Anthropogenic relief changes in a long-lasting lignite mining area (‘Ville’, Germany) derived from historic maps and digital elevation models

Humans constitute one of the main geomorphological agents in modern times. As an example, post-mining regions represent a typical landscape of the Anthropocene. Strong relief modifications are particularly obvious with open pit mining. However, many existing mining areas are lacking detailed pre-mining information for the quantification of anthropogenic relief changes, which is a considerable challenge in regions with historic mining activities. Here, the Ville (Rhenish lignite district, Germany) is used to quantify surface mining induced relief changes in one of the oldest and currently largest lignite districts in Europe. Historical maps from first geodetic mapping in 1893 enabled construction of a historic digital elevation model to quantify the relief changes in comparison to elevation data from 2000 and 2015. The vertical accuracy of the historic data is remarkably high, with relief differences < 2 m in areas not affected by mining. In total, 49.2% of the investigated area (184 km²) shows a relief deficit and 14.5% has positive relief differences. Absolute changes account for more than 80 m heightening (dumpsites of overburden) and lowering of the natural relief (pits). Besides these altitudinal changes, overall steeper slopes are significant for the new topography, but levelling exists likewise. The spatial variabilities are discussed in the context of the regional geology and the mining techniques. Undoubtedly, such large-scale anthropogenic relief changes persist for a very long time and will last as a human legacy far into the future. Only the detailed reconstruction of the pre-mining relief offers the ability to clarify the dimension of humans as geomorphological agents and to understand landscape perception. Due to the fact that the impact of open pit mining has such a large vertical and horizontal extension, their consideration as part of anthropogeomorphology can significantly contribute to support future Critical Zone research in the Anthropocene.     

Improved Representation of Land-surface Heterogeneity in a Non-hydrostatic Numerical Weather Prediction Model

This study focuses on the relevance of accurate surface parameters, in particular soil moisture, and of parameterizations for heterogeneous land surfaces, for the prediction of sensible and latent heat fluxes by a mesoscale weather forecast model with horizontal grid resolution of 7 km. The analysis is based on model integrations for a 30-day period, which are compared both to flux measurements obtained from the LITFASS-2003 field experiment and to high-resolution-model (1-km grid spacing) results. At first, the relevance of improved parameter sets and input data compared to usual operational practice for an accurate prediction of near-surface fluxes is shown and discussed. It is demonstrated that an observation-based land-surface assimilation scheme leads to an improved soil moisture analysis, which is shown to be essential for the realistic simulation of surface fluxes. Secondly, the implementation of two efficient parameterization strategies for subgrid-scale variability of the surface, the mosaic and the tile approach, is presented. Using these methods, the simulations are in better agreement with measurements than simulations with simple aggregation methods that use effective surface parameters. Integrations with the mosaic approach reproduce high resolution simulations very well and more accurately than simulations with the tile method. Finally, the high resolution simulations are analyzed to justify and discuss the approximations underlying both methods.     

Intermittent chaos in nonlinear wave–wave interactions in space plasmas

There is increasing observational evidence of nonlinear wave–wave interactions in space and astrophysical plasmas. We first review a number of theoretical models of nonlinear wave–wave interactions which our group has developed in the past years. We next describe a nonlinear three-mode truncated model of Alfvén waves, involving resonant interactions of one linearly unstable mode and two linearly damped modes. We construct a bifurcation diagram for this three-wave model and investigate the phenomenon of intermittent chaos. The theoretical results presented in this paper can improve our understanding of intermittent time series frequently observed in space and astrophysical plasmas.     

