Understanding the temporal dynamics of the wandering Renous River,New Brunswick,Canada

Wandering rivers are composed of individual anabranches surrounding semi‐permanent islands, linked by single channel reaches. Wandering rivers are important because they provide habitat complexity for aquatic organisms, including salmonids. An anabranch cycle model was developed from previous literature and field observations to illustrate how anabranches within the wandering pattern change from single to multiple channels and vice versa over a number of decades. The model was used to investigate the temporal dynamics of a wandering river through historical case studies and channel characteristics from field data. The wandering Renous River, New Brunswick, was mapped from aerial photographs (1945, 1965, 1983 and 1999) to determine river pattern statistics and for historical analysis of case studies. Five case studies consisting of a stable single channel, newly formed anabranches, anabranches gaining stability following creation, stable anabranches, and an abandoning anabranch were investigated in detail. Long profiles, hydraulic geometry, channel energy, grain size and sediment mobility variables were calculated for each channel. Within the Renous study area, the frequency of channel formation and abandonment were similar over the 54 years of analysis, indicating that the wandering pattern is being maintained. Eight anabranches were formed through avulsions, five were formed through the emergence of islands from channel bars and 11 anabranches were abandoned. The stable anabranch pair displayed similar hydraulic geometry and channel energy characteristics, while unstable anabranch pairs did not. The anabranch pair that gained stability displayed more similar channel energy characteristics than the anabranch pair that was losing stability (abandoning). It appears that anabranch pairs with similar energy characteristics are more stable than anabranches where these characteristics are out of balance. This is consistent with the hypothesis that anabranch pairs of similar length will be more stable than those with dissimilar lengths. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Storminess variation during the last 6500 years as reconstructed from an ombrotrophic peat bog in Halland,southwest Sweden

Cores taken from an ombrotrophic peat bog in the coastal zone of Halland, southwest Sweden, were examined for wind transported mineral grains, pollen and humidity indicators. The core covers the period from 6500 cal. yr BP to present. Ombrotrophic conditions existed from ca. 4200 cal. yr BP onwards. Bog surface wetness fluctuated strongly until ca. 3700 cal. yr BP, with an apparent dominance of dry summer conditions from 4800–4500 cal. yr BP. Local wet shifts occurred around 4300, 2800, 2400 and 1500 cal. yr BP, whereas the most recent 600 years of the record show increasingly dry conditions. Mineral grain content, interpreted as aeolian sand influx (ASI), was used as a proxy for (winter) storm frequency and intensity until ca. 1500 cal. yr BP, after which increasing human impact, as reconstructed by pollen analysis, became a second important potential cause for increased sand drift. Strongly increased storminess occurred at 4800, 4200, 2800–2200, 1500, 1100 and 400–50 cal. yr BP, indicating a dominance of cold and stormy winters during these periods. Many of these storm periods apparently coincide with storm events in other sites in southwestern Scandinavia, suggesting that our ASI record reflects a regional scale climatic signal. Furthermore these stormy periods correlate to well‐known cold phases in the North Atlantic region, suggesting a link to large‐scale fluctuations in atmospheric circulation patterns. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing sewer–groundwater interaction at the city scale based on individual sewer defects and marker species distributions

By combining a sewer defect database and hydrogeological information, it has been attempted to assess sewer–groundwater interaction at the scale of the city of Rastatt (SW-Germany). Comprehensive hydrochemical samplings, including a series of new marker species, have been conducted in the urban aquifer and used for validation. The iodated X-ray contrast media, amidotrizoic acid and iothalamic acid, can be considered as highly specific for wastewater influence and have been found in several groundwater observation wells. M. Eiswirth deceased     

Evidence that whales (Balaenoptera borealis) visit drifting fish aggregating devices: do their presence affect the processes underlying fish aggregation?

