Stratigraphic and Ecophysical Characterizations of Salt Pools: Dynamic Landforms of the Webhannet Salt Marsh,Wells, ME,USA

Salt pools are water-filled depressions common to north-temperate salt marshes. In Wells, ME, USA, cores reveal a unique salt pool signature consisting of water-saturated dark-gray mud often containing fragments of Ruppia maritima. Cores through pool sediment reenter salt marsh peat, not tidal flat sediment, demonstrating that most pools are of secondary origin. A principal component analysis of attribute data collected from 119 pools defines three distinct pool types: those with (1) surrounding high-marsh vegetation and thick heavily undercut banks (40% of the variance), (2) surrounding low-marsh vegetation and thicker slightly undercut banks (18% of the variance), and (3) surrounding low-marsh vegetation and less thick moderately undercut banks, containing R. maritima and a surficial drainage (15% of the variance). Cores and spatiotemporal analyses of aerial photographs between 1962 and 2003 reveal dramatic salt marsh surface dynamism suggesting that salt pools influence the geomorphological evolution of coastal marshes.     

Detecting and mapping slums using open data: a case study in Kenya

ABSTRACT

The worldwide slum population currently stands at over one billion, with substantial growth expected in the coming decades. Traditionally, slums have been mapped using information derived mainly from either physical indicators using remote sensing data, or socio-economic indicators using census data. Each data source on its own provides only a partial view of slums, an issue further compounded by data poverty in less-developed countries. To overcome such issues, this paper explores the fusion of traditional with emerging open data sources and data mining tools to identify additional indicators that can be used to detect and map the presence of slums, map their footprint, and map their evolution. Towards this goal, we develop an indicator database for slums using open sources of physical and socio-economic data that can be used to characterize slum settlements. Using this database, we then leverage data mining techniques to identify the most suitable combination of these indicators for mapping slums. Using three cities in Kenya as test cases, results show that the fusion of these data can improve the mapping accuracy of slums. These results suggest that the proposed approach can provide a viable solution to the emerging challenge of monitoring the growth of slums.     

Biological marker characteristics of oils and asphalts from carbonate source rocks in a rapidly subsiding graben,Dead Sea,Israel

A detailed GC/MS study of biological marker compounds in the saturated and aromatic hydrocarbon fractions of oils and asphalts from the Dead Sea area, Israel, provided decisive information to the solution of a long-lasting controversy by showing that the asphalts are products of early generation in an immature stage from the same type of carbonate source rock which generated more mature oils. The asphalts are not biodegraded residues of the oils.Oils from six different wells, and asphalts from wells, outcrops, and a floating block from the Dead Sea all have very similar sterane and triterpane patterns. They all lack rearranged steranes (diasteranes) indicating a carbonate source matrix and compare reasonably well with a sample of Upper Cretaceous bituminous chalk from Nebi Musa. The main difference between the oils and the asphalts is a significantly higher triaromatic to mono- plus triaromatic steroid hydrocarbon ratio in the former. This is explained as a result of rapid subsidence and heating of their source rock close to the deep parts of the Dead Sea graben. The oils thus were generated in the more deeply buried source rock blocks under the graben fill, whereas the asphalts either originate from an immature source rock section closer to the graben rims or represent an earlier phase of generation and expulsion.This study also provides general information on the evolution of biological markers in carbonate source rocks. Low-activation-energy processes, like isomerisation of steranes, appear to occur much faster at low temperatures than in shales. The high sulfur content and less cross-linking of the biogenic organic matter into a complex kerogen structure are suggested to be responsible for this. Care should be taken when using only sterane isomerisation to assess the maturity of hydrocarbons from carbonate rocks and of carbonate-derived oils.     

