Influence of landscape position and vegetation on long-term weathering rates at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire, USA

The spatial variability of long-term chemical weathering in a small watershed was examined to determine the effect of landscape position and vegetation. We sampled soils from forty-five soil pits within an 11.8-hectare watershed at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire. The soil parent material is a relatively homogeneous glacial till deposited ∼14,000 years ago and is derived predominantly from granodiorite and pelitic schist. Conifers are abundant in the upper third of the watershed while the remaining portion is dominated by hardwoods. The average long-term chemical weathering rate in the watershed, calculated by the loss of base cations integrated over the soil profile, is 35 meq m⁻² yr⁻¹—similar to rates in other ∼10 to 15 ka old soils developed on granitic till in temperate climates. The present-day loss of base cations from the watershed, calculated by watershed mass balance, exceeds the long-term weathering rate, suggesting that the pool of exchangeable base cations in the soil is being diminished. Despite the homogeneity of the soil parent material in the watershed, long-term weathering rates decrease by a factor of two over a 260 m decrease in elevation. Estimated weathering rates of plagioclase, potassium feldspar and apatite are greater in the upper part of the watershed where conifers are abundant and glacial till is thin. The intra-watershed variability across this small area demonstrates the need for extensive sampling to obtain accurate watershed-wide estimates of long-term weathering rates.     

Groundwater potential assessment in a sedimentary terrain,southwestern Nigeria

Geoelectrical resistivity techniques are increasingly being applied in addressing a wide range of hydrological, environmental, and geotechnical problems. This is due to their effectiveness in near-surface characterization. In the present study, a suite of vertical electrical soundings (VESs) was integrated with 2D geoelectrical resistivity and time-domain induced polarization (IP) imaging to characterize the near-surface and delineate the underlying aquifer in a sedimentary terrain. The geophysical survey was conducted as part of preliminary studies to evaluate the potential of groundwater resource in Iyana-Iyesi and Canaan Land area of Ota, southwestern Nigeria. A high-yield confined sandy aquifer overlain by a low-yield aquitard was delineated; overlying the aquitard is a very resistive and thick layer that is predominantly composed of kaolinitic swelling clay intercalated with phosphate mineral.     

When hazard avoidance is not an option: lessons learned from monitoring the postdisaster Oso landslide,USA

On 22 March 2014, a massive, catastrophic landslide occurred near Oso, Washington, USA, sweeping more than 1 km across the adjacent valley flats and killing 43 people. For the following 5 weeks, hundreds of workers engaged in an exhaustive search, rescue, and recovery effort directly in the landslide runout path. These workers could not avoid the risks posed by additional large-scale slope collapses. In an effort to ensure worker safety, multiple agencies cooperated to swiftly deploy a monitoring and alerting system consisting of sensors, automated data processing and web-based display, along with defined communication protocols and clear calls to action for emergency management and search personnel. Guided by the principle that an accelerating landslide poses a greater threat than a steadily moving or stationary mass, the system was designed to detect ground motion and vibration using complementary monitoring techniques. Near real-time information was provided by continuous GPS, seismometers/geophones, and extensometers. This information was augmented by repeat-assessment techniques such as terrestrial and aerial laser scanning and time-lapse photography. Fortunately, no major additional landsliding occurred. However, we did detect small headscarp failures as well as slow movement of the remaining landslide mass with the monitoring system. This was an exceptional response situation and the lessons learned are applicable to other landslide disaster crises. They underscore the need for cogent landslide expertise and ready-to-deploy monitoring equipment, the value of using redundant monitoring techniques with distinct goals, the benefit of clearly defined communication protocols, and the importance of continued research into forecasting landslide behavior to allow timely warning.

     

Why chromatic imaging matters

During the last two decades, the first generation of beam combiners at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer has proved the importance of optical interferometry for high-angular resolution astrophysical studies in the near- and mid-infrared. With the advent of 4-beam combiners at the VLTI, the u ? v coverage per pointing increases significantly, providing an opportunity to use reconstructed images as powerful scientific tools. Therefore, interferometric imaging is already a key feature of the new generation of VLTI instruments, as well as for other interferometric facilities like CHARA and JWST. It is thus imperative to account for the current image reconstruction capabilities and their expected evolutions in the coming years. Here, we present a general overview of the current situation of optical interferometric image reconstruction with a focus on new wavelength-dependent information, highlighting its main advantages and limitations. As an Appendix we include several cookbooks describing the usage and installation of several state-of-the art image reconstruction packages. To illustrate the current capabilities of the software available to the community, we recovered chromatic images, from simulated MATISSE data, using the MCMC software SQUEEZE. With these images, we aim at showing the importance of selecting good regularization functions and their impact on the reconstruction.     