Evidence of the presence of a group of sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis) detected around drifting fish aggregating devices (FADs) was provided by omnidirectional multi‐beam sonar during a survey off the Seychelles (Indian Ocean). The short visit by the sei whales produced a significant change in the behaviour of the fish assemblage associated with the FAD. There was first a significant increase in fish density when the whales approached the FAD, then a marked decrease after the whales had moved away from the FAD. Furthermore, the fish density was still low, 3 h after the whales had left the FAD. We assume that the presence and behaviour of the sei whales led some of the fish initially associated with the FAD to move away from it. There has been a considerable increase in the use of drifting artificial FADs in the Indian Ocean in recent decades. The frequency of cetacean visits to drifting FADs in the Indian Ocean is unknown, but they may have a major impact on assemblages of pelagic fish species around FADs. The effect of marine mammals on FAD‐associated fish could be relevant to the ecological trap theory (FAD acting as a trap for their associated fish) because of their impact on the dynamics of fish aggregation processes, through commensalism and/or predator–prey interactions.     

Evaluation of anthropogenic carbon in the Nordic Seas using observed relationships of N, P and C versus CFCs

Several methods to compute the anthropogenic component of total dissolved inorganic carbon () in the ocean have been reported, all in some way deducing (a) the effect by the natural processes, and (b) the background concentration in the pre-industrial scenario. In this work we present a method of calculating using nutrient and CFC data, which takes advantage of the linear relationships found between nitrate (N), phosphate (P) and CFC-11 in the Nordic Seas sub-surface waters. The basis of the method is that older water has lower CFC-11 concentration and also has been exposed to more sinking organic matter that has decayed, resulting in the slopes of P versus CFC-11 and N versus CFC-11 being close to the classic Redfield ratio of 1:16. Combining this with the slope in total alkalinity (A_T) versus CFC-11 to correct for the dissolution of metal carbonates gives us the possibility to deduce the concentration of anthropogenic C_T in the Nordic Seas. This further allowed us to compute the inventory of anthropogenic C_T below 250 m in the Nordic Seas in spring 2002, to ∼1.2 Gt C.     

Early Holocene Tree Growth at a High Elevation Site in the Northernmost Scandes of Sweden (Lapland): A Palaeobiogeographical Case Study Based on Megafossil Evidence

The paper focuses on early Holocene tree growth and alpine tree-limits in the northernmost Swedish Scandes (Lapland). Megafossil wood remnants in peats and lakes were searched for over a large area at elevations high above the modern tree-limits. Wood of Pinus sylvestris, Betula pubescens spp. tortuosa and Alnus incana was discovered near the shore of a small lake (999 m a.s.l.) c. 500 m higher than today's tree-limit of Pinus sylvestris in this region. Radiocarbon dating yielded values of unprecedented age, c. 8500–8100 ¹⁴C years BP for all three species and in addition 5400–4500 ¹⁴C years BP for Betula and Alnus. The highest position of the Pinus tree-limit occurred during the early Holocene, which compares well with the situation reconstructed by megafossils in the southern Scandes. It now appears that the long-term tree-limit and climate histories are broadly the same in entire mid- and northern Fennoscandia. Corrected for glacio-isostatic land uplift, the tree-limit record suggests that the summers were c. 2.4°C warmer than today at 8500 ¹⁴C years BP . A dry continental climate with substantial seasonal contrasts is likely to have prevailed during this period, which restricted the occurrence of glaciers and glacier activity. Most circumstances point to the overriding importance of the Milankovitch orbital theory for pacing or forcing the long-term postglacial climate change. The results are inconsistent with most inferences based on pollen, certain macrofossil records and general circulation simulations. These proxy environmental histories have frequently advocated a mid-Holocene thermal optimum and an oceanic and humid climate in northern and western Fennoscandia during the early Holocene. The uncovered discrepancy between the outcome of the objective and factual megafossil method and more subjective/inferential microfossil methods should be important for Quaternary plant ecology in general, stressing the usefulness of megafossil studies.     

Northern hudson bay and foxe basin: Water masses,circulation and productivity

Abstract

Total alkalinity and total carbonate determinations together with salinity and temperature are used to characterize water masses in Foxe Basin, Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. From these measurements, we are able to infer the amounts of fresh water from river runoff and from sea‐ice meltwater. The average ice cover is estimated to be 1.9 m, and the residence time of river runoff in Hudson Bay is 3—4 years. Estimates of biological productivity were made by “correcting” total carbonate measurements for effects of biological processes, giving a value of 24 gC m a for new production.     

