Quantifying weather conditions for rock fall hazard management

Relationships between weather conditions and rock fall occurrences have been acknowledged in the past, but seldom have such relationships been quantified and published. Rock falls are frequent hazards along transportation corridors through mountainous terrain, and predicting hazardous rock fall periods based on weather conditions can enhance mitigation approaches. We investigate the relationship between weather conditions and rock fall occurrences along a railway section through the Canadian Cordillera. Monthly weather-rock fall trends suggest that the seasonal variation in rock fall frequency is associated with cycles of freezing and thawing during the winter months. The intensity of precipitation and freeze–thaw cycles for different time-windows was then compared against recorded rock falls on a case-by-case approach. We found that periods when 90% of rock falls occurred could be predicted by the 3-day antecedent precipitation and freeze–thaw cycles. Some rock falls not predicted by this 3-day antecedent approach occurred during the first two weeks of spring thaw. These findings are used to propose a rock fall hazard chart, based on readily available weather data, to aid railway operators in their decision-making regarding safe operations.     

The Development of a Web‐based Demographic Data Extraction Tool for Population Monitoring

The Internet contains a great wealth of information available online. People search engines, such as WhitePages ( http://www.whitepages.com ), gather personal‐level demographic data, including full name, address, age and household members. Requiring only a surname and locational reference (e.g. city or postal code) as the minimum search criteria, such people search engines can be perceived as a gigantic database of demographic records. The objective of this article is to outline the development of a web‐based demographic data extraction tool for population monitoring. In this study, a web prototype was developed to extract web demographics of the Vietnamese‐American (VA) population in Texas, an ethnic minority with unique migration history, from WhitePages. After post‐processing, the personal‐level demographic data represent 40.3% of 202,003 VA in Texas reported by the American Community Survey (ACS) 2009. While all enumeration strategies, the web approach included, have their own strengths and weaknesses, this study suggests an alternative approach that is complementary to existing enumeration strategies. More research and development are needed to validate the accuracy of web demographics and further enhance data navigation and extraction rules. The utilization and release of web demographics must be cautious with regards to privacy and integrity of personal identity.     

Permeability evolution in fractured coal: The roles of fracture geometry and water-content

We report laboratory experiments that investigate the permeability evolution of an anthracite coal as a function of applied stress and pore pressure at room temperature as an analog to other coal types. Experiments are conducted on 2.5 cm diameter, 2.5-5 cm long cylindrical samples at confining stresses of 6 to 12 MPa. Permeability and sorption characteristics are measured by pulse transient methods, together with axial and volumetric strains for both inert (helium (He)) and strongly adsorbing (methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂)) gases. To explore the interaction of swelling and fracture geometry we measure the evolution of mechanical and transport characteristics for three separate geometries — sample A containing multiple small embedded fractures, sample B containing a single longitudinal through-going fracture and sample C containing a single radial through-going fracture. Experiments are conducted at constant total stress and with varied pore pressure — increases in pore pressure represent concomitant (but not necessarily equivalent) decreases in effective stress. For the samples with embedded fractures (A and C) the permeability first decreases with an increase in pressure (due to swelling and fracture constraint) and then increases near-linearly (due to the over-riding influence of effective stresses). Conversely, this turnaround in permeability from decreasing to increasing with increasing pore pressure is absent in the discretely fractured sample (B) — the influence of the constraint of the connecting fracture bridges in limiting fracture deformation is importantly absent as supported by theoretical considerations. Under water saturated conditions, the initial permeabilities to all gases are nearly two orders of magnitude lower than for dry coal and permeabilities increase with increasing pore pressure for all samples and at all gas pressures. We also find that the sorption capacities and swelling strains are significantly reduced for water saturated samples — maybe identifying the lack of swelling as the primary reason for the lack of permeability decrease. Finally, we report the weakening effects of gas sorption on the strength of coal samples by loading the cores to failure. Results surprisingly show that the strength of the intact coal (sample A) is smaller than that of the axially fractured coal (sample B) due to the extended duration of exposure to CH₄ and CO₂. Average post-failure particle size for the weakest intact sample (A) is found to be three times larger than that of the sample B, based on the sieve analyses from the samples after failure. We observe that fracture network geometry and saturation state exert important influences on the permeability evolution and strength of coal under in situ conditions.     