Paper 5. climate change impacts on the energy sector and possible adjustments in the mink region

The discussion reviews the prevailing pattern of energy demand and supply in the MINK states, speculates on the region's long-term energy future in the absence and presence of greenhouse warming, and, in the latter case, considers energy sector adaptation to such a prospect. Climate-sensitive energydemand is dominated by heating and cooling in various sectors of the regional economy (around 20% of regional energy consumption) and by such agricultural applications as irrigation pumping and crop drying (around 5%). A climate-sensitive energysupply issue of some importance is the region's partial dependence on hydroelectric capacity in the upper Missouri river basin. The analysis finds that, unlike the rather significant impacts likely to be experienced by other sectors of the regional economy, the hypothesized warming trend will translate into only small net increases in energy demand; and that technological possibilities and policy measures are available to mute any serious climatic effects on the energy sector.     

Reconstruction of seasonal temperatures in Central Canada since A.D. 1700 and detection of the 18.6- and 22-year signals

This paper presents an attempt to summarize various sparse proxy series into continuous and exhaustive climatic data. Freeze-up and break-up dates, early meteorological records and tree-ring data have been combined for the Hudson Bay region and 22 continuous proxy series extending from 1700 to 1979 have been deduced. These new series in term provided the basis for a regressive reconstruction of six seasonal temperature series. Verification tests are successful mainly for the high frequencies components. The low frequencies variability is better estimated by a best analogues method. Both kinds of reconstructions have been combined to improve the results. The main characteristic of the reconstructions is a warming trend beginning at the end of the 19th century. Evidence for a beat wave resulting from 22-year solar and 18.6-year lunar nodal tidal cycles is presented. A phase analysis showed results consistent with other studies of summer temperature variability: temperature maxima correspond to sunspot minima ending an even cycle and are emphasized by the lunar maxima. Different phenomena are pointed out for autumn and winter temperatures: their maxima coincide to sunspot even maxima amplified by lunar minima. In spring, the transition season, these signals are not apparent.     

A 3.5 Ga record of water-limited, acidic weathering conditions on Mars

The secondary mineral budget on Earth is dominated by clay minerals, Al-hydroxides, and Fe-oxides, which are formed under the moderate pH, high water-to-rock ratio conditions typical of Earth's near-surface environment. In contrast, geochemical analyses of rocks and soils from landed missions to Mars indicate that secondary mineralogy is dominated by Mg (± Fe, Ca)-sulfates and Fe-oxides. This discrepancy can be explained as resulting from differences in the chemical weathering environment of Earth and Mars. We suggest that chemical weathering processes on Mars are dominated by: (1) a low-pH, sulfuric acid-rich environment in which the stoichiometric dissolution of labile mineral phases such as olivine and apatite (± Fe–Ti oxides) is promoted; and (2) relatively low water-to-rock ratio, such that other silicate phases with slower dissolution rates (e.g., plagioclase, pyroxene) do not contribute substantially to the secondary mineral budget at the Martian surface. Under these conditions, Al-mobilization is limited, and the formation of significant Al-bearing secondary phases (e.g., clays, Al-hydroxides, Al-sulfates) is inhibited. The antiquity of rock samples analyzed in-situ on Mars suggest that water-limited acidic weathering conditions have more than likely been the defining characteristic of the Martian aqueous environment for billions of years.     

Feedbacks between erosion and sediment transport in experimental bedrock channels

Natural bedrock rivers flow in self‐formed channels and form diverse erosional morphologies. The parameters that collectively define channel morphology (e.g. width, slope, bed roughness, bedrock exposure, sediment size distribution) all influence river incision rates and dynamically adjust in poorly understood ways to imposed fluid and sediment fluxes. To explore the mechanics of river incision, we conducted laboratory experiments in which the complexities of natural bedrock channels were reduced to a homogenous brittle substrate (sand and cement), a single sediment size primarily transported as bedload, a single erosion mechanism (abrasion) and sediment‐starved transport conditions. We find that patterns of erosion both create and are sensitive functions of the evolving bed topography because of feedbacks between the turbulent flow field, sediment transport and bottom roughness. Abrasion only occurs where sediment impacts the bed, and so positive feedback occurs between the sediment preferentially drawn to topographic lows by gravity and the further erosion of these lows. However, the spatial focusing of erosion results in tortuous flow paths and erosional forms (inner channels, scoops, potholes), which dissipate flow energy. This energy dissipation is a negative feedback that reduces sediment transport capacity, inhibiting further incision and ultimately leading to channel morphologies adjusted to just transport the imposed sediment load. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.