Algal Cultivation for Treating Wastewater in African Developing Countries: A Review

The tremendous increase in human population and rapid decline in freshwater resources have necessitated the development of innovative and sustainable wastewater treatment methods. Africa as a developing continent is currently backing on sustainable solutions to tackle impending water resource crisis brought forward by wastewater‐induced environmental pollution and climate change. Microalgae‐based wastewater treatment systems represent an emerging technology that is capable of meeting the new demand for improved wastewater treatment and climate change mitigation strategies in an environmentally friendly manner. This review critically looks at the opportunities of Africa in harnessing and exploiting the potential of microalgae for the treatment of various wastewaters based on their capacity to recycle nutrients and for concurrent production of valuable biomass and several useful metabolites. Wastewaters, if improperly/completely untreated and discharged, simultaneously pollute freshwater sources and present significant health and environmental risks. Nutrients in wastewater can be utilized and recovered in the form of marketable biomass and products when integrated with the cultivation of microalgae. Several valuable bioproducts can be generated from wastewater‐grown microalgal biomass including biofuels, biofertilizers, animal feed, and various bioactive compounds. This biorefinery approach would most certainly improve wastewater treatment process economics, enhancing the technical feasibility of algae‐based wastewater remediation in African countries.     

Wind stress forcing of the North Sea 'pole tide'

We conduct numerical simulations of the wind forcing of sea level variations in the North Sea using a barotropic ocean model with realistic geography and bathymetry to examine the forcing of the 14 month 'pole tide', which is known to be anomalously large along the Denmark–Netherlands coast. The simulation input is the monthly mean surface wind stress field from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis for the 40 year period 1958–1997. The ocean model output sea level response is then compared with 10 coastal tide gauge records from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) over the same period of time. Besides the strong seasonal variations, several prominent quasi-periodicities exist near 7 years, 3 years, 14 months, 9 months and 6.5 months. Correlations and spectral analyses show remarkable agreement between the model output and the observations, particularly in the 14 month, or Chandler, period band. The latter indicates that the enhanced pole tide found in the North Sea along the Denmark–Netherlands coast is actually the coastal set-up response to wind stress forcing with a periodicity of around 14 months. We find no need to invoke a geophysical explanation involving resonance enhancement of the pole tide in the North Sea to explain the observations.     

An example of cluster analysis applied to a large geologic data set: Aerial radiometric data from Copper Mountain, Wyoming

One objective of the aerial radiometric surveys flown as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) program was to ascertain the spatial distribution of near-surface radioelement abundances on a regional scale. Some method for identifying groups of observations with similar -ray spectral signatures and radioelement concentration values was therefore required. It is shown in this paper that cluster analysis can identify such groups with or without a priori knowledge of the geology of an area. An approach that combines principal components analysis with convergentk-means cluster analysis is used to classify 6991 observations (each observation comprising three radiometric variables) from the Precambrian rocks of the Copper Mountain, Wyoming area. This method is compared with a convergentk-means analysis that utilizes available geologic knowledge. Both methods identify four clusters. Three of the clusters represent background values for the Precambrian rocks of the area, and the fourth represents outliers (anomalously high²¹⁴Bi). A segmentation of the data corresponding to geologic reality as interpreted by other methods has been achieved by perceptive quantitative analysis of aerial radiometric data. The techniques employed are composites of classical clustering methods designed to handle the special problems presented by large data sets.     

Tetroon flights across a ridge

Two series of tetroon flights across a long reasonably two-dimensional ridge with crest elevation of about 100 m were performed during the summers of 1977 and 1978. All of the tetroons were ballasted to float at an equilibrium level of 100 m above the ground. The first series was released in the daytime. Large instabilities were observed during windy neutral atmospheric conditions as well as on days with strong thermal convection. Under more stable conditions the air flow was observed to reflect the structure of the terrain more closely. The second series of tetroons was released on clear nights when stable atmospheric conditions prevailed. The natural wavelengths for these flights were approximately the same as the total base width of the ridge (~1.5 km). Some implications for pollutant dispersion calculations in areas of complex terrain are discussed.     

Magma batches in the Timber Mountain magmatic system, Southwestern Nevada Volcanic Field, Nevada, USA

