Site response zones and short-period earthquake ground motion projections for the Las Vegas Basin

A deterministic seismic hazard analysis was conducted to address the effect of local soil conditions on earthquake-induced strong ground motion in the Las Vegas Basin, Nevada (US). Using a large geological and geotechnical database, two response units were defined: a fine-grained unit, predominantly clay; and a coarse-grained unit, predominantly gravel. A moderate number of high-quality shallow shear wave velocity measurements were collected from which characteristic shear wave velocity profiles were developed for each response unit. An equivalent-linear one-dimensional site response model was used. The model was calibrated using a basin-wide, small-strain ground motion database. Calibration tests showed that ground motion projections become increasingly conservative with increasing ground-motion amplitude. Projections were overconservative for the coarse-grained response unit, likely due to the sparseness of the velocity database. For the earthquake response analyses, historical ground motions were used to model characteristic ‘bedrock’ motion for earthquakes on 10 faults judged to be critical. Response spectral envelopes were generated for each unit through Monte-Carlo simulations. For the fine-grained response unit, 95th percentile peak ground acceleration, peak spectral acceleration and predominant period were 310 cm/s², 1100 cm/s², and 0.29 s, respectively. With respect to codified design spectra, projections are lower at short periods and higher at long periods. Projections of peak spectral accelerations for the coarse-grained response unit, were more than double that of codified spectra; however, they are believed to be overconservative. Near-fault effects and basin-edge effects, though potentially important, were not considered in these analyses.     

The accumulation of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in the aquatic biomass of sulphide tailing ponds

Flooding mine tailings to limit the oxidation of sulfides provides a habitat for aquatic organisms, such as plants, plankton, insects, and fish, which can uptake metals and, thus, threats for local ecosystems and influence the cycling of elements in biogeocenosis. An aquatic ecosystem developed naturally in sulphide tailing ponds containing cyanidation wastes of the Salair ore-refining plant (SORP), Russia, was studied. The objectives of this research were to: (i) reveal the level of contamination of living organisms in the tailing ponds compared to a natural control site and (ii) calculate the weight of metals in aquatic biomass to estimate the amount of metals transferring from the tailing ponds into the biogechemical cycle. The concentration of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in the sediments of the tailing ponds is significantly higher than from the control site. Concentrations of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in plant shoots were significantly higher than in the control and accumulated mainly in cell envelopes and membranes. The concentration of Pb in fish liver and eggs were 41 and 7.5 times higher, respectively, than maximum allowable concentrations. The biomass distribution between producers and consumers of the tailing pond ecosystem is similar to those of natural pond ecosystems. However, the weights of Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in all trophic levels per hectare of the tailing pond are orders of magnitude higher than those for Lake Baikal. The largest portion of metal circulates within the ecosystem of the Dyukov Ravine Pond with a maximum of 5 to 13% of this amount transferred into the surrounding environment through the food chains.     

Streamline method for resolving sharp fronts for complex two-phase flow in porous media

In this paper, we present a fast streamline-based numerical method for the two-phase flow equations in high-rate flooding scenarios for incompressible fluids in heterogeneous and anisotropic porous media. A fractional flow formulation is adopted and a discontinuous Galerkin method (DG) is employed to solve the pressure equation. Capillary effects can be neglected in high-rate flooding scenarios. This allows us to present an improved streamline approach in combination with the one-dimensional front tracking method to solve the transport equation. To handle the high computational costs of the DG approximation, domain decomposition is applied combined with an algebraic multigrid preconditioner to solve the linear system. Special care at the interior interfaces is required and the streamline tracer has to include a dynamic communication strategy. The method is validated in various two- and three-dimensional tests, where comparisons of the solutions in terms of approximation of flow front propagation with standard fully implicit finite-volume methods are provided.     

An open source high-performance solution to extract surface water drainage networks from diverse terrain conditions

This paper describes a workflow for automating the extraction of elevation-derived stream lines using open source tools with parallel computing support and testing the effectiveness of procedures in various terrain conditions within the conterminous United States. Drainage networks are extracted from the US Geological Survey 1/3 arc-second 3D Elevation Program elevation data having a nominal cell size of 10 m. This research demonstrates the utility of open source tools with parallel computing support for extracting connected drainage network patterns and handling depressions in 30 subbasins distributed across humid, dry, and transitional climate regions and in terrain conditions exhibiting a range of slopes. Special attention is given to low-slope terrain, where network connectivity is preserved by generating synthetic stream channels through lake and waterbody polygons. Conflation analysis compares the extracted streams with a 1:24,000-scale National Hydrography Dataset flowline network and shows that similarities are greatest for second- and higher-order tributaries.     