Detection of the water level in fractured phreatic aquifers using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) geophysical measurements

Correlation of geophysical data collected using the NMR method in the Negev Desert, Israel, with hydrogeological data from nearby observation wells is presented. The experiment was conducted near Kibbutz Revivim in the Besor drainage system (Fig. 1). The objective of the survey was to detect groundwater layers in the Quaternary cover filling and Eocene fractured aquifers down to a depth of 100 m. The experiment was performed using a combination of two different geophysical techniques, namely the NMR and time domain electromagnetic (TDEM) methods. The geophysical results were verified by measuring the water level in three observation wells, two of which were drilled several months after the geophysical survey was carried out.The water level measured in these follow-up observation wells shortly after drilling did not coincide with the geophysical data. However, it settled over a period of time and finally stabilized at a depth very similar to that obtained from the NMR measurements. This phenomenon is caused by the fractured nature of the phreatic aquifer. Since the flow of water in such aquifers is confined by the fractures, the appearance of water in the well during or shortly after drilling is determined solely by the intersection of the well and the fracture. Our experiments showed that geophysical measurements in fractured phreatic aquifers may have a distinct advantage over direct borehole measurements, since the former average the depth to the water table over large areas (several thousand square meters) while the latter are limited by the area of the borehole cross-section (several tens of square centimeters).     

Phosphorus in marine and non-marine humic substances

The phosphorus content of marine humic acids (HA) is in the range of 0.1–0.2%. The C/P ratios of the HA are 300 to 400. Marine fulvic acids (FA) contain 0.4–0.8% P and have C/P ratios of 80 to 100. High molecular weight organic matter dissolved in pore waters (DOM) contains 0.5% P and has C/P of 90. The data suggest that during the formation sequence: Plankton → DOM → FA → HA → Kerogen, phosphorus is lost, mainly in the FA → HA (and possibly also in the HA → Kerogen) step. Diagenesis of sedimentary humic acids is accompanied by loss of phosphorus (as well as of nitrogen) to form HA with C/P ratios of 1000.Soil humic substances resemble marine humates in P content (0.3%) and soil FA's are about three to fivefold enriched in P relative to HA. C/P ratios are lower in soil HA (ca. 200) as compared with marine HA. Humic acids from diagenetic products such as peat and lignite are highly depleted in P. Rough calculations indicate that humate bound P may account for 20–50% of the organic phosphorus reservoir in sediments. The chemical speciation of this P is unknown, but lack of correlation with ash, Fe, Ca or Al content (in marine humates, at least) indicates that it is organically bound.     

Atom Probe Tomography: Development and Application to the Geosciences

Atom probe tomography (APT) is an analytical technique that provides quantitative three‐dimensional elemental and isotopic analyses at sub‐nanometre resolution across the whole periodic table. Although developed and mostly used in the materials science and semiconductor fields, recent years have seen increasing development and application in the geoscience and planetary science disciplines. Atom probe studies demonstrate compositional complexity at the nanoscale and provide fundamental new insights into the atom‐scale mechanisms taking place in minerals over geological time. Here, we provide an overview of APT, including the historical development and technical aspects of the instrumentation, and the fundamentals of data acquisition, data processing and data reconstruction. We also review previous studies and highlight the potential future applications of nanoscale geochemical studies of natural materials.     

An alternative use of Kieffer’s lattice dynamics model using vibrational density of states for constructing thermodynamic databases

We use Kieffer’s model to represent the vibrational density of states (VDoS) and thermodynamic properties of pure substances in pressure–temperature space. We show that this model can be simplified to a vibrational model in which the VDoS is represented by multiple Einstein frequencies without significant loss of accuracy in thermodynamic properties relative to experimental data. The resulting analytical expressions for thermodynamic properties, including the Gibbs energy, are mathematically simple and easily accommodated in existing computational software for making thermodynamic databases. We show for aluminium, platinum, orthoenstatite and forsterite that thermodynamic properties can be represented with comparable accuracy as with Kieffer’s model with the same number of fitting parameters as in the Mie–Grüneisen–Debye model. We demonstrate that the method enables to achieve thermodynamic properties with superior accuracy relative to the Mie–Grüneisen–Debye method. The method is versatile in the sense that it allows incorporating dispersion of Grüneisen parameters. It is possible to extend the formalism to include other physical effects, such as intrinsic anharmonicity in the same way as in vibrational models based on Kieffer’s formalism.