Catastrophic landslides,glacier behaviour and moraine formation – A view from an active plate margin

The influence of large bedrock landslides (“rock avalanches”) on the behaviour of glaciers is incompletely recognised. Here we present an example from an active tectonic margin in South Island, New Zealand where large earthquakes leave a significant imprint on glacial records. We demonstrate that terminal moraines on the western side of the Southern Alps record both ‘ordinary’ (i.e. climate-driven) and landslide-initiated glacial advances. Following consideration of the processes involved in rock avalanche-initiated moraine construction we suggest ways of determining the nature of the advance that built the terminal moraine. The implications of these observations are important in breaking the conventional linkage of individual terminal moraines with climate forcing.     

Political ecology of tiger conservation in India: Adverse effects of banning customary practices in a protected area

Protected areas have had significant impacts on local communities primarily through the physical removal of people. In some instances, people continue to live within protected areas due to the inability of the state to evict them. The restrictions on livelihoods placed on people living inside protected areas lead to in situ displacement. We show how conservation enclosures in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve have produced a class of people that the state ‘lets die’ by banning customary practices such as fire use, hunting and harvesting of forest produce. Using longitudinal ethnographic, socio‐economic and ecological data, we demonstrate that conservation policy has alienated indigenous forest dwellers from their agricultural and forest‐land. The outcomes of conservation policy include dispossession through increased crop losses, reduced income from agriculture and forest produce, as well as a forest that is dominated by weeds due to fire suppression. The ban on hunting in particular has increased wildlife densities, which has enabled the state to accumulate revenues through the establishment of wildlife tourism facilities. All in all, centralized protected area governance has changed the relationships among people, forest and the state in a way that has produced adverse effects for both livelihoods and the ecosystem.     

Parameters of thermochemical plumes responsible for the formation of batholiths: Results of experimental simulation

Based on laboratory and theoretical modeling results, we present the thermal and hydrodynamical structure of the plume conduit during plume ascent and eruption on the Earth’s surface. The modeling results show that a mushroom-shaped plume head forms after melt eruption on the surface for 1.9 < Ka < 10. Such plumes can be responsible for the formation of large intrusive bodies, including batholiths. The results of laboratory modeling of plumes with mushroom-shaped heads are presented for Ka = 8.7 for a constant viscosity and uniform melt composition. Images of flow patterns are obtained, as well as flow velocity profiles in the melt of the conduit and the head of the model plume. Based on the laboratory modeling data, we present a scheme of a thermochemical plume with a mushroom-shaped head responsible for the formation of a large intrusive body (batholith). After plume eruption to the surface, melting occurs along the base of the massif above the plume head, resulting in a mushroom-shaped plume head. A possible mechanism for the formation of localized surface manifestations of batholiths is presented. The parameters of some plumes with mushroom-shaped heads (plumes of the Altay-Sayan and Barguzin-Vitim large-igneous provinces, and Khangai and Khentei plumes) are estimated using geological data, including age intervals and volumes of magma melts.     

Reconstruction of Holocene Environmental Changes in North-Western Pacific in Relation to Paleorecord from Shikotan Island

Doklady Earth Sciences - Results of a paleolimnological investigation of a well-dated lake sediment section from Shikotan Island (Southern Kurils) showed that from ca 8.0 to 5.8 cal ka BP a warm...     

Evolution of east coast of India — A plate tectonic reconstruction

The evolution of east coast of India sis discussed within the ambit of clearly identifiable four major tectonic stages which had a profound effect in shaping the tectonic grain of the east coast basins. The evolutionary process began with rift related crustal extension between India and Sri Lanka as a consequence of Africa-Antarctica rifting and development of Natal Basin. An arm of this rift led to initial extension in the Cauvery Basin and failed. Later, the India-West Australia rift propagated further in southwesterly direction initiating Mahanadi and Krishna-Godavari Basins. This extension was an oblique one with Nayudupeta high acting as pivot. The oblique extension followed by asymmetric seafloor spreading developed transpression along India-Sri Lanka and Antarctica junction, resulting in a NNW-SSE trending transcurrent fault along which Antarctica moved southward. Subsequently, entire east coast evolved through a more or less uniform post rift stage.     