The common occurrence of compositionally and mineralogically zoned ash flow sheets, such as those of the Timber Mountain Group, provides evidence that the source magma bodies were chemically and thermally zoned. The Rainier Mesa and Ammonia Tanks tuffs of the Timber Mountain Group are both large volume (1200 and 900 km³, respectively) chemically zoned (57–78 wt.% SiO₂) ash flow sheets. Evidence of distinct magma batches in the Timber Mountain system are based on: (1) major- and trace-element variations of whole pumice fragments; (2) major-element variations in phenocrysts; (3) major-element variations in glass matrix; and (4) emplacement temperatures calculated from Fe-Ti oxides and feldspars. There are three distinct groups of pumice fragments in the Rainier Mesa Tuff: a low-silica group and two high-silica groups (a low-Th and a high-Th group). These groups cannot be related by crystal fractionation. The low-silica portion of the Rainier Mesa Tuff is distinct from the low-silica portion of the overlying Ammonia Tanks Tuff, even though the age difference is less than 200,000 years. Three distinct groups occur in the Ammonia Tanks Tuff: a low-silica, intermediate-silica and a high-silica group. Part of the high-silica group may be due to mixing of the two high-silica Rainier Mesa groups. The intermediate-silica group may be due to mixing of the low- and high-silica Ammonia Tanks groups. Three distinct emplacement temperatures occur in the Rainier Mesa Tuff (869, 804, 723 °C) that correspond to the low-silica, high-Th and low-Th magma batches, respectively. These temperature differences could not have been maintained for any length of time in the magma chamber (cf. Turner, J.S., Campbell, I.H., 1986. Convection and mixing in magma chambers. Earth-Sci. Rev. 23, 255–352; Martin, D., Griffiths, R.W., Campbell, I.H., 1987. Compositional and thermal convection in magma chambers. Contrib. Mineral. Petrol. 96, 465–475) and therefore eruption must have occurred soon after emplacement of the magma batches into the chamber. Emplacement temperatures of the pumice fragments from the Ammonia Tanks Tuff show a continuous gradient of temperatures with composition. This continuous temperature gradient is consistent with the model of storage of magma batches in the Ammonia Tanks group that have undergone both thermal and chemical diffusion.     

Modern saltmarsh diatom distributions of the Outer Banks, North Carolina, and the development of a transfer function for high resolution reconstructions of sea level

We collected modern diatom samples from Currituck Barrier Island, Oregon Inlet and Pea Island marshes, Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA, which have different salinity regimes due to their varying distances from a major barrier island inlet. Multivariate analyses separate the saltmarsh diatom assemblages into distinct elevational zones, dominated by differing abundances of polyhalobous, mesohalobous and oligohalobous taxa, suggesting that the distribution of saltmarsh diatoms is a direct function of elevation, with the most important controlling factors being the duration and frequency of subaerial exposure.We developed the first diatom-based transfer function for the east coast of North America to reconstruct former sea levels based upon the relationship between diatom assemblage and elevation. Results imply that this is possible to a precision of ±0.08 m, superior to most similar studies from temperate, mid-latitude environments. The transfer function is used to construct a relative sea-level curve from fossil assemblages from Salvo, North Carolina. These results suggest a sea-level rise of 0.7 m over the last c. 150 years, at an average of c. 3.7 mm year⁻¹. This is consistent with existing sea-level data, and illustrates the utility of the transfer function approach.     

Architecture and emplacement of the Nebo–Babel gabbronorite-hosted magmatic Ni–Cu–PGE sulphide deposit,West Musgrave,Western Australia

The Nebo–Babel Ni–Cu–platinum-group element (PGE) sulphide deposit in the West Musgrave Block, Western Australia, is the largest nickel sulphide discovery in the last 10 years. The deposit is hosted within a concentrically zoned, olivine-free, tube-like (chonolithic), gabbronorite intrusion associated with the, approximately, 1,078-Ma Giles Complex-layered intrusions in the Warakurna large igneous province. Emplaced into sulphide-free amphibolite facies orthogneiss, the fault-offset Nebo–Babel chonolith extends for 5 km and has a cross-section of 1 × 0.5 km. Igneous mineralogy, fabrics, and textures are well preserved. The lithostratigraphy includes variably textured leucogabbronorites (VLGN) that form an outer shell around mineralised gabbronorite (MGN), with barren gabbronorite (BGN) and oxide–apatite gabbronorite (OAGN) in the middle and lower parts of the chonolith. Mineral and whole-rock geochemistry indicate that the units become progressively evolved in the order: VLGN, MGN, BGN, and OAGN, and that incompatible trace-element concentrations increase downwards within the MGN and BGN. The mineralisation, which is confined to the early, more primitive units (VLGN and MGN), occurs as massive sulphide breccias and stringers and as disseminated gabbronorite-hosted sulphides. The massive sulphides were emplaced late in the intrusive sequence, have different PGE chemistry and Cu tenor to the disseminated sulphides, and have undergone sulphide fractionation. The distribution of disseminated sulphides, which are primary magmatic in origin, is related to chonolith geometry and magma flow regimes, rather than to gravitational settling. Sulfur-bearing country rocks are absent in the Nebo–Babel deposit area, and thus, local crustal S addition was unlikely to have been the major mechanism in achieving sulphide immiscibility. The Nebo–Babel intrusion is part of an originally continuous magma chonolith with multiple and related magma pulses. The parental magma was medium- to low-K tholeiite with 8–9 wt% MgO. The initial magma pulse (VLGN), the most primitive and sulphide saturated, was probably emplaced along a linear weakness in the country rock. After crystallisation of VLGN, marginally more fractionated, sulphide-saturated magma was injected through the thermally insulated core of the conduit, forming the MGN. Successive pulse(s) of more fractionated magma (BGN) were emplaced in the core of the intrusion. After magma flow ceased, closed system crystal fractionation produced consistent mineral and chemical fractionation trends within BGN and OAGN. After crystallisation, the intrusion was overturned and then offset by the Jameson Fault resulting in the apparent ‘reverse’ chemical and mineral trends in Nebo–Babel.