Rydberg Matter as the dust atmosphere in comets: Spectroscopic and polarization signatures

The long-lived excited state of matter called Rydberg Matter (RM) may explain several spectroscopic features in space, like the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) and the unidentified infrared bands (UIR, UIB). RM is here used to interpret some previously unexplained or inconsistent features in comets: (1) line absorption in the emission from the nucleus, (2) IR band emission from the coma, (3) selective and variable molecular line emission from the coma, (4) extended sources of molecules in the coma, (5) degree of linear polarization of light scattered from the coma. (1) The unexplained IR absorptions observed in the flyby of the nucleus of the Comet Borrelly agree well with RM emission bands observed by stimulated emission in the laboratory. It is proposed that RM is the so-called ultrared matter or at least formed from it. (2) The IR bands previously attributed to silicate particles are shown to be better described by RM theory. Transitions in atoms in RM are shown to dominate. (3) The inverted RM medium will optically amplify light from molecular transitions in the comet comae, in agreement with observations that many of the molecular IR emission lines lie within the emission bands from RM, or much too close to Rydberg transitions to be accidental. (4) The unexplained extended sources observed, e.g., for CO are proposed to be due to release of molecules previously incorporated in the RM clusters at low temperature. Such clusters may be the very small particles observed by space probes. (5) Finally, the largely unexplained measurements of the degree of linear polarization of scattered sunlight from comets are explained as due to scattering by the planar RM clusters. Quantitative agreement is demonstrated.     

Amplification by Stimulated Emission in Rydberg Matter Clusters as the Source of Intense Maser Lines in Interstellar Space

The detailed processes giving maser line radiation from various molecules in space are not well understood, as can be seen from many recent detailed studies of maser line emission with high spatial and velocity resolution, and with polarization measurements. We now propose an improved maser mechanism based on amplification of the original molecular line emission by stimulated emission in Rydberg Matter (RM) clouds in HII regions, containing clusters H _N and (H₂) _N . This mechanism will amplify the molecular lines, depending on the position, velocity, cluster size and state of excitation of the clusters in the RM cloud. RM will only support certain frequencies, corresponding to rotational transitions of the clusters. The bond lengths in the RM clusters are known within 1% from radio frequency emission measurements in the laboratory, and it is now shown that all the commonly studied maser lines agree well with stimulated emission transitions in several types of RM clusters simultaneously. This may explain the strongly varying intensities of neighboring or related maser lines, an important effect that is not well understood previously. It is also pointed out that the magnetic field due to RM is of the same order of magnitude as observed from the Zeeman splitting in maser lines; thus, the molecules that are the original sources of the lines may be embedded in the RM clouds, for example in dense HII regions that are likely to be RM regions.     

Grazing effects by Nereis diversicolor on development and growth of green algal mats

Nereis diversicolor is generally considered to be a predator and deposit feeder, but have also been found to graze on benthic algae in shallow coastal areas. In this study we investigated the grazing effects on the development and growth of green algae, Ulva spp. Algal growth was studied in an experiment including two levels of sediment thickness; 100 mm sediment including macrofauna and 5 mm sediment without macrofauna, and three treatments of varying algal biomass; sediment with propagules, sediment with low algal biomass (120 g dry weight (dwt) m^− 2) and sediment with high algal biomass (240 g dwt m^− 2). In the 100 mm sediment, with a natural population of macrofauna, N. diversicolor was the dominating (60% of total biomass) species. After three weeks of experimentation the result showed that N. diversicolor was able to prevent initial algal growth, affect growth capacity and also partly reduce full-grown algal mats. The weight of N. diversicolor was significantly higher for polychaetes in treatments with algae added compared to non-algal treatments. There were also indications that a rich nutrient supply per algae biomass counteracted the grazing capacity of N. diversicolor.