Changing anthropogenic influence on the Santa Monica Bay watershed

Santa Monica Bay is an open coastal embayment located directly seaward of Los Angeles, California. The Bay provides vital economic value through its water-dependent activities, such as swimming, diving, boating, and fishing. An increase from 100,000 residents in 1900 to 10 million in 2000 has imposed numerous environmental stressors on the Bay, including urbanization of the watershed. Pollutant discharges into the Bay increased throughout the early part of the century, but declined following passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Since that time, the predominant source of pollutant inputs has changed from point sources to non-point urban runoff. To assess how present-day and historical pollution interact to affect the environmental quality of Santa Monica Bay, three organizations collaborated on a multi-disciplinary study in 1997, towards which this volume is focused. This paper details the temporal patterns of anthropogenic influence on Santa Monica Bay to provide context for the papers that follow.     

Casualties in dry bulk shipping (1963–1996)

In recent years, bulk carriers have been identified with high risks of catastrophic structural failure and foundering, and with heavy loss of human life. This study, based upon Lloyd's of London casualty records, identified four risk factors that had significant, independent effect upon the likelihood of a bulk carrier foundering. The risk of foundering increased with the age of the ship, and was related to the ship's flag of registration. Most importantly, however, increased risks were found for heavy cargoes of iron ore and scrap steel or iron, and for trading routes to the Far East and from Europe to North America. Additional safety measures, in particular regarding ship design and high-risk trades, may well be necessary to reduce the high casualty rates.     

Geochemical variation in ferromanganese nodules and associated sediments from the Pacific Ocean

The major and minor element compositions of a suite of abyssal sea-floor ferromanganese nodules and associated sediments from the eastern central Pacific have been used to examine inter-element relationships and the mineralogy of the nodules, the relationship between the composition of nodules and their associated sediments and regional variations in composition with respect to likely modes of formation of such deposits. Apart from Mn and Fe, significant proportions of the total Ti, Ca, Mg, K, Ba, Sr, Th and Y and almost all the P, As, Ce, Co, Cu, Mo, Ni, Pb, Zn and Zr are present in the oxide fractions of the nodules. The Mg, Ba, Cu, Mo, Ni and Zn contents are significantly correlated with the Mn content, while Ti, P, As, Pb, Sr, Y and Zr are similarly correlated with the total Fe content.Nodules from the northeastern tropical Pacific have Mn/Fe ratios higher than those in the oxide fractions of their associated sediments, todorokite as the principal Mn phase and relatively high concentrations of minor elements associated with Mn. Nodules from the south central Pacific have Mn/Fe ratios similar to those in the oxide fractions of the associated sediments, δ-MnO₂ as the only Mn-phase, and relatively high concentrations of minor elements associated with Fe. There appears to be a smooth gradation in composition in the tropical Pacific between these two end members.The regional compositional variation is interpreted as a reflection of different sources of metals for, and different growth mechanisms of, sea-floor nodules. The oxide precipitate from sea water consists of δ-MnO₂, has a relatively low Mn/Fe ratio and minor element contents related to the total Fe and Mn(δ-MnO₂) content. The oxide precipitate forming in areas of very low sedimentation as a result of diagenetic remobilisation in the surface sediment consists of todorokite, and has a high Mn/Fe ratio and enhanced metal content in the Mn-(todorokite)phase. Available information on the morphology and compositional variation of individual nodules from the tropical Pacific corroborates these contrasting metal sources and suggests that they can be resolved on the scale of an individual oxide concretion.     

A comparison of Hα and soft X-ray characteristics of spotless and spot group flares

A comparative analysis of spotless and spot group flares recorded at Hvar and Kanzelhöhe Observatories during the 21st cycle of solar activity is presented. The rate of occurrence of two-ribbon flares was found to be significantly higher for the spotless flares. In comparison with spot group flares of corresponding H importance, the soft X-ray peak values have been systematically lower for the spotless flares. The highest peak values and the energy released in soft X-rays was found for flares with a H ribbon protruding over a major spot umbra. It was found that the effective plasma temperatures in spotless flares have been considerably lower than the temperatures in spot group flares.     

