Variation of initial Th/Th and limits of high precision U-Th dating of shallow-water corals

One hundred eighty U-Th data, including 23 isochrons on 24 pristine modern and Holocene corals and 33 seawater samples, were analyzed using sector-field mass spectrometry to understand the variability of initial ²³⁰Th/²³²Th (²³⁰Th/²³²Th₀). This dataset allows us to further assess the accuracy and precision of coral ²³⁰Th dating method. By applying quality control, including careful sampling and subsampling protocols and the use of contamination-free storage and workbench spaces, the resulting low procedural blanks give an equivalent uncertainty in age of only ±0.2-0.3 yr for 1-2 g of coral sample. Using site-specific ²³⁰Th/²³²Th₀ values or isochron techniques, our study demonstrates that corals with an age less than 100 yrs can be ²³⁰Th-dated with precisions of ±1 yr. Six living subtidal coral samples were collected from two continental shelf sites, Nanwan off southern Taiwan in the western Pacific and Son Tra off central Vietnam in the South China Sea; one coral core was drilled from an open-ocean site, Santo Island, Vanuatu, in the western tropical Pacific; and modern and fossil intertidal coral slabs, 17 in total, were cut from six sites around the islands of Simeulue, Lago, North Pagai and South Pagai of Sumatra in the eastern Indian Ocean. The results indicate that the main source of thorium is the dissolved phase of seawater, with variation of ²³⁰Th/²³²Th₀ depending on local hydrology. With intense input of terrestrial material, low ²³⁰Th/²³²Th₀ atomic ratios of 4.9 × 10⁻⁶ and 3.2 × 10⁻⁶ with a 10% variation are observed in Nanwan and Son Tra, respectively. At the Santo site, we find a value of 5.6 × 10⁻⁶ at 4 horizons and one high value of 24 × 10⁻⁶ in a sample from AD 1974.6 ± 0.5, likely due to the upwelling of cold water during a La Niña event between AD 1973 and 1976. The natural dynamics of ²³⁰Th/²³²Th₀ recorded in the intertidal corals at sites in the Sumatran islands are complicated so that this value varies significantly from 3.0 to 9.4 × 10⁻⁶. Three of the 141 modern coral ²³⁰Th ages differ from their true ages by −23 to +4, indicating the presence of detrital material with anomalous ²³⁰Th/²³²Th values. Duplicate measurement of coeval subsamples is therefore recommended to verify the age accuracy. This improved high precision coral ²³⁰Th dating method raises the prospects of refining the age models for band-counted and tracer-tuned chronologies and of advancing coral paleoclimate research.     

Mechanism of two rapid and long-runout landslides in the 16 April 2016 Kumamoto earthquake using a ring-shear apparatus and computer simulation (LS-RAPID)

Around hundred landslides were triggered by the Kumamoto earthquakes in April 2016, causing fatalities and serious damage to properties in Minamiaso village, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. The landslides included many rapid and long-runout landslides which were responsible for much of the damage. To understand the mechanism of these earthquake-triggered landslides, we carried out field investigations with an unmanned aerial vehicle to obtain DSM and took samples from two major landslides (Takanodai landslide and Aso-ohashi landslide) to measure parameters of the initiation and the motion of landslides. A series of ring-shear tests and computer simulations were conducted using a measured Kumamoto earthquake acceleration record from KNet station KMM005, 10 km west of Aso-ohashi landslide. The research results supported our assumed mechanism of sliding-surface liquefaction for the rapid and long-runout motion of these landslides.     

Susceptibility assessment of the precursor stage of a landslide threatening Haivan Railway Station,Vietnam

Haivan Station is an important station on the North-South railway line in central Vietnam. Field investigation has identified a precursor stage of a landslide that would threaten this railway. Therefore, a landslide susceptibility assessment for Haivan Station was urgently needed to protect passenger safety and the national railway. Conducted investigations included air-photo interpretation, drilling, ground water and inclinometer monitoring, laboratory testing, and landslide simulation. This research applied the undrained dynamic loading ring shear apparatus ICL-2 to drill-core samples from the precursor landslide. Samples for ring shear tests were taken from sandy soil layers found at depths of ~21, ~31, and ~50 m in the cores. Each of these was believed to be a possible sliding surface of a landslide, and all were tested to shear failure in the ICL-2 apparatus. The boundary between highly weathered granitic rock and weathered granitic rock was identified at about 50 m depth. The inclinometer monitoring detected slight movement at this depth. Therefore, the present day risk of a landslide forming at 50 m is higher than for one forming at either 21 or 31 m. The landslide dynamic parameters obtained from the ring shear test of the 50-m-deep sample were used in an integrated numerical simulation model LS-RAPID. The simulation result gave the critical pore-pressure ratio for landslide occurrence, and landslide’s likely maximum speed, total volume, and depth of landslide debris that could cover the railway. These estimates serve to raise awareness of the vulnerability of the Vietnam national railway sector to landslide impact.     

