Monitoring of rapid salt weathering in the central Namib Desert using limestone blocks

Pre-weighed blocks of a Jurassic Limestone were exposed on the ground surface in the coastal Namib Desert for a period of 2 years. The environment is both salty and foggy. Some of the blocks suffered extensive disintegration, and laboratory analyses (including geochemistry, XRD and SEM) indicate that the weathered samples have a high halite (sodium chloride) content. Cycles of wetting and drying associated with the frequent fog events of the area cause cycles of halite crystallization. Rocks exposed at the surface absorb salts from the surrounding desert surface and then disintegrate, contributing to planation of the landscape.     

Late Cretaceous rift-related upwelling and melting of the Trindade starting mantle plume head beneath western Brazil

High mantle potential temperatures and local extension, associated with the Late-Cretaceous impact of the Trindade mantle plume, produced substantial widespread and voluminous magmatism around the northern half of the Paraná sedimentary basin. Our previous studies have shown that, above the central and eastern portions of the postulated impact zone where lithosphere extension is minimal, heat conducted by the plume caused large-scale melting of the more fusible parts of the subcontinental lithospheric mantle beneath the margin of the São Francisco craton and the surrounding Brasilía mobile belt. Here we combine geochemical data and field evidence from the Poxoreu Igneous Province, western Brazil to show how more intense lithospheric extension above the western margin of the postulated impact zone permitted greater upwelling and melting of the Trindade plume than further east. Laser ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar age determinations indicate that rift-related basaltic magmas of the Poxoreu Igneous Province were emplaced at ? 84 Ma. Our detailed geochemical study of the mafic magmas shows that the parental melts underwent polybaric crystal fractionation within the crust prior to final emplacement. Furthermore, some magmas (quartz-normative) appear to have assimilated upper crust whereas others (nepheline- and hypersthene-normative) appear to have been unaffected by open-system crustal magma chamber processes. Incompatible trace element ratios (e.g. chondrite-normalised La/Nb?=?1) and isotopic ratios (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr?=?0.704 and ¹⁴³Nd/¹⁴⁴Nd?=?0.51274) of the Hy-normative basalts resemble those of oceanic islands (OIB). We therefore propose that these “OIB-like” magmas were predominantly derived from convecting-mantle-source melts (i.e. Trindade mantle plume). Inverse modelling of rare-earth element (REE) abundances suggests that the initial melts were predominantly generated within the depth range of ?80–100 km, in mantle with a potential temperature of ?1500 °C.     

铜陵地区老鸦岭层状钼矿床铅同位素组成研究

安徽铜陵老鸦岭矿床中二叠系大隆组(P2d)顶部的含矿(钼矿化)黑色页岩以及附近(立新煤矿)同一层位不含矿黑色页岩的实测铅同位素组成分别为：^206Pb/^204Pb20.20～22.37,^207Pb/^204Pb15.67～15.82,^208Pb/^204Pb38.47～38.60和^206Pb/204Pb18.83～20.80,^207Pb/^204Pb15.65～15.76,^208Pb/^204Pb38．84～39．22。对137Ma的放射成因Pb进行校正后的铅同位素组成表明，含矿黑色页岩和不含矿黑色页岩均与燕山晚期火成岩无关，老鸦岭含矿黑色页岩可能具沉积成因。对沉积(约250Ma)以来的放射成因Pb进行校正后的铅同位素组成表明：不含矿黑色页岩的Pb源自上地壳，而含矿黑色页岩的Pb(因而推测其他成矿金属)可能源于上地壳物质(与不含矿黑色页岩的Pb源相似)与下地壳物质的混合。     

鄂尔多斯盆地中生代晚期以来大地热流的变化及其对生态环境格局和演变的影响

鄂尔多斯盆地的西北部、东北部和南部三个区域现今大地热流平均值分别为56．3、67．3和65．3mW／m^2，对应的生态环境格局也有明显的差异。研究表明，大地热流每增加4～5mW／m^2可使年均地表温度升高约l℃，使最低月均地表温度升高2。C以上。鄂尔多斯盆地东北部的平均大地热流比西北部高出11mW／m^2，东北部年均地表温度可能比西北部高出2～3℃，其最低月均地表温度可能比西北部高出4～6℃。西北部的大地热流平均值已经低于维持地表生态系统延续所需大地热流的临界值(57mW／m^2)，其自然生态系统整体上已经处于脆弱境地；东北部和南部的大地热流均大于57mW／m^2，自然生态系统均尚较稳健。东北部的沙漠化可能是风沙侵入的结果，其生态应该是可以恢复的。整个西北部作为一个整体看，72万年以前大地热流就已衰减到临界值以下，区域生态系统渐趋脆弱，开始整体上向荒漠化演变。     

Velocity field in the spiral-wave pattern observed in rotating shallow-water experiments

The paper presents the first quantitative results of a laboratory study of the velocity field in a two-arm spiral-wave pattern generated in a steady-state fashion by a hydrodynamical instability in a differentially rotating, thin layer of liquid. The liquid layer has a free surface, and the rotational profile includes an interval where the velocity drops abruptly, as in the gaseous disks of spiral galaxies. The properties of anticyclonic vortices observed between the arms of this pattern at the corotation radius are considered.     

Study of statistically correcting model CMAQ-MOS for forecasting regional air quality

Based on analysis of the air pollution observational data at 8 observation sites in Beijing including outer suburbs during the period from September 2004 to March 2005, this paper reveals synchronal and in-phase characteristics in the spatial and temporal variation of air pollutants on a city-proper scale at deferent sites; describes seasonal differences of the pollutant emission influence between the heating and non-heating periods, also significantly local differences of the pollutant emission influence between the urban district and outer suburbs, i.e. the spatial and temporal distribution of air pollutant is closely related with that of the pollutant emission intensity. This study shows that due to complexity of the spatial and temporal distribution of pollution emission sources, the new generation Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model developed by the EPA of USA produced forecasts, as other models did, with a systematic error of significantly lower than observations, albeit the model has better capability than previous models had in predicting the spatial distribution and variation tendency of multi-sort pollutants. The reason might be that the CMAQ adopts average amount of pollutant emission inventory, so that the model is difficult to objectively and finely describe the distribution and variation of pollution emission sources intensity on different spatial and temporal scales in the areas, in which the pollution is to be forecast. In order to correct the systematic prediction error resulting from the average pollutant emission inventory in CMAQ, this study proposes a new way of combining dynamics and statistics and establishes a statistically correcting model CMAQ-MOS for forecasts of regional air quality by utilizing the relationship of CMAQ outputs with corresponding observations, and tests the forecast capability. The investigation of experiments presents that CMAQ-MOS reduces the systematic errors of CMAQ because of the uncertainty of pollution emission inventory and improves the forecast level of air quality. Also this work employed a way of combining point and area forecasting, i.e. taking the products of CMAQ for a center site to forecast air pollution for other sites in vicinity with the scheme of model products "reanalysis" and average over the "area".