Bottle‐green microtektites from the South Tasman Rise: Deep‐sea evidence for an impact event near the Miocene/Pliocene boundary

Abstract— Forty‐eight bottle‐green microtektites (BGMTs) were found in a core sample recovered from Ocean Drilling Program Site 1169, located along the western flank of the South Tasman Rise in the southeastern Indian Ocean. Biostratigraphic evidence loosely constrains the age of the Site 1169 BGMTs to an interval spanning the late‐middle Miocene to earliest Pliocene (12.1–4.6 Ma); incomplete core recovery and a major stratigraphic hiatus prevented a more precise age determination. This broad range of biostratigraphic ages indicates that these microtektites predate the Australasian strewn layer by at least 3.83 Ma, and perhaps by as much as 11.33 Ma. Furthermore, the REE signatures of the Site 1169 BGMTs are incongruent with those of typical Australasian ejecta, indicating that the Site 1169 BGMTs are not part of the larger Australasian strewn field. Among the various australite subgroups, the Site 1169 BGMTs are most similar in age to the HNa/K australites. However, numerous compositional discrepancies indicate that these two ejecta populations are also unrelated; the great distances separating Site 1169 from HNa/K australite‐bearing localities also makes a shared provenance unlikely. Therefore, we conclude that the Site 1169 BGMTs were formed by a late Miocene impact that is distinctly separate from the Australasian and HNa/K australite events, though the location of this impact is unknown.     

Estimating carbon sequestration in the piedmont ecoregion of the United States from 1971 to 2010

Human activities have diverse and profound impacts on ecosystem carbon cycles. The Piedmont ecoregion in the eastern United States has undergone significant land use and land cover change in the past few decades. The purpose of this study was to use newly available land use and land cover change data to quantify carbon changes within the ecoregion. Land use and land cover change data (60-m spatial resolution) derived from sequential remotely sensed Landsat imagery were used to generate 960-m resolution land cover change maps for the Piedmont ecoregion. These maps were used in the Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS) to simulate ecosystem carbon stock and flux changes from 1971 to 2010. Results show that land use change, especially urbanization and forest harvest had significant impacts on carbon sources and sinks. From 1971 to 2010, forest ecosystems sequestered 0.25 Mg C ha?1 yr?1, while agricultural ecosystems sequestered 0.03 Mg C ha?1 yr?1. The total ecosystem C stock increased from 2271 Tg C in 1971 to 2402 Tg C in 2010, with an annual average increase of 3.3 Tg C yr?1. Terrestrial lands in the Piedmont ecoregion were estimated to be weak net carbon sink during the study period. The major factors contributing to the carbon sink were forest growth and afforestation; the major factors contributing to terrestrial emissions were human induced land cover change, especially urbanization and forest harvest. An additional amount of carbon continues to be stored in harvested wood products. If this pool were included the carbon sink would be stronger.     

On feminism and feminist allies in knowledge production in urban geography

In this response to Ananya Roy’s paper, I ask: who are the allies of feminist knowledge production about the urban? To explore this question, I specifically ask what feminist scholars may find of use in two books, namely Arrival Cities by Doug Saunders and Implosions/Explosions edited by Neil Brenner, that are representative of two major discourses on the urban, respectively, the “Urban Age” and planetary urbanization, currently favored by policy bodies and (some) academics. Their limited engagement with politics leads me to conclude with a call for a feminist mode of situated knowledge production to engage with (the limits of) urban theory and the urban as a site of praxis.     

Were last glacial climate events simultaneous between Greenland and France? A quantitative comparison using non‐tuned chronologies

Several large abrupt climate fluctuations during the last glacial have been recorded in Greenland ice cores and archives from other regions. Often these Dansgaard–Oeschger events are assumed to have been synchronous over wide areas, and then used as tie‐points to link chronologies between the proxy archives. However, it has not yet been tested independently whether or not these events were indeed synchronous over large areas. Here, we compare Dansgaard–Oeschger‐type events in a well‐dated record from southeastern France with those in Greenland ice cores. Instead of assuming simultaneous climate events between both archives, we keep their age models independent. Even these well‐dated archives possess large chronological uncertainties that prevent us from inferring synchronous climate events at decadal to multi‐centennial time scales. If possible, comparisons between proxy archives should be based on independent, non‐tuned time‐scales. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shear-wave polarizations near the North Anatolian Fault – II. Interpretation in terms of crack-induced anisotropy

Summary. The polarizations of shear waves recorded by networks of digital three-component seismometers immediately above small earthquakes near the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey display shear-wave splitting on almost all shear-wave seismograms recorded within the shear-wave window. This splitting is incompatible with source radiation-patterns propagating through simple isotropic structures but is compatible with effective anisotropy of the internal structure of the rock along the ray paths. This paper interprets the phenomena in terms of widespread crack-induced anisotropy. Distributions of stress-induced cracks model many features of the observations, and synthetic polarization diagrams calculated for propagation through simulated cracked rock are similar to the observed patterns. This evidence for widespread crack-induced anisotropy lends strong support to the hypothesis of extensive-dilatancy anisotropy (EDA) suggested by laboratory experiments in subcritical crack-growth. The crucial evidence confirming some form of EDA would be observations of temporal changes in shear-wave splitting as the stress field alters the crack density and crack geometry. There is some weak evidence for such temporal changes at one site, but further analysis of suitable digital three-component seismometer networks in seismic areas is required to confirm EDA.     

Quarter diurnal shelf resonances and tidal bed stress in the English Channel

The mean sea level and mean bed stress due to tidal co-oscillations in the presence of quadratic friction is examined analytically and numerically. In some idealised situations under conditions of near M₄ shelf resonances it is shown that phase relationships tend to exist between the M₂ tidal currents and the M₄ tidal currents which combine to give maximum currents in the flood or ebb direction. In the presence of quadratic friction these effects result in a mean bed stress and affect mean sea level. It is shown that these idealised responses are in part relevant to the sea level differences and sand transport paths due to tides around the British Isles.     

Long-term variation of fiddler crab populations in North Carolina salt marshes

Estuaries and Coasts - Total biomass of the fiddler crabsUca pugnax andU. minax in fourSpartina marshes in the lower Cape Fear River estuary, North Carolina, declined by 65 to 70% between the...