Present and future prolonged drought impacts on a large temperate embayment: Port Phillip Bay, Australia

Observations of a large temperate embayment in Victoria, Australia, reveal a sustained climatic shift that occurred in response to a prolonged drought in the region during 1997–2009. Historically, the bay is fresher than the ocean with fresh outflow to the sea. However, the drought has caused substantially elevated salinity and temperatures above adjacent oceanic waters. The bay's capacity to dilute and flush waste discharges to the ocean was also changed. Observed conditions have been numerically modelled with hydrodynamic and coupled lagrangian particle dispersion models to test differences in dispersion and exchange during historically fresher conditions and hypersaline bay scenarios. Further scenarios were tested for projected climate conditions which were similar to the recent drought responses in the bay. The models identified the effects on the circulation of the climatic shift including regions of increased vulnerability to extreme salinity in the bay, with some existing discharges concentrating in these regions of heightened vulnerability. Absolute salinity in the bay could reach critical levels of over 38?g?kg^?1, in places, which may compromise bay ecology.     

The 3D facies architecture and petrophysical properties of hyaloclastite delta deposits: An integrated photogrammetry and petrophysical study from southern Iceland

Hyaloclastites develop where lava interacts with water resulting in deposits that have a unique and often complex range of petrophysical properties. A combination of eruptive style and emplacement environment dictates the size, geometry and distribution of different hyaloclastite facies and their associated primary physical properties such as porosity, permeability and velocity. To date, links between the 3D facies variability within these systems and their petrophysical properties remain poorly understood. Hjörleifshöfði in southern Iceland presents an exceptional outcrop exposure of an emergent hyaloclastite sequence >1 km wide by >200 m high and enables an investigation of the distribution of the hyaloclastite deposits at seismic scale. Within this study we present a photogrammetry-based 3D model from part of this recent hyaloclastite delta and incorporate previous work by Watton et al. (Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 2013, 250, 19) to undertake detailed facies interpretation and quantification. Laboratory petrophysical analyses were performed on 34 core plugs cut from key field facies samples, including P- and S-wave velocity, density, porosity and permeability at both ambient and confining pressure. Integration of the 3D model with the petrophysical data has enabled the production of pseudo-wireline logs and property distribution maps which demonstrate the variability of physical properties within hyaloclastite sequences at outcrop to seismic scale. Through comparison of our data with examples of older buried hyaloclastite sequences we demonstrate that the wide-ranging properties of young hyaloclastites become highly uniform in older sequences making their identification by remote geophysical methods for similar facies variations more challenging. Our study provides an improved understanding of the petrophysical property distribution within hyaloclastite sequences and forms a valuable step towards improving the understanding of similar subsurface sequences and their implications for imaging and fluid flow.     

New measurement of melting and thermal conductivity of iron close to outer core conditions

The amount of literature on both melting and thermal conductivity of iron at Earth’s core conditions is overwhelming and the discrepancies are very large.There is a broad range of experimental techniques each of which is flawed to a certain degree,which may explain the discrepancy.In this report,we present new data using a different method for determining the phase behavior and resistivity of iron in the laser-heated diamond cell by measuring the electrical resistance of both solid and liquid iron wires.The experiment avoids some of the major flaws of previous experiments,the most important of which is the detection of the onset of melting.These measurements confirm a shallow melting curve found earlier and the resistivity data imply a trend towards low thermal conductivity in the liquid outer core.     

An Origin for Harrisitic and Granular Olivine in the Rum Layered Suite, NW Scotland: a Crystal Size Distribution Study

Dendritic crystal morphologies occur in a number of igneousrocks and are thought to originate from the rapid growth ofcrystals, yet many examples of dendritic morphologies are foundin plutonic igneous rocks where cooling rates should be low.Results from crystal size distribution (CSD) measurements onharrisitic olivines from Rum, Scotland, combined with estimatedolivine growth rates, suggest that the characteristic skeletalhopper and branching olivines of harrisitic cumulates that areup to centimetres long, may have exceptionally short crystalgrowth times (several hours to several hundreds of days). This,together with very low calculated nucleation densities for harrisiticolivine, supports the interpretation of harrisite being a disequilibriumtexture, developed in response to supersaturation of the magmain olivine. We propose that this supersaturation arose throughundercooling of thin picrite sheets emplaced along the Rum magmachamber floor, beneath cooler resident magma. It is envisagedthat the picrite sheets were largely free of suspended olivinecrystals. Coupled with the olivine-enriched composition of themelt and the increasing cooling rate, this allowed homogeneousnucleation of olivine to set in at deeper undercooling and greaterolivine supersaturation than if there had been plentiful suspendedolivines to act as heterogeneous nuclei. The enhanced supersaturationcaused rapid growth of olivine once nucleation began, with skeletaland dendritic shapes. It is suggested that the observed, interlayeredsequences of harrisite and cumulus peridotite found throughoutthe Rum Layered Suite are a result of multiple episodes of harrisitecrystallization resulting from picrite emplacement that alternatedwith periods of crystal growth and accumulation in the mainbody of magma at lesser degrees of undercooling. KEY WORDS: crystal size distribution; harrisite; crystal growth rates; Rum Layered Suite