The Digital Archive of the Photographic Images of the Córdoba Observatory Plates Collections

The astronomical events registered in photographic plates are unique. A remarkable interest in using old plates in many areas of the current astronomical research is widely recognized by the IAU. There are almost ten thousand plates in several collections at the Córdoba Observatory and most of them are nearly one century old. This photographic material is difficult to handle in order to get the information stored in it. The goal of this project is to make a digital archive of images of these collections. In this first survey plates are being scanned with a standard commercial transparency scanner. These low spatial resolution, low digital resolution and low signal-to-noise ratio images are intended for facilitating handling and visual inspection. However, one arc-second positions can be obtained. Photometric quality has not been yet determined. Otherwise high quality digital images can be acquired with a microdenstitometer based on a scientific grade CCD whose implementation is at its final stage. The possibility of using a better-performance scanner is being evaluated. It is planned to permit the access to low-resolution images via internet. High-resolution images of selected zones will be available upon request. At this first stage, collections totally digitized at low resolution are:Carte du Ciel and Small Magellanic Cloud Zones. Gaviola's Eta Carinae Spectra and Pulkovo Zones are still in process.     

Impacts of wildfire and post-fire land management on hydrological and sediment processes in a humid Mediterranean headwater catchment

The extensive afforestation of the Mediterranean rim of Europe in recent decades has increased the number of wildfire disturbances on hydrological and sediment processes, but the impacts on headwater catchments is still poorly understood, especially when compared with the previous agricultural landscape. This work monitored an agroforestry catchment in the north-western Iberian Peninsula, with plantation forests mixed with traditional agriculture using soil conservation practices, for one year before the fire and for three years afterwards, during which period the burnt area was ploughed and reforested. During this period, continuous data was collected for meteorology, streamflow and sediment concentration at the outlet, erosion features were mapped and measured after major rainfall events, and channel sediment dynamics were monitored downstream from the agricultural and the burnt forest area. Data from 202 rainfall events with over 10 mm was analysed in detail. Results show that the fire led to a notable impact on sediment processes during the first two post-fire years, but not on streamflow processes; this despite the small size of the burnt area (10% of the catchment) and the occurrence of a severe drought in the first year after the fire. During this period, soil loss at the burnt forest slopes was much larger than that at most traditionally managed fields, and, ultimately, led to sediment exhaustion. At the catchment scale, storm characteristics were the dominant factor behind streamflow and sediment yield both before and after the fire. However, the data indicated a shift from detachment-limited sediment yield before the fire, to transport-limited sediment yield afterwards, with important increases in streamflow sediment concentration. This indicates that even small fires can temporarily change sediment processes in agroforestry catchments, with potential negative consequences for downstream water quality.     

Homogenized constitutive laws for rocks with elastoplastic fractures

This work deals with the development of a constitutive law for fractured rocks. Fractures are considered as penny‐shaped inclusions, whose constitutive law is deduced from an interface law and a regularization procedure. Such a method is applied to linear and non‐linear interface behaviours in order to reproduce effects such as an increase in stiffness during fracture closing, dilatancy or asperity surface degradation. Then, considering the fractured rock as a composite material, we use a Mori–Tanaka method to estimate the homogenized properties of the rock. Numerical experiments illustrate the interest of the proposed homogenization procedure. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transition from debris flow to hyperconcentrated flow in a submarine channel (the Cretaceous Cerro Toro Formation, southern Chile)

ABSTRACT It is important to understand the exact process whereby very large amounts of sediment are transported. This paper reports peculiar conglomerate beds reflecting the transition of submarine debris flows into hyperconcentrated flows, something that has been well documented only in subaerial debris-flow events until now. Voluminous debris flows generated along a Cretaceous submarine channel, southern Chile, transformed immediately into multiphase flows. Their deposits overlie fluted or grooved surfaces and comprise a lower division of clast-supported and imbricated pebble–cobble conglomerate with basal inverse grading and an upper division of clast- to matrix-supported, disorganized conglomerate with abundant intraformational clasts. The conglomerate beds suggest temporal succession of turbidity current, gravelly hyperconcentrated flow, and mud-rich debris flow phases. The multiphase flows resulted from progressive dilution of gravelly but cohesive debris flows that could hydroplane, in contrast to the flow transitions in subaerial environments, which involve mostly non-cohesive debris flows. This finding has significant implications for the definition, classification, and hazard assessment of submarine mass-movement processes and characterization of submarine reservoir rocks.     

