Evaluation of policy options for the live reef food fish trade in the province of Palawan,Western Philippines

The live reef food fish (LRFF) trade has an estimated annual retail value of US$1 billion in the Asia-Pacific region and at least US$30 million in the Philippines. Palawan Province is the trade's center accounting for as much as 55% of the commodity's total export. Concern about the LRFF trade has caused the Palawan Provincial government to take action to regulate the trade. Four key policy options to address the short-term policy objective of developing a sustainable LRFF industry through the reduction of threats associated with destructive fishing and overfishing were proposed. These four policy options and associated analyses were presented to stakeholders at three separate policy consultations. The stakeholders reached a consensus that a regulated LRFF trade was the most sensible option. As a result, the Provincial Government of Palawan took action to enact “The Palawan Live Reef Fish Ordinance of 2006”, which provides for the sustainable and integrated regulation of the LRFF industry. This provincial ordinance will assist in crafting a national policy for the LRFF trade and may also be useful in revising the 1998 Philippine Fisheries Code. The key challenge is how to translate the ordinance provisions into effective on-the-ground actions.     

On the vertical distribution of

The aim of this paper is to present an analytical expression for the vertical distribution of the correlation between the horizontal ( ) and vertical ( ) wave velocity components. This quantity, , which appears explicitly in the time-averaged momentum balance equations, has been shown to play an important role in the vertical distribution of wave-induced currents.The proposed formulation for is based on an identity that relates the effective (wave) shear stress to the effective (wave) normal stresses ( ² and ²) and to the vorticity of the oscillatory flow gw. This general expression has been applied to simplified situations and has been shown to degenerate into other existing formulations with comparable simplifying assumptions, viz. irrotational waves in shallow water over an arbitrary bottom topography and breaking waves over a horizontal bottom.The model has also been applied to the case of waves interacting with a depth-varying current over a horizontal bottom, in which preliminary results have been obtained for a simplified situation invoking linear (small-amplitude) wave theory.     

Palaeokarst and rauhwacke development,mountain uplift and subaerial sliding of tectonic sheets (northern Sierra de los Filabres,Betic Cordilleras,Spain)

The rauhwackes near Serón in the northern Sierra de los Filabres (S Spain), previously considered as true tectonic breccias, are reinterpreted on the basis of sedimentological, geomorphological and geometrical evidence as subaerial or nearly subaerial sedimentary deposits. Channel fills, parallel lamination, cross-lamination, graded bedding, sedimentary clastic dykes and other sedimentary structures and features occur in the rauhwacke body. These sedimentary rocks correspond to continental deposits of alluvial and karstic origin deposited over a karstified erosional surface of Nevado–Filabride marbles. Although no fossils have been found in the rauhwackes, a Tortonian age for these rocks is suggested on the basis of structural arguments and lithostratigraphic data from the nearby Almanzora basin. The rauhwackes were buried by slabs of Alpujarride rocks that gravitationally slid over them during the uplifting of the Sierra de los Filabres.     

Mechanical Behavior of Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation Cemented Sand

Geotechnical and Geological Engineering - New sustainable ground improvement techniques have been recently required for applications in onshore and offshore geotechnical structures. The...     

Variability of extreme precipitation in coastal river basins of the southern mexican Pacific region

Extreme wet and dry years (± 1 standard deviation, respectively), as well as the top 95 percentile (P95) of daily precipitation events, derived from tropical cyclone (TC) and nontropical cyclone (NTC) rainfall, were analyzed in coastal river basins in Southern Oaxaca, Mexico (Río Verde, Río Tehuantepec, and the Southern Coast). The study is based on daily precipitation records from 47 quality-controlled stations for the 1961 to 1990 period and TC data for the Eastern Tropical Pacific (EPAC). The aim of this study was to evaluate extreme (dry and wet) trends in the annual contribution of daily P95 precipitation events and to determine the relationship of summer precipitation with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacifical Decadal Oscillation (PDO). A regionalization based on a rotated principal component analysis (PCA) was used to produce four precipitation regions in the coastal river basins. A significant negative correlation (significance at the 95% level) was only found with ONI in rainfall Region 3, nearest to the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Wet years, mainly linked to TC-derived P95 precipitation events, were associated with SST anomalies (≥?0.6°C) similar to weak La Niña and Neutral cool conditions, while dry years were associated with SST positive anomalies similar to Neutral warm conditions (≤?0.5°C). The largest contribution of extreme P95 precipitation derived from TCs to the annual precipitation was observed in Region 3. A significant upward trend in the contribution of TC-derived precipitation to the annual precipitation was found only in Region 1, low Río Verde.     

Barium-rich fluids and melts in a subduction environment (La Corea and Sierra del Convento mélanges,eastern Cuba)

Whole-rock compositions of muscovite-bearing amphibolite, trondhjemite, pegmatite and quartz-muscovite rocks from Sierra del Convento and La Corea mélanges (eastern Cuba), as well as mineralogy, record complex circulation of Ba-rich fluids and melts in the subduction environment. Partial melting of fluid-fluxed, MORB-derived amphibolite produced trondhjemite magmas that crystallized at depth, in some cases evolving into pegmatites. Qtz-Ms rocks probably crystallized from primary fluids derived from subducted sediments. All these rocks have elevated concentrations of large-ion lithophile elements, especially Ba (up to 11,810 ppm), presumably released from slab sediments by fluids and/or melts. Fluid–rock interaction produced crystallization of phengite in parental amphibolites. The phengite crystallized in all types of rocks is rich in Ba, with concentric zoning, characterized by Ba-rich cores and Ba-poor rims, indicating a compatible behaviour of Ba in the studied systems. Zoning in phengite is governed primarily by the celadonite (tschermak) exchange vector ((Mg,Fe)Si-(Al)_-2), with more moderate contributions of the celsian (BaAl-(KSi)_-1) and paragonite (NaK_-1) exchange vectors. Late remobilization of Ba at relatively low temperature formed retrograde celsian. The compatible behaviour of Ba in the studied rocks strengthens the importance of the stability of phengite for the transfer of LIL elements from the subduction to the volcanic arc environments.