Helium resonance lines in the flare of 15 June, 1973

Time sequences of He i and He ii resonance line intensities at several sites within the flare of 15 June, 1973 are derived from observations obtained with the Naval Research Laboratory's Slitless Spectroheliograph on Skylab. The data are compared with predictions in six model flare atmospheres based on two values for the heating rate and three for the flux of photoionizing coronal X-rays and EUV. A peak ionizing flux more than 10³ times that in the quiet Sun is indicated. For most conditions in flare kernels the He ii L and L lines are found to be formed by collisional excitation, thereby contributing to the local cooling of the plasma at temperatures above 6 × 10⁴ K. Emission in the higher Lyman lines is generally the result of a mixture of collisional excitation at these temperatures and photoionization and recombination at temperatures near 2.5 × 10⁴ K. We discuss implications for the common practice of deriving stellar coronal fluxes from He ii 1640 Å fluxes assuming dominance of the recombination mechanism.Chief, Quantum Physics Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology.Operated jointly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado.Operated by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under contract with the National Science Foundation.     

Chemical abundances from B-stars in the Magellanic Clouds

We observed near-Main-Sequence B-stars in the Magellanic Clouds with the 3.6 m telescope and CASPEC at La Silla. We obtained spectra of high resolution and high S/N-ratio. The stars are members of the blue globular clusters NGC 1818 (LMC) and NGC 330 (SMC). The spectra are used for differential abundance analyses using HER as galactic reference star. Apart from CNO the metals are underabundant by about a factor of three and four for the LMC and SMC star, respectively. The CNO pattern is interesting since in both stars oxygen is considerably more abundant than carbon.Based on observations collected at ESO, La Silla and on Calar Alto, Spain and on observations made with the International Ultraviolet Explorer.     

Fiber bursts in type IV dm radio continua as a signature of coronal current sheet dynamics

In the late phase of some complex flare events which produce type IV radio emission, a narrow-band decimetric component with generally a high abundance of spectral fine structures is observed. We identify this late dm continuum as a hypothetical switch-off signature of the equivalent two-ribbon flare current system. The quasi-periodic and highly dynamic fiber-burst pattern studied in the February 5, 1986 example is understood as radio evidence for a final reactivation of a cyclic sequence of instabilities in the driven reconnecting current sheet below the rising prominence.Paper presented at the 4th CESRA Workshop in Ouranopolis (Greece) 1991.     

Impact-generated atmospheres over Titan, Ganymede, and Callisto

The competition between impact erosion and impact supply of volatiles to planetary atmospheres can determine whether a planet or satellite accumulates an atmosphere. In the absence of other processes (e.g., outgassing), we find either that a planetary atmosphere should be thick, or that there should be no atmosphere at all. The boundary between the two extreme cases is set by the mass and velocity distributions and intrinsic volatile content of the impactors. We apply our model specifically to Titan, Callisto, and Ganymede. The impacting population is identified with comets, either in the form of stray Uranus-Neptune planetesimals or as dislodged Kuiper belt comets. Systematically lower impact velocities on Titan allow it to retain a thick atmosphere, while Callisto and Ganymede get nothing. Titan's atmosphere may therefore be an expression of a late-accreting, volatile-rich veneer. An impact origin for Titan's atmosphere naturally accounts for the high D/H ratio it shares with Earth, the carbonaceous meteorites, and Halley. It also accounts for the general similarity of Titan's atmosphere to those of Triton and Pluto, which is otherwise puzzling in view of the radically different histories and bulk compositions of these objects.     

Charge-coupled device imaging spectroscopy of Mars. 1. Instrumentation and data reduction/analysis procedures

This paper describes the collection, reduction, and analysis of 0.4–1.0 m Mars imaging spectroscopy data obtained during the 1988 and 1990 oppositions from Mauna Kea Observatory and provides a general outline for the acquisition and analysis of similar imaging spectroscopy data sets. The U.H. 2.24-m Wide Field Grism CCD Spectrograph was used to collect 13 three-dimensional image cubes covering 90% of the planet south of 50°N in the 0.4–0.8 m region (/=245 at 0.6 m) and covering 55% of the planet south of 50°N in the 0.5–1.0 m region (/=293 at 0.75 m). Spectra extracted from these image cubes reveal the detailed character of the martian near-UV to visible spectrum. Images at red wavelengths reveal the classical albedo markings at 100–500 km spatial resolution while images at blue wavelengths show little surface feature contrast and are dominated by condensate clouds/hazes and polar ice. Many of the data acquisition, reduction, and analysis steps discussed here are new or unique to imaging spectroscopy data sets. These techniques exploit the information contained within the spatial domain of data such as these, thus allowing more traditional point-spectral analysis techniques to be expanded into an imaging format.