Système hydrogéologique d'un massif minier ultrabasique de Nouvelle-Calédonie

Ultramafic rocks outcrop over more than one third of New Caledonia's main island. Under tropical conditions, thick lateritic mantles with nickel concentrations developed on these rocks by geochemical weathering. Groundwater in ultramafic mined massifs represents a valuable resource, but also a severe constrain for mining engineering. Previous works describe several water tables in the various layers of the weathering mantle. From a hydrologic study of the Tiebaghi massif, the hydraulic continuity across the weathering layers down to the bedrock is proposed. To cite this article: J.-L. Join et al., C. R. Geoscience 337 (2005).     

New approach in the kinematic k−2 source model for generating physical slip velocity functions

In an attempt to improve the ground motion modelling, the characteristics of the slip velocity functions (SVF) generated using the kinematic k ⁻² source are investigated and compared to the dynamic solutions proposed in the literature. Several numerical simulations were performed to test the influence of the model parameters on the SVF modelling. Overall, the shapes of SVF are very complex and exhibit a large variability in time and space. However, we found out that the mean SVF is a simple boxcar with duration equal to the largest rise time value. In the areas of weak slip, the SVFs are characterized by the existence of negative values, whereas in large slip areas, the SVF is more impulsive. Overall, on the examples investigated, the SVFs modelled with this k ⁻² source model are different from a typical Kostrov's solution. The critical analysis of the kinematic k ⁻² source led us to identify the Fourier decomposition of the slip to be responsible for these difficulties, and to propose a new recombination scheme. It consists of adding a positive correction to the Fourier slip components. The slip is described as the sum of positive contributions at various scales. The SVFs modelled using this new scheme are greatly improved. Moreover, through several parametrical analyses performed to qualify this new approach, we show that the SVF are corrected while preserving the essential quality of the k ⁻² modelling, that is, the ω² spectral shape and C _d apparent directivity of the synthetic accelerograms. Strong ground motion modelling in the near-fault region was made and numerical ground motion parameters were compared to the empirical relationships. We show that predicted peak ground motion is consistent with near-source attenuation laws.     

Determination of the free core nutation period from tidal gravity observations of the GGP superconducting gravimeter network

This study is based on 25 long time-series of tidal gravity observations recorded with superconducting gravimeters at 20 stations belonging to the Global Geodynamic Project (GGP). We investigate the diurnal waves around the liquid core resonance, i.e., K ₁, ψ₁ and φ₁, to determine the free core nutation (FCN) period, and compare these experimental results with models of the Earth response to the tidal forces. For this purpose, it is necessary to compute corrected amplitude factors and phase differences by subtracting the ocean tide loading (OTL) effect. To determine this loading effect for each wave, it was thus necessary to interpolate the contribution of the smaller oceanic constituents from the four well determined diurnal waves, i.e., Q ₁, O ₁, P ₁, K ₁. It was done for 11 different ocean tide models: SCW80, CSR3.0, CSR4.0, FES95.2, FES99, FES02, TPXO2, ORI96, AG95, NAO99 and GOT00. The numerical results show that no model is decisively better than the others and that a mean tidal loading vector gives the most stable solution for a study of the liquid core resonance. We compared solutions based on the mean of the 11 ocean models to subsets of six models used in a previous study and five more recent ones. The calibration errors put a limit on the accuracy of our global results at the level of ± 0.1%, although the tidal factors of O ₁ and K ₁ are determined with an internal precision of close to 0.05%. The results for O ₁ more closely fit the DDW99 non-hydrostatic anelastic model than the elastic one. However, the observed tidal factors of K ₁ and ψ₁ correspond to a shift of the observed resonance with respect to this model. The MAT01 model better fits this resonance shape. From our tidal gravity data set, we computed the FCN eigenperiod. Our best estimation is 429.7 sidereal days (SD), with a 95% confidence interval of (427.3, 432.1).     

Variation and uncertainty in evaporation from a subtropical estuary: Florida Bay

Variation and uncertainty in estimated evaporation was determined over time and between two locations in Florida Bay, a subtropical estuary. Meteorological data were collected from September 2001 to August 2002 at Rabbit Key and Butternut Key within the Bay. Evaporation was estimated using both vapor flux and energy budget methods. The results were placed into a long-term context using 33 years of temperature and rainfall data collected in south Florida. Evaporation also was estimated from this long-term data using an empirical formula relating evaporation to clear sky solar radiation and air temperature. Evaporation estimates for the 12-mo period ranged from 144 to 175 cm yr⁻¹, depending on location and method, with an average of 163 cm yr⁻¹ (±9%). Monthly values ranged from 9.2 to 18.5 cm, with the highest value observed in May, corresponding with the maximum in measured net radiation. Uncertainty estimates derived from measurement errors in the data were as much as 10%, and were large enough to obscure differences in evaporation between the two sites. Differences among all estimates for any month indicate the overall uncertainty in monthly evaporation, and ranged from 9% to 26%. Over a 33-yr period (1970–2002), estimated annual evaporation from Florida Bay ranged from 148 to 181 cm yr⁻¹, with an average of 166 cm yr⁻¹. Rainfall was consistently lower in Florida Bay than evaporation, with a long-term average of 106 cm yr⁻¹. Rainfall considered alone was uncorrelated with evaporation at both monthly and annual time scales; when the seasonal variation in clear sky radiation was also taken into account both net radiation and evaporation were significantly suppressed in months with high rainfall.     

About the influence of pre-stress upon adiabatic perturbations of the Earth

Summary. In this paper we examine the influence of the state of stress in the equilibrium configuration of the Earth (i.e. the pre-stress) upon its adiabatic perturbations. The equations governing these perturbations to the first order (Woodhouse & Dahlen; Dahlen) are re-derived using a Lagrangian approach. Different expressions of the sesquilinear form associated to the elastic-gravitational operator are given. One of these provides a way to extend to hydrostatically pre-stressed solids the criterion of local stability given by Friedman & Schutz for uniformly rotating fluids. Then the propagation in the Earth of seismic wavefronts is considered. It is shown that the nature of these different wavefronts is entirely determined by the quadratic coefficients of the development of the specific internal energy variation, corresponding to isentropic evolution, with respect to the Lagrangian finite deformation tensor. Expressions for the velocities of the various waves are given as functions of incidence angle and pre-stress for orthotropic elastic material. In the particular case where the elastic parameters depend only on one coordinate of a curvilinear system and the axis of orthotropy of the material coincides with the corresponding natural base vector, the elastodynamic equations are reduced to a simple system for a displacement stress vector, using surface operators. In particular for spherical geometry, equations are obtained which generalize to orthotropic pre-stress those given by Alterman et al. and Takeuchi & Saito.