SKA studies of atomic gas in the interstellar medium of the Milky Way

The λ21-cm line is an excellent tracer of the neutral interstellar medium (ISM). Atomic hydrogen (HI) is found in a variety of environments, from dense clouds to the diffuse galactic halo, and its filling factor is often high, so structures with sizes over a wide range of scales can be mapped with this line. Galactic HI surveys show small scale structure that is consistent with a spectrum of interstellar turbulence similar to what is measured in the ionized component of the ISM. But our sampling of the spectrum of this turbulence is limited to a few size ranges, based on the sensitivities of existing telescopes for emission and absorption studies. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) will provide the sensitivity and resolution to give continuous coverage of the turbulence spectrum from hundreds of parsecs to a few tens of Astronomical Units. By showing us the full spectrum of interstellar turbulence in the neutral medium, the physical processes driving hydrodynamic and magneto-hydrodynamic instabilities will be illuminated. Ultimately the turbulence governs the passage of the gas from the warm phases of the medium to the cold phases where gravitational collapse can initiate star formation. The SKA is needed to fill in this missing link in the cycle of star formation and chemical enrichment that drives the evolution of galaxies. In the Milky Way halo, SKA mapping of HI high velocity clouds will trace the structure and motion of both the warm phase gas and the hot medium. The interaction between these two phases of halo gas is a great unsolved problem in Galactic astrophysics.     

Semi-analytic simulations of galactic winds: volume filling factor, ejection of metals and parameter study

We present a semi-analytic treatment of galactic winds within high-resolution, large-scale cosmological N -body simulations of a Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) universe. The evolution of winds is investigated by following the expansion of supernova-driven superbubbles around the several hundred thousand galaxies that form in an approximately spherical region of space with diameter 52  h ⁻¹ Mpc and mean density close to the mean density of the universe. We focus our attention on the impact of winds on the diffuse intergalactic medium. Initial conditions for mass loss at the base of winds are taken from Shu, Mo & Mao. Results are presented for the volume filling factor and the mass fraction of the intergalactic medium (IGM) affected by winds, and their dependence on the model parameters is carefully investigated. The mass-loading efficiency of bubbles is a key factor to determine the evolution of winds and their global impact on the IGM: the higher the mass loading, the later the IGM is enriched with metals. Galaxies with 10⁹ < M _★ < 10¹⁰ M_⊙ are responsible for most of the metals ejected into the IGM at   z = 3  , while galaxies with   M _★ < 10⁹ M_⊙   give a non-negligible contribution only at higher redshifts, when larger galaxies have not yet assembled. We find a higher mean IGM metallicity than Lyα forest observations suggest, and we argue that the discrepancy may be explained by the high temperatures of a large fraction of the metals in winds, which may not leave detectable imprints in absorption in the Lyα forest.     

Formation of hard very high energy gamma-ray spectra of blazars due to internal photon–photon absorption

The energy spectra of TeV gamma-rays from blazars, after being corrected for intergalatic absorption in the extragalactic background light (EBL), appear unusually hard, a fact that poses challenges to the conventional models of particle acceleration in TeV blazars and/or to the EBL models. In this paper, we show that the internal absorption of gamma-rays caused by interactions with dense narrow-band radiation fields in the vicinity of compact gamma-ray production regions can lead to the formation of gamma-ray spectra of an almost arbitrary hardness. This allows significant relaxation of the current tight constraints on particle acceleration and radiation models, although at the expense of enhanced requirements to the available non-thermal energy budget. The latter, however, is not a critical issue, as long as it can be largely compensated by the Doppler boosting, assuming large (>10) Doppler factors of the relativistically moving gamma-ray production regions. The suggested scenario of formation of hard gamma-ray spectra predicts detectable synchrotron radiation of secondary electron–positron pairs which might require a revision of the current 'standard paradigm' of spectral energy distributions of gamma-ray blazars. If the primary gamma-rays are of hadronic origin related to pp or   p γ  interactions, the 'internal gamma-ray absorption' model predicts neutrino fluxes close to the detection threshold of the next generation high-energy neutrino detectors.     

An analytic method to determine future close approaches between satellites

The calculation of the times of future close approaches between pairs of satellites has been formulated using analytical techniques. The resulting analytical equations are solved using numerical iterative techniques similar to solving Kepler's equation. A solution is obtained in a very efficient manner by use of a series of prefilters which eliminate many cases from further consideration. The method is valid for all values of eccentricities less than one and all relative geometries between the two orbits. This approach produces results in a very efficient and reliable manner.     

Ergebnisse neuer Spezialforschungen in den deutschen Alpen

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