Zirconology of dunite of the Nizhnii Tagil massif (middle Urals)

Doklady Earth Sciences -     

Nature and age of metamorphic rocks from the basement of the West Siberian megabasin (according to U-Pb isotopic dates)

The SHRIMP-II zircon U-Pb dates for metamorphic rocks from the West Siberian basement are determined for the first time. It is established that the major protolith of the metamorphic strata from the Shaimsk-Kuznetsovsk meganticlinorium is composed of sedimentary Late- and Middle-Devonian rocks (395–398 Ma). It is likely that the greywackes, whose strata were mainly formed under erosion of ophiolitic rocks, served as a substrate for the metamorphic rocks. The metamorphic transformations of the rocks occurred under conditions of greenschist and occasionally lower amphibolite facies of metamorphism during the Late Carboniferous-Early Permian period.     

Revisiting the abandoned shorelines of Lake George,Australia: a refined optical dating framework

Abandoned shorelines are an important archive used to constrain past fluctuations in the hydrological balance of lakes around the globe. Within Australia, the shorelines preserved at Lake George, NSW, form one of the few shoreline archives in the south-east of the continent that record palaeoenvironmental conditions throughout the late Quaternary. Here, we examined and tested the lake-level record for Lake George constructed in the 1970s by dating a well-preserved shoreline sequence at Luckdale, on the lake's eastern shore, using single-grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. Ten stratigraphic units were identified, and these suggest a late Quaternary highstand for Lake George in MIS 3, with fluctuations superimposed upon an overall drying trend throughout MIS 2 and into the present. At Luckdale, the highest four shoreline-associated units were deposited ~13 to 19 m above lake base and date to between 39 ± 2 and 29 ± 1 ka ago. Our study pushes back the timing of maximum lake depth at Lake George to at least MIS 3, rather than MIS 2. The overall drying trend is supported by similar reductions in both Riverine Plain fluvial activity and other associated lake-level records from within the Murray basin.     

Development of New Zealand according to the fore-arc model of crustal evolution

Analysis of New Zealand geology using a fore-arc model (Crook, 1980a) leads to the recognition of four arc terrains. The west facing Tuhua volcanic arc was active from the Late Proterozoic until the Middle or Late Cambrian. Post-subduction sediments, neritic in the east and flysch in the west, accumulated on the Tuhua accretionary prism from the Late Cambrian until the Early Devonian. Thermal equilibration, metamorphism, granitoid plutonism and penetrative deformation occurred in the Middle to Late Devonian. A small area of Permian platform cover has escaped later erosion. The east-facing Rangitata Terrain records subduction from Early Permian to late Early Cretaceous. Much of its accretionary prism consists of a submarine fan complex derived from Western Antarctica and carried sideways into the trench. The accretionary prism is thick and completely kratonized in southern New Zealand, but the thickness is more variable northwards. There the overlying Upper Cretaceous to Upper Oligocene post-subduction sequence comprises shelf sediments (implying an intermediate-thickness prism) or flysch followed by shelf sediments (implying a thin prism). During the accumulation of this sequence the Rangitata Terrain was a passive continental margin. The south-facing Jurassic-late Oligocene Northland Terrain collided with this passive margin in northern New Zealand at the end of the Oligocene, forming the Northland Allochthon. Subduction then flipped and the oldest part of the Kaikoura Terrain volcanic arc formed on the outer part of the Northland Terrain. Originally this terrain faced northeast and consumed the southwestern part of the South Fiji Basin crust, but during the Miocene the arc migrated clockwise to assume its present northeastern orientation. The fore-arc model employed here satisfactorily explains most first-order and many second-order features of New Zealand geology without requiring modification, thus attesting to the model's versatility and robustness. New Zealand provides a basis for elaborating some aspects of the model, particularly the transition from the syn- to post-subduction phases of fore-arc evolution. Combination of this study with a similar study of the southeastern Australian Paleozoic yields insights into the Phanerozoic evolution of the Australian: Pacific Plates' active margin.