Impact of climate variability of the Western Tropical Pacific on maximum salinity water in the South China Sea

Ocean Dynamics - Salinity observations in the Vietnamese upwelling area in June 2016 indicated a significant increase in the salinity of the maximum salinity water (MSW). The source of MSW inflow...     

Farside explorer: unique science from a mission to the farside of the moon

Farside Explorer is a proposed Cosmic Vision medium-size mission to the farside of the Moon consisting of two landers and an instrumented relay satellite. The farside of the Moon is a unique scientific platform in that it is shielded from terrestrial radio-frequency interference, it recorded the primary differentiation and evolution of the Moon, it can be continuously monitored from the Earth–Moon L2 Lagrange point, and there is a complete lack of reflected solar illumination from the Earth. Farside Explorer will exploit these properties and make the first radio-astronomy measurements from the most radio-quiet region of near-Earth space, determine the internal structure and thermal evolution of the Moon, from crust to core, and quantify impact hazards in near-Earth space by the measurement of flashes generated by impact events. The Farside Explorer flight system includes two identical solar-powered landers and a science/telecommunications relay satellite to be placed in a halo orbit about the Earth–Moon L2 Lagrange point. One lander would explore the largest and oldest recognized impact basin in the Solar System— the South Pole–Aitken basin—and the other would investigate the primordial highlands crust. Radio astronomy, geophysical, and geochemical instruments would be deployed on the surface, and the relay satellite would continuously monitor the surface for impact events.     

Estimating the spatial pattern of human-caused forest fires using a generalized linear mixed model with spatial autocorrelation in South Korea

Most forest fires in Korea are spatially concentrated in certain areas and are highly related to human activities. These site-specific characteristics of forest fires are analyzed by spatial regression analysis using the R-module generalized linear mixed model (GLMM), which can consider spatial autocorrelation. We examined the quantitative effect of topology, human accessibility, and forest cover without and with spatial autocorrelation. Under the assumption that slope, elevation, aspect, population density, distance from road, and forest cover are related to forest fire occurrence, the explanatory variables of each of these factors were prepared using a Geographic Information System-based process. First, we tried to test the influence of fixed effects on the occurrence of forest fires using a generalized linear model (GLM) with Poisson distribution. In addition, the overdispersion of the response data was also detected, and variogram analysis was performed using the standardized residuals of GLM. Second, GLMM was applied to consider the obvious residual autocorrelation structure. The fitted models were validated and compared using the multiple correlation and root mean square error (RMSE). Results showed that slope, elevation, aspect index, population density, and distance from road were significant factors capable of explaining the forest fire occurrence. Positive spatial autocorrelation was estimated up to a distance of 32 km. The kriging predictions based on GLMM were smoother than those of the GLM. Finally, a forest fire occurrence map was prepared using the results from both models. The fire risk decreases with increasing distance to areas with high population densities, and increasing elevation showed a suppressing effect on fire occurrence. Both variables are in accordance with the significance tests.     

A general reduction scheme for reactive transport in porous media

We present a method to transform the governing equations of multispecies reactive transport in porous media. The reformulation leads to a smaller problem size by decoupling of equations and by elimination of unknowns, which increases the efficiency of numerical simulations. The reformulation presented here is a generalization of earlier works. In fact, a whole class of transformations is now presented. This class is parametrized by the choice of certain transformation matrices. For specific choices, some known formulations of reactive transport can be retrieved. Hence, the software based on the presented transformation can be used to obtain efficiency comparisons of different solution approaches. For our efficiency tests, we use the MoMaS benchmark problem on reactive transport.     

Frequency–Magnitude Distribution of −3.7 ≤ M W ≤ 1 Mining-Induced Earthquakes Around a Mining Front and b Value Invariance with Post-Blast Time

We investigated frequency-magnitude distribution (FMD) of acoustic emissions (AE) occurring near an active mining front in a South African gold mine, using a catalog developed from an AE network, which is capable of detecting AEs down to M _W  ?5. When records of blasts were removed, FMDs of AEs obeyed a Gutenberg?Richter law with similar b values, not depending on post-blasting time from the initial 1-min interval through more than 30 h. This result denies a suggestion in a previous study (Richardson and Jordan Bull Seismol Soc Am, 92:1766–1782, 2002) that new fractures generated by blasting disturb the size distribution of background events, which they interpreted as slip events on existing weak planes. Our AE catalog showed that the GR law with b ～ 1.2 was valid between M _W  ?3.7 and 0 for AEs around the mining front. Further, using the mine’s seismic catalog, which covers a longer time period of the same area, we could extend the validity range of the GR law with the same b value up to M _W 1.     

Extreme anomaly event detection in biosphere using linear regression and a spatiotemporal MRF model

Natural Hazards - Detecting abnormal events within time series is crucial for analyzing and understanding the dynamics of the system in many research areas. In this paper, we propose a methodology...     

Microstructures,subglacial till deposition,and shear band development revealing up-section changes in shear–A study from Weissbach,Austria

Tills from an exposure in Wildschönau Valley, northern Austria were examined using microsedimentological techniques. The tills exhibit a range of microstructures indicative of soft sediment deformation within temperate subglacial bed conditions. The tills can be subdivided at the macroscale into a lower grey and upper red till both of which exhibit some sedimentological variations; however, at the micro-level the tills appear essentially identical. The microstructures in the tills are illustrative of structures developed during deformation both during and following their emplacement. Of note are the microshears within these tills that are demonstrative of changes in applied stress. Both low (<25°) and high angle (>25°) microshears were mapped and their fabric data analyzed. The microshears show a change in stress levels ascending through successive till units. The changes in stress are demonstrative of spatially and temporally changing rheological conditions undergone by the subglacial tills during deformation, ongoing deposition/ emplacement and stress localization. These findings indicate that microstructures reveal local deformation conditions in tills and a more detailed micro-history of paleo-stress.