The disruption of planetary satellites and the creation of planetary rings

The Voyager spacecraft discovered that small moons orbit within all four observed ring systems coincident with the discovery of narrow and dusty rings around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These moons can provide the source for new rings if they are catastrophically disrupted by a comet or large meteoroid impact. This hypothesis for ring origins provides a natural mechanism for the ongoing creation of planetary rings. While it relieves somewhat the problem of explaining the continued existence of rings with apparently short evolutionary lifetimes, it raises the problem of explaining the continued existence of small moons, and the coexistence of moons and rings at comparable locations within the Roche zones of the giant planets. This problem has been studied in some detail recently, and the present work is a review of our current understanding of the processes in satellite disruption that pertain to the creation of planetary rings and the collisional cascade of circumplanetary bodies. Significant progress has been made. Narrow rings are produced by disruption of small moons in numerical simulations, and a self-consistent model of the collisional cascade can explain present-day moon populations. Absolute timescales and initial moon populations remain uncertain due to our poor knowledge of the impactor population and uncertainties in the strength of planetary satellites. More pressing are the qualitative issues that remain to be resolved including the nature of reaccretion of the debris and the origin of Saturn's rings.     

Observations of estuarine circulation and solitary internal waves in a highly energetic tidal channel

Despite vigorous tidal and wind mixing, observations in an estuarine tidal inlet in the Wadden Sea show that during part of the tidal cycle, vertical stratification and internal waves may still develop. Acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) and conductivity, temperature, depth observations, collected over the past 6 years at 13 h anchor stations (ASs), reveal that these occur especially during slack tide, when there is little wind and large freshwater discharge from nearby Lake IJssel. Measurements with a moored ADCP show that in the same tidal phase, strong cross-channel circulation develops, which may suddenly reverse circulation sense due to passing density fronts. In the vertically stratified phase that follows after the front passage, propagating mode-one solitary internal waves are observed. These are resonantly generated during decelerating tidal ebb currents when the (shear) flow passes a transcritical regime (Froude number equal to 1). A combination of photographs (including one from the International Space Station), bathymetric data, and ASs data leads to the discovery of yet another source of internal waves in this area, produced during slackening tide by propagating lee waves that develop over a deep trench. We suggest that both the cross-channel circulation as well as the (solitary) internal waves may locally be of importance for the (re)distribution and transport of sediments and nutrients and may influence tidally averaged transports.     

Nitrate dynamics in a rural headwater catchment: measurements and modelling

This study was designed to improve our understanding of, and mechanistically simulate, nitrate (NO₃) dynamics in a steep 9.8 ha rural headwater catchment, including its production in soil and delivery to a stream via surface and subsurface processes. A two‐dimensional modelling approach was evaluated for (1) integrating these processes at a hillslope scale annually and within storms, (2) estimating denitrification, and (3) running virtual experiments to generate insights and hypotheses about using trees in streamside management zones (SMZs) to mitigate NO₃ delivery to streams. Total flow was mathematically separated into quick‐ and slow‐flow components; the latter was routed through the HYDRUS software with a nitrogen module designed for constructed wetlands. Flow was monitored for two years. High surface‐soil NO₃ concentrations started to be delivered to the stream via preferential subsurface flow within two days of the storm commencing. Groundwater NO₃‐N concentrations decreased from 1.0 to less than 0.1 mg l^?1 from up‐slope to down‐slope water tables, respectively, which was attributed to denitrification. Measurements were consistent with the flushing of NO₃ mainly laterally from surface soil during and following each storm. The model accurately accounted for NO₃ turnover, leading to the hypotheses that denitrification was a minor flux (<3 kg N ha^?1) compared to uptake (98^?127 kg N ha^?1), and that SMZ trees would reduce denitrification if they lowered the water table. This research provides an example of the measurement and modelling of NO₃ dynamics at a small‐catchment scale with high spatial and temporal resolution. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Bayesian approach to inverse modelling of stratigraphy, part 2: Validation tests

A novel inverse modelling method is applied to the problem of constraining the environmental parameters (e.g. relative sea level, sediment supply) that control stratigraphic architecture. This technique links forward modelling of shallow-marine wave/storm-dominated stratigraphy to a combination of inverse methods formulated in a Bayesian framework. We present a number of examples in which relative sea-level and sediment-supply curves were inferred from synthetic vertical successions of grain size (e.g. wells) and synthetic thickness curves (e.g. seismically derived isopachs) extracted from a forward model simulation. These examples represent different scenarios that are designed to test the impact of data distribution, quantity and quality on the uncertainty of the inferred parameters. The inverse modelling approach successfully reproduces the gross stratigraphic architectures and relative sea level and sediment-supply histories of the synthetic forward model simulation, within the constraints of the modelled data quality. The relative importance of the forcing parameters can be evaluated by their sensitivity and impact on the inverted data. Of equal importance, the inverse results allow complete characterisation of the uncertainties inherent to the stratigraphic modelling tool and to the data quality, quantity and distribution. The numerical scheme also successfully deals with the problem of non-uniqueness of the solution of the inverse problem. These preliminary results suggest that the inverse method is a powerful tool in constraining stratigraphic architecture for hydrocarbon reservoir characterisation and modelling, and it may ultimately provide a process-based geological complement to standard geostatistical tools.     