OH and O2 airglow emissions during the 1998 leonid outburst and the 2002 leonid storm

In order to enhance our understanding of the possible influence of meteor ablation on the enrichment in OH and O₂ of the lower thermosphere we studied intense Leonid meteor activity by using the SATI (Spectral Airglow Temperature Imager) interferometer of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía. We measured the emission rate and rotational temperature of OH and O₂ airglow emission layers during two observation periods of high meteoric activity: the 1998 Leonid outburst and the 2002 Leonid storm. The results show that there is not a clear relation of O₂ and OH airglow emission and rotational temperature with meteoric activity.     

Observations of comet impact by reflections from the Galilean satellites

Results of observations of the Galilean satellites during the week of the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter are reported. These observations have been carried out at the Pico dos Dias observatory, at Brasópolis, Brazil. The satellites's light flux was monitored with a photometer during the time of the predicted impact of fragments B, F, J and L. No conclusive flash was observed in any of the data adquired. This non-detection imposes an upper limit to the energy released during the impact of these fragments.Observations carried out at the Observatório do Pico dos Dias, operated by the Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica/CNPq/MCT, Brazil     

Spring drought prediction based on winter NAO and global SST in Portugal

The aim of this paper is to test the ability of neural network approaches to hindcast the spring standardized precipitation index on a 6‐month time scale (SPI6) in Portugal, based on winter large‐scale climatic indices. For this purpose, the linkage of the spring SPI time series with the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the sea surface temperature (SST) was investigated by means of maps of the correlation coefficient for the period from October 1910 to September 2004. The results indicate that the winter NAO is a good predictor for the SPI6 of the spring (SPI6 finishing in April, May and June, SPI6_April, SPI6_May and SPI6_June, respectively) for the northern, central and southern regions of Portugal. The winter SST1 (area of the Mediterranean Sea) must only be considered for the northern region, and the winter SST3 (area of the North Atlantic between Iberia and North America) only for the southern region. Spatial maps of predictive SPI6 for April, May and June were created and validated. The neural models explained more than 81% of the total variance for the SPI6_April and SPI6_May and more than 64% of the total variance for the SPI6_June. Probability maps were also developed considering the values predicted by the neural methods for the spring months and all drought categories (moderate, severe and extreme). These maps indicating the probability of droughts can provide valuable support for the integrated planning and management of water resources throughout Portugal. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of environmental forcing on the acoustic backscattering strength in the equatorial Pacific: Diurnal,lunar, intraseasonal,and interannual variability

We analyzed several records of mean volume backscattering strength (S_v) derived from 150 kHz acoustic doppler current profilers (ADCPs) moored along the equator in upwelling mesotrophic conditions and in the warm pool oligotrophic ecosystem of the Pacific Ocean. The ADCPs allow for gathering long time-series of non-intrusive information about zooplankton and micronekton at the same spatial and temporal scales as physical observations. High S_v are found from the surface to the middle of the thermocline between dusk and dawn in the mesotrophic regime. Biological and physical influences modified this classical diel cycle. In oligotrophic conditions observed at 170°W and 140°W during El Niño years, a subsurface S_v maximum characterized nighttime S_v profiles. Variations of the thermocline depth correlated with variations of the base of the high S_v layer and the subsurface maximum closely tracked the thermocline depth from intraseasonal to interannual time-scales. A recurring deepening (20–60 m) of the high S_v layer was observed at a frequency close to the lunar cycle frequency. At 165°E, high day-to-day variations prevailed and our results suggest the influence of moderately mesotrophic waters that would be advected from the western warm pool during westerly wind events. A review of the literature suggests that S_v variations may result from changes in biomass and species assemblages among which myctophids and euphausiids would be the most likely scatterers.