The relationship between rock glacier and contributing area parameters in the Front Range of Colorado

Rock glaciers are an end unit of the coarse debris system that links frost weathering and rockfall to debris transport in mountainous environments. By examining topographic and climatic controls on creep, a better understanding of rock glacier formation and evolution could be obtained. A series of statistical tests were run comparing contributing area parameters (width, length, area, slope, headwall height, etc.) and rock glacier variables (width, length, area, thickness, slope, creep and temperature) in the Front Range of Colorado. Results showed that rock glacier width had the strongest correlation with contributing area width due to an abundance of lobate rock glaciers (r = 0.78). Rock glacier area and contributing area size were also related (r = 0.74), but are also a function of talus production factors. Mean surface velocity appears to be better correlated with thickness (r = 0.58) and length (r = 0.62), rather than slope (r = 0.33). Mean annual air temperature had a stronger exponential relationship with maximum velocities (r = 0.76) compared to mean annual velocity (r = 0.60). Front Range rock glacier velocities tend to decrease with warming, suggesting that the volume of ice and debris, rates of shear in plastic layers, or melt water may have a greater influence on deformation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Isotopic and noble gas study of Chalk groundwater in the London Basin, England

The chemical and isotopic composition of groundwater from 52 sites in the London (U.K.) area was determined as part of a project aimed at assessing the spatial variation in the age of Chalk groundwater, and in determining the relationship between fracture and matrix groundwater in this dual porosity system.Systematic changes in groundwater chemistry take place in the downgradient direction in response to several chemical processes. These processes include early concentration by evaporation and congruent dissolution of calcite followed by widespread incongruent dissolution and ion exchange in addition to local oxidation-reduction reactions, gypsum dissolution and saline intrusion. As a result of the above processes, Chalk groundwater follows an evolutionary path from Ca bicarbonate type to Na bicarbonate type.The age of Chalk groundwater was modelled using¹⁴C, δ¹³C,³H, δ²H and δ¹⁸0. There is a general increase in the groundwater age in a downgradient direction with the oldest water found in N central areas of the basin. Groundwater in the unconfined zones and in areas S of the Greenwich fault is almost entirely of unevolved, modem composition. Carbon-14 modelling suggests that Chalk groundwater in the S basin is generally less than 10000 a old while that in the north is generally between 10000 and 25000 a old. The presence of³H in concentrations of up to 7 TU in groundwater which yields ages of several 1000 a, however, indicates that mechanisms exist for the rapid introduction of recent groundwater to the confined aquifer. Results of palaeorecharge temperature determinations using δ²H, δ¹⁸0 and noble gas analytical results suggest that significant Devensian recharge did indeed occur in the aquifer.A model of the development of the Chalk recognizes that it is a classic dual porosity aquifer in which groundwater flow occurs predominantly in the fracture system. The upper 50 m of the aquifer was flushed with fresh water during the 2–3 × 10⁶ a of the Quaternary and therefore meteoric water largely replaced the Tertiary and Cretaceous marine water that previously saturated the system. Most processes which control the chemistry of the groundwater occur in the matrix where the surface area is exceptionally high. Although fracture flow dominates the flow regime, diffusion from the matrix into the fracture porosity controls the chemistry of Chalk groundwater.     

Analytical methods for error propagation in planar space–time prisms

The space–time prism demarcates all locations in space–time that a mobile object or person can occupy during an episode of potential or unobserved movement. The prism is central to time geography as a measure of potential mobility and to mobile object databases as a measure of location possibilities given sampling error. This paper develops an analytical approach to assessing error propagation in space–time prisms and prism–prism intersections. We analyze the geometry of the prisms to derive a core set of geometric problems involving the intersection of circles and ellipses. Analytical error propagation techniques such as the Taylor linearization method based on the first-order partial derivatives are not available since explicit functions describing the intersections and their derivatives are unwieldy. However, since we have implicit functions describing prism geometry, we modify this approach using an implicit function theorem that provides the required first-order partials without the explicit expressions. We describe the general method as well as details for the two spatial dimensions case and provide example calculations.     

大气环境卫星温室气体和气溶胶协同观测综述

人类排放的温室气体和气溶胶是造成全球气候变暖和大气环境恶化的主要因素,也是大气环境卫星遥感的核心探测目标。与传统的单一探测目标卫星相比,实现同平台的大气温室气体和气溶胶协同监测,对于提高温室气体卫星反演精度、改善“自上而下”碳源汇估算、提升温室气体和气溶胶的人为/自然源区分能力具有重要意义,也是各国航天机构积极发展的空间探测手段。本文对欧、日、中、美等具备温室气体和气溶胶协同监测能力的卫星进行系统的介绍,包括卫星平台、传感器、处理算法和质控验证。按照卫星监测任务和传感器用途,将其分为大气综合探测卫星和温室气体监测卫星两大类,并从碳中和行动和大气环境综合治理等需求出发,提出温室气体和气溶胶协同观测星座（GACOC）的概念及其发展方向,包括主被动卫星组网观测、温室气体和气溶胶高精度联合反演算法、人为排放源识别和定量监测等应用。     

Changes in timber haul emissions in the context of shifting forest management and infrastructure

Background  

Although significant amounts of carbon may be stored in harvested wood products, the extraction of that carbon from the forest generally entails combustion of fossil fuels. The transport of timber from the forest to primary milling facilities may in particular create emissions that reduce the net sequestration value of product carbon storage. However, attempts to quantify the effects of transport on the net effects of forest management typically use relatively sparse survey data to determine transportation emission factors. We developed an approach for systematically determining transport emissions using: 1) -remotely sensed maps to estimate the spatial distribution of harvests, and 2) - industry data to determine landscape-level harvest volumes as well as the location and processing totals of individual mills. These data support spatial network analysis that can produce estimates of fossil carbon released in timber transport.     

Spuriously induced precipitation trends in the southeast United States

This study uses correlation and multiple regression techniques to document differences in annual and seasonal precipitation trends between the NCDC Climate Division database and the United States Historical Climate Network (USHCN) in the southeast United States. Findings indicate that the majority of climate divisions have different temporal patterns than those depicted by the USHCN. They did not, however, consistently possess statistically significant relationships between the ratio (CDD/USHCN) and changes in mean station location as noted in other studies. It appears that other influences cause the majority of the variance between the two datasets. The fact that the two datasets do not consistently agree, however, suggests that spuriously induced trends may be present in the NCDC Climate Division database.     

Structure Inclination Angles in the Convective Atmospheric Surface Layer

Two-point correlations of the fluctuating streamwise velocity are examined in the atmospheric surface layer over the salt flats of Utah’s western desert, and corresponding structure inclination angles are obtained for neutral, stable and unstable conditions. The neutral surface-layer results supplement evidence for the invariance of the inclination angle given in Marusic and Heuer (Phys Rev Lett 99:114504, 2007). In an extension of those results it is found that the inclination angle changes drastically under different stability conditions in the surface layer, varying systematically with the Monin–Obukhov stability parameter in the unstable regime. The variation is parametrized and subsequently can be used to improve existing near-wall models in the large-eddy simulation of the atmospheric surface layer.