Snow accumulation and ablation response to changes in forest structure and snow surface albedo after attack by mountain pine beetle

This study quantified changes in snow accumulation and ablation with forest defoliation in a young pine stand attacked by mountain pine beetle, a mature mixed species stand, and a clearcut in south‐central British Columbia. From 2006 to 2012, as trees in the pine stand turned from green to grey, average canopy transmittance increased from 27% to 49%. In the mixed stand, transmittance remained constant at 19%. In 2009, the year of greatest needle loss, average snow surface litter cover in the pine stand was 29% (range 4 – 61%), compared to ≤9% in other years and over double that in the mixed stand. By 2012, litter accumulation in the now‐grey pine stand was only a sixth of that in the mixed stand. Inter‐annual variability in the weather had the greatest effect on snow accumulation and ablation, with the greatest differences between both forested stands and the clearcut occurring in 2010, the year of lowest SWE. Differences in snow accumulation between the pine and mixed stand increased in 2010 as a result of decreased snow interception in the young stand after needlefall. Average ablation rates in the attacked stand were most different from the mixed stand in 2009 and 2012, the years with the largest and smallest over‐winter needle loss, respectively. This study shows that grey, non‐pine, and understory trees moderate snow response to changes in the main canopy. It also highlights the complex interrelationships between ecohydrological processes key to assessing watershed response to forest cover loss in snow dominated hydrologic regimes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Were last glacial climate events simultaneous between Greenland and France? A quantitative comparison using non‐tuned chronologies

Several large abrupt climate fluctuations during the last glacial have been recorded in Greenland ice cores and archives from other regions. Often these Dansgaard–Oeschger events are assumed to have been synchronous over wide areas, and then used as tie‐points to link chronologies between the proxy archives. However, it has not yet been tested independently whether or not these events were indeed synchronous over large areas. Here, we compare Dansgaard–Oeschger‐type events in a well‐dated record from southeastern France with those in Greenland ice cores. Instead of assuming simultaneous climate events between both archives, we keep their age models independent. Even these well‐dated archives possess large chronological uncertainties that prevent us from inferring synchronous climate events at decadal to multi‐centennial time scales. If possible, comparisons between proxy archives should be based on independent, non‐tuned time‐scales. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing the effects of post‐pine beetle forest litter on snow albedo

The effect of forest litter on snow surface albedo has been subject to limited study, mainly in the hardwood‐dominated forests of the northeastern United States. Given the recent pine beetle infestation in Western North America and associated increases in litter production, this study examines the effects of forest litter on snow surface albedo in the coniferous forests of south‐central British Columbia. Measured changes in canopy transmittance provide an indication of canopy loss or total litterfall over the winter of 2007–2008. Relationships between percent litter cover, an index of albedo, snow depth, and snow ablation during the 2008 melt season are compared between a mature, young, and clearcut coniferous stand. Results indicate a strong feedback effect between canopy loss and subsequent enhanced shortwave transmittance, and litter accumulation on the snow surface from that canopy loss. However, this relationship is confounded by other variables concurrently affecting albedo. While results suggest that a relatively small percent litter cover can have a significant effect on albedo and ablation, further research is underway to extract the litter signal from that of other factors affecting albedo, particularly snow depth. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Frequency and directional evaluation of the ocean data gathering program (ODGP) wave spectra at Hibernia

Abstract

The frequency and directional wave‐modelling capability of the Ocean Data Gathering Program (ODGP) deep water spectral wave model is assessed through comparison with WAVEC data gathered at Hibernia. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses indicate better agreement with observations during storms and with the wind‐driven component of the wave spectra. There is statistically poor modelling of the swell. A coherence analysis on derived wave vectors indicates that the ODGP model does not simulate geophysical variability with time‐scales less than about 30 h for overall spectral energy and less than 24 h for wave energy of frequency greater than 0.6 rad s^?1 (0.095 Hz). The signals associated with swell waves are incoherent at nearly all time‐scales.