Experimental Study of the Effect of Clay and Oil Polarity on Oil Recovery by Low Salinity Water Flooding Using Glass Micromodel

Natural Resources Research - Low salinity water flooding (LSWF) has been recognized as one of the promising methods for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in sandstone reservoirs. Both the positive...     

A new model order reduction strategy adapted to nonlinear problems in earthquake engineering

Earthquake dynamic response analysis of large complex structures, especially in the presence of nonlinearities, usually turns out to be computationally expensive. In this paper, the methodical developments of a new model order reduction strategy (MOR) based on the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method as well as its practical applicability to a realistic building structure are presented. The seismic performance of the building structure, a medical complex, is to be improved by means of base isolation realized by frictional pendulum bearings. According to the new introduced MOR strategy, a set of deterministic POD modes (transformation matrix) is assembled, which is derived based on the information of parts of the response history, so‐called snapshots, of the structure under a representative earthquake excitation. Subsequently, this transformation matrix is utilized to create reduced‐order models of the structure subjected to different earthquake excitations. These sets of nonlinear low‐order representations are now solved in a fractional amount of time in comparison with the computations of the full (non‐reduced) systems. The results demonstrate accurate approximations of the physical (full) responses by means of this new MOR strategy if the probable behavior of the structure has already been captured in the POD snapshots. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Correction to: Geochemical Prospectivity Mapping Through a Feature Extraction–Selection Classification Scheme

Natural Resources Research - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake in the second part of Table 3. The data in last four rows of Table 3, i.e.,...     

An Improved Data-Driven Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Procedure for Spatial Modeling of Mineral Prospectivity: Adaption of Prediction–Area Plot and Logistic Functions

Natural Resources Research - Assigning realistic weights to targeting criteria in order to synthesize various geo-spatial datasets is one of the most important challenging tasks for mineral...     

Climatology of dust days in the Central Plateau of Iran

Natural Hazards - Dust storms are a major natural hazard to human health. Severe erosive storms in parts of the Central Plateau of Iran have made the situation very difficult for the inhabitants,...     

Assessment of Various Fuzzy c-Mean Clustering Validation Indices for Mapping Mineral Prospectivity: Combination of Multifractal Geochemical Model and Mineralization Processes

This paper describes the application of an unsupervised clustering method, fuzzy c-means (FCM), to generate mineral prospectivity models for Cu?±?Au?±?Fe mineralization in the Feizabad District of NE Iran. Various evidence layers relevant to indicators or potential controls on mineralization, including geochemical data, geological–structural maps and remote sensing data, were used. The FCM clustering approach was employed to reduce the dimensions of nine key attribute vectors derived from different exploration criteria. Multifractal inverse distance weighting interpolation coupled with factor analysis was used to generate enhanced multi-element geochemical signatures of areas with Cu?±?Au?±?Fe mineralization. The GIS-based fuzzy membership function MSLarge was used to transform values of the different evidence layers, including geological–structural controls as well as alteration, into a [0–1] range. Four FCM-based validation indices, including Bezdek’s partition coefficient (V_Pc) and partition entropy (V_Pe) indices, the Fukuyama and Sugeno (V_FS) index and the Xie and Beni (V_XB) index, were employed to derive the optimum number of clusters and subsequently generate prospectivity maps. Normalized density indices were applied for quantitative evaluation of the classes of the FCM prospectivity maps. The quantitative evaluation of the results demonstrates that the higher favorability classes derived from V_FS and V_XB (N_d?=?9.19) appear more reliable than those derived from V_Pc and V_Pe (N_d?=?6.12) in detecting existing mineral deposits and defining new zones of potential Cu?±?Au?±?Fe mineralization in the study area.

     

Development of water management strategies in southern Mesopotamia during the fourth and third millennium B.C.E.

The last two decades witnessed increasing scholarly interest in the history of water management in southern Mesopotamia. Thanks to many geoarchaeological research projects conducted throughout the central and southern Iraqi floodplains, a general understanding of the macrophases of anthropogenic manipulation of this vast hydraulic landscape has been achieved. However, current narratives mostly rely on studies at a regional scale and are based on excessively long chronological phases (often spanning a whole millennium). A finer-tuned analysis at a submillennial scale is needed to better appreciate the dynamics that led to the development of artificial canals and irrigation systems and the creation of harbours in cities and other navigation-related facilities. The Iraqi-Italian QADIS project is addressing this issue through a systematic geoarchaeological investigation in the south-eastern area of the Qadisiyah province. We aim to update the current narrative by analysing case studies involving specific periods of occupation. We performed 17 boreholes to propose a date on the functioning period of the hydraulic works in five selected archaeological sites of this region. This approach allowed us to understand changes in water management strategies in both the short and the medium term (i.e., on a scale of centuries). In this paper, we present the results for the fourth and third millennia B.C.E. This period witnessed a crucial passage from the basic exploitation of natural watercourses for irrigation and occasional navigation to the emergence of the first system of artificial canals and intraurban harbours.     

喀纳斯自然保护区地衣生态地理分布的研究

根据1985年以来实地考察的基础上,对保护区自然地理条件和地衣生长发育的地理背景进行了分析,对地衣植被的生态地理分布规律进行了初步探讨.并对地衣植被进行了生态分类.     

The effect of the Zagros Mountains on the formation and maintenance of the Iran Anticyclone using RegCM4

Iran anticyclone is one of the main features of the summer circulation over the Middle East in the middle and upper troposphere. To examine the effect of the Zagros Mountains on the formation and maintenance of the Iran anticyclone, an experiment was conducted by Regional Climate Model (RegCM4) in an area between 22°?C44°N and 35°?C70°E with a 40?km horizontal grid spacing. The NCEP/NCAR re-analysis data set were used to provide the initial and lateral boundary conditions in a control run and in a simulation run by removing the Zagros Mountains. The result reveals that the Zagros Mountains have an important effect on the formation and maintenance of the low-level cyclonic circulation and mid-level anticyclonic circulation in summer. Examining the diabatic heating shows that the elimination of the Zagros Mountains causes a significant change in the heating values and its spatial distributions over the study area. Comparing the diabatic heating terms, the vertical advection term has the main contribution to the total heating. In the absence of the Zagros Mountains, the vertical advection and the mid-troposphere anticyclonic circulation are apparently weak and, therefore, the Iran subtropical anticyclone vanishes over the west of Iran. The study indicates that the Zagros Mountains as an elevated heat source have the main impact in the formation of a thermally driven circulation over the Middle East.