Expected damage from displacement of slow-moving slides

Facilities such as buildings, highways, railways, bridges, dams and pipelines often are built on natural slopes where the risk of landslides is not low. The vulnerability of these facilities to slow-moving slides has sometimes been underestimated, although the velocity of some classes of slow slides is uncontrollable. More than 50 cases of slow slides were compiled from the literature for this study. Some statistics about the movement trigger(s), the methods used to measure displacement, the material forming the rupture surface and the type of the vulnerable facilities are presented. It is shown that the expected degree of damage to urban settlements, highways, bridges and dams can be related to the slide velocity or accumulating displacement. Buildings and residential houses may tolerate higher slide velocities and total displacements than other facilities before experiencing serious damage. Movements as low as 100 mm may severely damage bridges, but such low rates may cause only moderate damage to urban communities. The relationship between movement and the expected extent of damage should be useful to geotechnical engineers who deal with different classes of slow slides and will help in the choice of appropriate mitigation measures based on preliminary estimates of movement rates.     

Early-stage transformation of coastal marine governance in Vietnam?

This paper examines an apparent ‘early stage’ governance transformation in the Tam Giang Lagoon, Vietnam. In this context, the role of key policy windows for innovative governance practice is assessed (e.g., changes to Land and Fisheries Laws). Also examined is the emergence of recent initiatives to catalyze a wider shift in governance practice in the region, including the formation of co-management institutional networks that contribute to trust building and learning, and the allocation of collective territorial use rights for fisheries. While these changes are consistent with experiences in other coastal marine contexts, the paper shows that place-based and longitudinal research is necessary to explain and predict the conditions and incentives that catalyze governance shifts. Differences between a governance change and more fundamental transformation are difficult to discern using point-in-time analysis. Moreover, the results show that current declines in ecological conditions in the lagoon may not be reversed by changes to access rights or the emergence of co-management. Rather, these governance changes may simply help to stabilize the situation and buy time until other livelihood opportunities arise. Assessments of governance transformation thus need to be linked to ecological outcomes (i.e., reversing degradation of coastal marine systems, avoiding biophysical tipping points) which may not be easily identified in the short-term. Despite uncertainty, the emergence of policy windows, evidence of institutional innovation, and small-scale rights allocation experiments, all suggest important shifts in the trajectory of governance are underway in the Tam Giang Lagoon.     

The Sutter's Mill meteorite: Thermoluminescence data on thermal and metamorphic history

A piece of the Sutter's Mill meteorite, fragment SM2‐1d, has been examined using thermoluminescence techniques to better understand its thermal and metamorphic history. The sample had very weak but easily measureable natural and induced thermoluminescence (TL) signals; the signal‐to‐noise ratio was better than 10. The natural TL was restricted to the high‐temperature regions of the glow curve suggesting that the meteorite had been heated to approximately 300 °C within the time it takes for the TL signal to recover from a heating event, probably within the last 10⁵ years. It is possible that this reflects heating during release from the parent body, close passage by the Sun, or heating during atmospheric passage. Of these three options, the least likely is the first, but the other possibilities are equally likely. It seems that temperatures of approximately 300 °C reached 5 or 6 mm into the meteorite, so that all but one of the small Sutter's Mill stones have been heated. The Dhajala normalized induced TL signal for SM2‐1d is comparable to that of type 3.0 chondrites and is unlike normal CM chondrites, the class it most closely resembles, which do not have detectable TL sensitivity. The shape of the induced TL curve is comparable to other low‐type ordinary, CV, and CO chondrites, in that it has a broad hummocky structure, but does not resemble any of them in detail. This suggests that Sutter's Mill is a unique, low‐petrographic–type (3.0) chondrite.     

Lake District pioneers – the earliest footprints on land

New evidence reveals that the first arthropods colonized dry land over 450 million years ago, more than 20 million years before the appearance of vascular plants. Traditionally, it was thought that animals only emerged on to land after plants had become established, thus providing a plentiful new food source. The earliest known terrestrial trace fossils occur in volcanogenic sediments from the English Lake District. The trace fossils are thought to have been made on land by a small millipede-like creature. These rocks contain no other fossils.