assessment and decision-making. This study aims to develop a framework to increase teamwork efficiency by spatio-temporal modeling of human group activities in geospatial information systems. For this purpose, time geography framework was extended with round-robin scheduling and then was integrated in geographic information system environment to manage human activities in a spatio-temporal framework. The proposed framework enjoys the graphical presentation of the tasks to be executed, as well as mathematical modeling of the complex interactions to be managed. To validate the proposed model, activities of an earthquake life-detection team in normal and suggested framework were simulated and assessed. An average improvement of 18.69 % (in time and the number of rescuers) was observed using the proposed framework. The suggested framework helps to resolve multidimensional problems in risk management.     

Investigation of the probable trigger factor for large landslides in north of Dehdasht,Iran

Natural Hazards - Charosa and Dehdasht is a part of folded Zagros that is located in the Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province in southwestern Iran. This area is covered with several Zagros...     

The Effects of Temperature and Pressure on the Porosity Evolution of Flechtinger Sandstone

A porosity change influences the transport properties and the elastic moduli of rock while circulating water in a geothermal reservoir. The static and dynamic elastic moduli can be derived from the slope of stress–strain curves and velocity measurements, respectively. Consequently, the acoustic velocities were measured while performing hydrostatic drained tests. The effect of temperature on static and dynamic elastic moduli and porosity variations of Flechtinger sandstone was investigated in a wide range of confining pressure from 2 to 55 MPa. The experiments were carried out in a conventional triaxial system whereas the pore pressure remained constant, confining pressure was cycled, and temperature was increased step wise (25, 60, 90, 120, and 140 °C). The porosity variation was calculated by employing two different theories: poroelasticity and crack closure. The porosity variation and crack porosity were determined by the first derivative of stress–strain curves and the integral of the second derivative of stress–strain curves, respectively. The crack porosity analysis confirms the creation of new cracks at high temperatures. The porosity variation was increasing with an increase in temperature at low effective pressures and was decreasing with a rise in temperature at high effective pressures. Both compressional and shear wave velocities were increasing with increasing pressure due to progressive crack closure. Furthermore, the thermomechanical behavior of Flechtinger sandstone was characterized by an inversion effect where the sign of the temperature derivative of the drained bulk modulus changes.