Dam deformation analysis based on BPNN merging models

Hydropower has made a significant contribution to the economic development of Vietnam, thus it is important to monitor the safety of hydropower dams for the good of the country and the people. In this paper, dam horizontal displacement is analyzed and then forecasted using three methods: the multi-regression model, the seasonal integrated auto-regressive moving average (SARIMA) model and the back-propagation neural network (BPNN) merging models. The monitoring data of the Hoa Binh Dam in Vietnam, including horizontal displacement, time, reservoir water level, and air temperature, are used for the experiments. The results indicate that all of these three methods can approximately describe the trend of dam deformation despite their different forecast accuracies. Hence, their short-term forecasts can provide valuable references for the dam safety.     

Modal control of seismic structures using augmented state matrix

In conventional methods of modal control, the number of controllable structural modes is usually restrained by the number of sensors that feedback the structural signals. In this paper a modal control scheme where the feedback gain is formulated in an augmented state space is proposed. The advantage of the proposed method is that it increases the number of the controllable modes without adding extra sensors. The method is verified experimentally by an earthquake simulation test with a full‐scale building model. The proposed modal control was also compared with the conventional ones in the test. For the building model tested, the performance of the proposed control with only one feedback signal can be as efficient as that of modal control with full state feedback. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multiple seismic attribute analyses for determination of bottom simulating reflector of gas hydrate seismic data in the Ulleung Basin of Korea

The bottom simulating reflector (BSR), the boundary between the gas hydrate and the free gas zone, is considered to be the most common evidence in seismic data analysis for gas hydrate exploration. Multiple seismic attribute analyses of reflectivity and acoustic impedance from the post-stack deconvolution and complex analysis of instantaneous attribute properties including the amplitude envelope, instantaneous frequency, phase, and first derivative of the amplitude of seismic data have been used to effectively confirm the existence of a BSR as the base of gas hydrate stability zone. In this paper, we consider individual seismic attribute analysis and integrate the results of those attributes to locate the position of the BSR. The outputs from conventional seismic data processing of the gas hydrate data set in the Ulleung Basin were used as inputs for multiple analyses. Applying multiple attribute analyses to the individual seismic traces showed that the identical anomalies found in two-way travel time (TWT) between 3.1 and 3.2 s from the results of complex analyses and l ₁ norm deconvolution indicated the location of the BSR.     

2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene in soil and groundwater under a waste lagoon at the former Explosives Factory Maribyrnong (EFM), Victoria, Australia

Energetic materials contamination was investigated at the former Explosives Factory Maribyrnong, Victoria, Australia. Spectrophotometric/high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis was utilised to delineate a 5 tonne crystalline 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) source in a former process waste lagoon that was found to be supplying contaminant leachate to the surficial clay aquitard with a maximum-recorded concentration of 7.0 ppm TNT. Groundwater within underlying sand and gravel aquifers was found to be uncontaminated due to upward hydraulic gradients resulting in slow plume development and propagation. Adsorption and microcosm test results from a parallel study were used as input parameters to simulate aqueous TNT transport in the clay aquitard using ATRANS20 software. The simulated TNT plume was localised within a few metres of the source, and at steady state, though leaching rate calculations suggest that without mitigation or other changes to the system, persistence of the source would be approximately 2,000 years. Remediation strategies may involve removal of the near surface source zone and infilling with an impermeable capping to impede leaching while facilitating ongoing natural attenuation by anaerobic degradation.     

Identification of anthropogenic radionuclides in the Song Hong (Red) and Song Da (Black) river basins of Vietnam

The concentration and distribution of U were measured in zircon samples separated from the streambed sediments collected at different sites along the rivers of northern Vietnam using semiconductor alpha spectrometry and alpha- and fission-track autoradiography. Based on the absolute U content and distribution, we distinguished two groups of zircon grains of different origin. Group 1 zircons have relatively low and uniform U contents ranging from 280 to 440 μg/g. Group 2 zircons are characterized by heterogeneous U distribution and U contents ranging from 490 to 2040μg/g. The determination of absolute alpha activity values and alpha spectrometric characteristics for a number of group 2 zircon grains indicated the presence of relatively short-lived alpha-emitters. These radionuclides are probably ²¹⁰Po, ²³²U, ²³⁶Pu, ²⁴¹Am, and ²⁴³Am, and all of them can originate exclusively from anthropogenic sources. A comparison of the observed alpha activity values for group 2 zircons with those of group 1 zircons and zircons separated from the suspended colloids in river water samples provided conclusive evidence for traces of anthropogenic radioactive contamination in the Lao Cai, Yen Bai, Tuyen Quang, Thac Ba, Viet Tri, and Hanoi streams flowing in the Song Hong (Red) and Song Da (Black) river basins of northern Vietnam and sourced in the southern regions of the neighboring state.