Sandy beach ecosystems: key features, sampling issues, management challenges and climate change impacts

Escalating pressures caused by the combined effects of population growth, demographic shifts, economic development and global climate change pose unprecedented threats to sandy beach ecosystems worldwide. Conservation of beaches as functional ecosystems and protection of their unique biodiversity requires management interventions that not only mitigate threats to physical properties of sandy shores, but also include ecological dimensions. Yet, beach management remains overwhelmingly focused on engineering interventions. Here we summarise the key outcomes of several workshops, held during the 2006 Sandy Beach Ecology Symposium in Vigo, Spain, that addressed issues of climate change, beach management and sampling methodology. Because efficient communication between managers and ecologists is critical, we summarise the salient features of sandy beaches as functional ecosystems in 50 'key statements'; these provide a succinct synopsis of the main structural and functional characteristics of these highly dynamic systems. Key outcomes of the workshops include a set of recommendations on designs and methods for sampling the benthic infaunal communities of beaches, the identification of the main ecological effects caused by direct and indirect human interventions, the predicted consequence of climate change for beach ecosystems, and priority areas for future research.     

Life Histories and Breeding Patterns of Three Intertidal Sand Beach Isopods

Abstract. Three-weekly transects were done over a 14-month period at Sundays River Beach, a high energy beach in Algoa Bay, South Africa, to determine the life histories, breeding patterns, and fecundities of three intertidal cirolanid isopods. Eurydice longicornis. Pontogeloides latipes , and Excirolana naialensis. E. longicornis exhibits an annual, multivoltine life history with a more extended breeding period than the other two species. P. latipes and E. natalensis both have biennial. univoltine life histories with lower fecundities than E. longicornis.     

Effects of crude oil on the supralittoral meiofauna of a sandy beach

The supralittoral zone of an open sandy beach was dosed with crude oil and changes in the meiofauna monitored. Treatments included weathered and fresh oil on the surface, fresh oil mixed with dispersant on the surface and weathered oil at the water table, all in layers 0·8 cm thick. In all cases the meiofauna was reduced 1 month after dosing but numbers had returned to normal by 5 months except in the site dosed with fresh oil mixed with dispersant. Oil on the surface had greater effects than oil at the water table; fresh oil had a greater effect than weathered oil and fresh oil with dispersant was more toxic than fresh oil alone. Nematodes were least sensitive to the oil and oligochaetes more sensitive, their numbers being correlated with oil concentrations and depth in the substrate. It is concluded that, under all but the heaviest conditions of pollution in their environment, recovery from oil contamination should occur within 5 months in the meiofauna.     

The Shatter Belt and the European Core - A Geopolitical Discussion on the Untypical Case of Slovenia

Europe in general is in a great state of change. States uniting with difficulty, states collapsing in pain, newly freed states struggling for new political, economic, and social identities - it is a region in a true transition. The paper is focussing primarily on the European Shatter Belt, formerly known as Eastern Europe. This is in fact a subset of new and old nation-states in the region of Central and Eastern Europe or, to use an older, but increasingly popular term, Mitteleuropa (Ruppert, 1997). Mitteleuropa is reemerging from the commotion resulting from the collapse of the old political order - communism. Our focus in this presentation is on personal experiences and observations. We will note the progress and positive dimensions of the change (transition) in the light of Europe's and NATO expansion. We will address the issues at two scales- at the international/national level and then, at the level of a Slovenian case study. This will enable us to discuss the natural system of the process of enlargement and incorporate supporting material of geographical, historical and social nature as envisioned by Hartshorne. Since the collapse of communism, the region has experienced some serious traumas that vary in intensity across the region. Probably the greatest pain has been experienced in the former Yugoslavia - an estimated 150,000 have perished and about 2.5 millions have been displaced within and outside the country. Chaos still exists despite the protectorate arrangement in Bosnia. The hot spot Kosovo has yet to be calmed down. In parts of the region economic pain has been considerable. Every state of Mitteleuropa experienced absolute economic decline from 1990–1995; high inflation rates, increased economic inequality, high levels of poverty, increase of crime and more. Economic and psychological stress effect demographic processes. Things have partly changed to the better in the most recent years. The adoption of capitalism and a democratic political system has been painful, disorienting, and is still in progress. The democratization process varies considerably across the region and in some states is in jeopardy. Reformed communist parties had staged a restoration in nearly all of the states - in some winning the control of the government, in others gaining strong and influential positions, or both. But, two major processes promise future democracy, rule of law, wealth and stability in general. This is the decision of the member states of the European Union and NATO to incorporate some/several states of the Shatter Belt into their own zone of protection and/or federation. Nation-states of the region tend to follow the EU Agenda 2000 rules with Slovenia one of the first!     

