A stochastic model describing the impact of daily rainfall depth distribution on the soil water balance

Simplified, vertically-averaged soil moisture models have been widely used to describe and study eco-hydrological processes in water-limited ecosystems. The principal aim of these models is to understand how the main physical and biological processes linking soil, vegetation, and climate impact on the statistical properties of soil moisture. A key component of these models is the stochastic nature of daily rainfall, which is mathematically described as a compound Poisson process with daily rainfall amounts drawn from an exponential distribution. Since measurements show that the exponential distribution is often not the best candidate to fit daily rainfall, we compare the soil moisture probability density functions obtained from a soil water balance model with daily rainfall depths assumed to be distributed as exponential, mixed-exponential, and gamma. This model with different daily rainfall distributions is applied to a catchment in New South Wales, Australia, in order to show that the estimation of the seasonal statistics of soil moisture might be improved when using the distribution that better fits daily rainfall data. This study also shows that the choice of the daily rainfall distributions might considerably affect the estimation of vegetation water-stress, leakage and runoff occurrence, and the whole water balance.     

Australian cities: the challenge of the 1980s

The growth of Australian cities was the most prominent aspect of Australia's development during the boom years from the end of World War Two. As the nation pursued a policy of import substitution, the economies of the cities became firmly based on manufacturing. Mass production methods and mass consumption dictated the pattern of urban development. Such growth was premissed on very special conditions that enabled the system to accommodate the fluctuations that inevitably occur within the capitalist mode of production in general, and mass production methods in particular. A nation which had always been highly urbanised and open to international influences became even more deeply enmeshed in the fluctuating fortunes of the global economy. As the special factors supporting the postwar prosperity broke down through the 1970s and 1980s, Australian cities have faced a number of critical problems of adapting to the new environment.     

A diffusion battery without end-pieces or connecting tubing

Summary An account is given of a new instrument for determining the apparent diffusion coefficient of aerosols using the dynamic method in which a diffusion battery without end-pieces or connecting tubing is built into the fog-tube of a photo-electric condensation nucleus counter.The elimination of the end-pieces and connecting tubings removes any end-effect and diffusion losses in these parts of the diffusion batteries used hitherto and reduces the volume of the diffusion apparatus to that of its channels, thus minimising the lag in the response of the battery.A preliminary application of the instrument in room air confirmed previous findings that the apparent diffusion coefficient as determined by the dynamic method depends on the air-flow used.

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Zusammenfassung Es wird ein neues Instrument für die Bestimmung des virtuellen Diffusionskoeffizienten eines Aerosols mittels der dynamischen Methode beschrieben, bei welchem eine Diffusionsbatterie ohne Endstücke oder Verbindungsröhren direkt in das Nebelrohr eines photoelektrischen Kondensations-Kernzählers eingebaut ist.Die Beseitigung der Endstücke und Verbindungsröhren schliesst jeglichen «Endeffekt» und Diffusionsverluste in diesen Teilen der bisher benützten Diffusionsbatterien aus und reduziert das Volumen des Diffusionsapparates auf jenes seiner Kanäle, wodurch die zur Anwendung der dynamischen Methode erforderliche Zeit wesentlich verkürzt wird.Eine vorläufige Anwendung des Instrumentes in Laboratoriumluft bestätigt frühere Feststellungen, dass der virtuelle diffusionskoeffizient, wie er mittels der dynamischen Methode erhalten wird, von der benützten Luftstromgeschwindigkeit abhängt.

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The research reported in this article has been sponsored and supported in part by the Geophysics Research Directorate of the Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Air Research and Development Command, United States Air Force, under Contract No. AF 61(052)-26 and Supplemental Agreement No. 1, through the European Office, ARDC in Brussels.     

A stochastic model for daily subsurface CO2 concentration and related soil respiration

Near-surface soil CO₂ gas-phase concentration (C) and concomitant incident rainfall (P_i) and through-fall (P_t) depths were collected at different locations in a temperate pine forest every 30 min during the 2005 and 2006 growing seasons (and then averaged to the daily timescale). At the daily scale, C temporal variations were well described by a sequence of monotonically decreasing functions interrupted by large positive jumps induced by rainfall events. A stochastic model was developed to link rainfall statistics responsible for these jumps to near-surface C dynamics. The model accounted for the effect of daily rainfall variability, both in terms of timing and amount of water, and permitted an analytical derivation of the C probability density function (pdf) using the parameters of the rainfall pdf. Given the observed positive correlation between daily C and soil CO₂ fluxes to the atmosphere (F_s), the effects of various rainfall regimes on the statistics of F_s can be deduced from the behavior of C under different climatic conditions. The predictions from this analytical model are consistent with flux measurements reported in manipulative experiments that varied rainfall amount and frequency.     

Age and provenance of early Precambrian metasedimentary rocks in the Lapland–Kola Belt, Russia: evidence from Pb and Nd isotopic data

²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁶Pb ages are presented for detrital zircons (Laser Ablation Microprobe ICP‐MS) and whole‐rock Nd isotopic determinations (TIMS) from samples of Neoarchean and Palaeoproterozoic metasedimentary rocks from the Umba granulite terrane and the Keivy domain of the Central Kola composite terrane, Kola Peninsula, north‐western Russia. Three are samples of rocks from the Umba granulite terrane that were deposited ≈ 2.20–1.90 Ga; they contain Archaean detritus, much of it older than 3.0 Gyr, as well as abundant 2.20–1.95‐Gyr‐old material. Deposition may have occurred on the margin of an Archaean craton with an exposed Palaeoproterozoic magmatic arc source, possibly during orogenesis. Two samples from the Keivy domain have remarkably similar, dominantly Archaean detrital zircon age spectra. One was deposited pre‐2.4 Ga, whereas the other was probably deposited post‐2.01 Ga. Both had similar sources, compatible with the proximal country rocks, and possible shallow‐water (?) cratonic margin depositional settings.     

New Horizons 2005

Eve Daly, Colin Brown and Peter Maguire report on a BGA meeting in Galway where British and Irish geophysics postgraduate students got together to present and discuss their work.     

Energetic Electrons as a Field Line Topology Tracer in the High Latitude Boundary/CUSP Region: Cluster Rapid Observations

Energetic electrons (e.g., 50 keV) travel along field lines with a high speed of around 20 R_Es⁻¹. These swift electrons trace out field lines in the magnetosphere in a rather short time, and therefore can provide nearly instantaneous information about the changes in the field configuration in regions of geospace. The energetic electrons in the high latitude boundary regions (including the cusp) have been examined in detail by using Cluster/RAPID data for four consecutive high latitude/cusp crossings between 16 March and 19 March 2001. Energetic electrons with high and stable fluxes were observed in the time interval when the IMF had a predominately positive B_z component. These electrons appeared to be associated with a lower plasma density exhibiting no obvious tailward plasma flow (<20 keV). On the other hand, no electrons or only spike-like electron events have been observed in the cusp region during southward IMF. At that time, the plasma density was as high as that in the magnetosheath and was associated with a clear tailward flow. The fact that no stable energetic electron fluxes were observed during southward IMF indicates that the cusp has an open field line geometry. The observations indicate that both the South and North high latitude magnetospheric boundary regions (including both North and South cusp) can be energetic particle trapping regions. The energetic electron observations provide new ways to investigate the dynamic cusp processes. Finally, trajectory tracing of test particles has been performed using the Tsyganenko 96 model; this demonstrates that energetic particles (both ions and electrons) may be indeed trapped in the high latitude magnetosphere.