Potential environmental issues of CO2 storage in deep saline aquifers: Geochemical results from the Frio-I Brine Pilot test,Texas, USA

Sedimentary basins in general, and deep saline aquifers in particular, are being investigated as possible repositories for large volumes of anthropogenic CO₂ that must be sequestered to mitigate global warming and related climate changes. To investigate the potential for the long-term storage of CO₂ in such aquifers, 1600 t of CO₂ were injected at 1500 m depth into a 24-m-thick “C” sandstone unit of the Frio Formation, a regional aquifer in the US Gulf Coast. Fluid samples obtained before CO₂ injection from the injection well and an observation well 30 m updip showed a Na–Ca–Cl type brine with ∼93,000 mg/L TDS at saturation with CH₄ at reservoir conditions; gas analyses showed that CH₄ comprised ∼95% of dissolved gas, but CO₂ was low at 0.3%. Following CO₂ breakthrough, 51 h after injection, samples showed sharp drops in pH (6.5–5.7), pronounced increases in alkalinity (100–3000 mg/L as HCO₃) and in Fe (30–1100 mg/L), a slug of very high DOC values, and significant shifts in the isotopic compositions of H₂O, DIC, and CH₄. These data, coupled with geochemical modeling, indicate corrosion of pipe and well casing as well as rapid dissolution of minerals, especially calcite and iron oxyhydroxides, both caused by lowered pH (initially ∼3.0 at subsurface conditions) of the brine in contact with supercritical CO₂.     

Crystal fractionation and partial melting in the petrogenesis of a Proterozoic high-MgO volcanic suite,Ungava, Québec

There is little concensus on the relative importance of crystal fractionation and differential partial melting to the chemical diversity observed within most types of volcanic suites. A resolution to this controversy is best sought in suites containing high MgO lavas such as the Chukotat volcanics of the Proterozoic Cape Smith foldbelt, Ungava, Quebec. The succession of this volcanic suite consists of repetitive sequences, each beginning with olivine-phyric basalt (19-12 wt% MgO), grading upwards to pyroxene-phyric basalt (12-8 wt% MgO) and then, in later sequences, to plagioclase-phyric basalt (7-4 wt% MgO). Only the olivine-phyric basalts have compositions capable of equilibrating with the upper mantle and are believed to represent parental magmas for the suite. The pyroxene-phyric and plagioclase-phyric basalts represent magmas derived from these parents by the crystal fractionation of olivine, with minor chromite, clinopyroxene and plagioclase. The order of extrusion in each volcanic sequence is interpreted to reflect a density effect in which successively lighter, more evolved magmas are erupted as hydrostatic pressure wanes. The pyroxene-phyric basalts appear to have evolved at high levels in the active part of the conduit system as the eruption of their parents was in progress. The plagioclase-phyric basalts may represent residual liquids expelled from isolated reservoirs along the crust-mantle interface during the late stages of volcanic activity.A positive correlation between FeO and MgO in the early, most basic olivine-phyric basalts is interpreted to reflect progressive adiabatic partial melting in the upper mantle. Although this complicates the chemistry, it is not a significant factor in the compositional diversification of the volcanic suite. The preservation of such compositional melting effects, however, suggests that the most basic olivine-phyric basalts represent primitive magmas. The trace element characteristics of these magmas, and their derivatives, indicate that the mantle source for the Chukotat volcanics had experienced a previous melting event.     

The fluctuation origin of cosmic radiation

We have investigated the origin of cosmic radiation in terms of a sudden injection of particles in time, momentum and space. The appropriate boundary conditions for the various regions through which the particles pass were used. With all of the acceleration within a turbulent region, we find that the observed spectrum is explained by a continuous deceleration in which statistical fluctuations dominate. This is contradictory to the usual assumptions in which fluctuations do not play an important part. We find that the time dependent solution has an exponent of the power law spectrum that varies weakly with the momentum and time. The steady state solution shows the usual constant exponent.This work was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant NsG-695.     

Synthetic coral-reef terraces and variations of Quaternary sea level

Coral-reef terraces on tectonically elevated coasts provide important data on variations of sea level. In this paper a systematic approach is presented for the construction of synthetic reef terraces. Idealized reef terraces are generated assuming a constant rate of tectonic uplift ν and a harmonic variation of sea level with amplitudeh_wo and period τ. It is further assumed that coral terraces grow only during periods of relative sea-level rise. The behavior is governed by the parameter u = τυ/2π h_wo. If u > 1 no reef terraces form. If 0.217 < u < 1 a discontinuous series of terraces form on the uplifting basement. If 0 < u < 0.217 the basement is covered with coral and a series of coral terraces forms on this coral. Uplifted coral-reef terraces on the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea, compare reasonably well with terraces generated by our model with τ = 20,000 years andh_wo = 21.4 m. We also compare the observed terraces with model terraces using the paleo sea level inferred from¹⁸O/¹⁶O data. The observed terraces are qualitatively similar to those predicted using the oxygen isotope data, however, the model terraces require larger relative sea-level variations with a near 20,000 year period than those inferred directly from the¹⁸O/¹⁶O data.