Research Note: Frequency domain orthogonal projection filtration of surface microseismic monitoring data

We address the problem of increasing the signal-to-noise ratio during surface microseismic monitoring data processing. Interference from different seismic waves causes misleading results of microseismic event locations. Ground-roll suppression is particularly necessary. The standard noise suppression techniques assume regular and dense acquisition geometries. Many pre-processing noise suppression algorithms are designed for special types of noise or interference. To overcome these problems, we propose a novel general-purpose filtration method. The goal of this method is to amplify only the seismic waves that are excited in the selected target area and suppress all other signals. We construct a linear projector onto a frequency domain data subspace, which corresponds to the seismic emission of the target area. The novel filtration method can be considered an extension of the standard frequency–wavenumber flat wave filtration method for non-flat waves and arbitrary irregular receiver-position geometries. To reduce the effect of the uncertainty of the velocity model, we suggest using additional active shot data (typically the perforation shots), which provide static travel time corrections for the target area. The promising prospects of the proposed method are confirmed by synthetic and semi-synthetic data processing.     

Erosion,transport and deposition of a sediment replenishment under flood conditions

River reaches downstream of dams with constant residual discharge often lack sediment supply and periodic high flows due to dam sediment retention and flow regulation, respectively. To test a novel multi-deposit methodology for defining environmental flows for activating the dynamics of the river morphology downstream of dams, a flood was released from Rossens Dam in Switzerland. This event was combined for the first time with a multi-deposit configuration of sediment replenishment consisting of four artificial deposits allocated as alternate bars along the riverbanks as a restoration measure. To validate the sediment transport behaviour observed in laboratory tests, stones were equipped with radiofrequency identification (RFID) passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags, a fixed antenna was installed at the river bed and a mobile antenna was used to enable the investigation of the erosion, transport and deposition of replenished sediments. The duration of the erosion period was determined for the tracked stones, and average transport velocities were found to be on the order of 10^–3 m/s. To estimate the erosion efficiency of the flood, defined as the eroded tagged stones compared with the released water volume, the hydrograph was divided into different periods: rising limb, constant peak discharge, decreasing limb. During the rising limb of the flood, which lasted for 20% of the total flood duration, more than 40% of the PIT tags were transported. The defined erosion efficiency is a measure to support the hydrographic design of artificial flood releases from dams. The deposition of tagged stones resulted in a repeating cluster formation, as expected from previous laboratory experiments, creating an increase in hydraulic habitat diversity. Comparison of the results obtained in the field and from laboratory experiments confirmed the robustness of the multi-deposit sediment replenishment method. Combined with the knowledge gained on the erosion efficiency, these results could motivate further applications and research into multi-deposit sediment replenishment techniques as a habitat-oriented river restoration measure. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

微波消解ICP—AES法测定石油样品中镍钒铝硅

Ni、V、Al、Si是石油的天然组分。其中M和V来源于形成石油的原始物质,它们易形成大而复杂的分子,从而使沸点非常高。含Ni和V的化合物在提炼过程中无法蒸馏,不能很经济地从燃料中去除。     

Investigation of iron sulfide impact crater residues: A combined analysis by scanning and transmission electron microscopy

Abstract– Samples returned from comet 81P/Wild 2 by the Stardust mission provided an unequaled opportunity to compare previously available extraterrestrial samples against those from a known comet. Iron sulfides are a major constituent of cometary grains commonly identified within cometary interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) and Wild 2 samples. Chemical analyses indicate Wild 2 sulfides are fundamentally different from those in IDPs. However, as Wild 2 dust was collected via impact into capture media at approximately 6.1 km s^?1, it is unclear whether this is due to variation in preaccretional/parent body processes experienced by these materials or due to heating and alteration during collection. We investigated alteration in pyrrhotite and pentlandite impacted into Stardust flight spare Al foils under encounter conditions by comparing scanning and transmission electron microscope (SEM, TEM) analyses of preimpact and postimpact samples and calculating estimates of various impact parameters. SEM is the primary method of analysis during initial in situ examination of Stardust foils, and therefore, we also sought to evaluate the data obtained by SEM using insights provided by TEM. We find iron sulfides experience heating, melting, separation, and loss of S, and mixing with molten Al. These results are consistent with estimated peak pressures and temperatures experienced (approximately 85 GPa, approximately 2600 K) and relative melting temperatures. Unambiguous identification of preserved iron sulfides may be possible by TEM through the location of Al‐free regions. In most cases, the Ni:Fe ratio is preserved in both SEM and TEM analyses and may therefore also be used to predict original chemistry and estimate mineralogy.