Bar development in a fluvial sandstone (Westphalian 'A'), Scotland

The fluvial sandstone beneath the Mill Coal in the Westphalian ‘A’ of Scotland erosively overlies a lake mudstone. Slightly erosive surfaces within the sandstone, traceable for over 200 m, are used to divide it into two types of major sedimentary units termed type A and type B. Type A sand units are approximately 200 m wide, up to 7 m thick, convex upward, and lenticular in all directions. The constituent cosets overlap to the ENE and dip mainly at 1–2° downcurrent (NNW), but locally at 10–15°. Where thickest, type A sand units display a vertical facies sequence commencing with trough cross-bedded and massive sandstone, overlain by a thick zone of ripple cross-lamination, a thin zone of trough cross-beds, and a variably eroded silt drape up to 0.4 m thick. Attenuated lateral margins are dominated by flat bedded sandstone with primary current lineation. Type A sand units are interpreted as deposits which were accreted on to a large fluvial bar during successive flood events. The bar is thought to have had a similar topographic significance to sand waves described from the Brahmaputra and slip face bounded bars observed in the South Saskatchewan river. Palaeocurrents measured from trough cross-bed sets 0.3–1.0 m thick within type B sand units indicate flow to the WSW, perpendicular to the palaeoflow direction measured from type A units. In sections perpendicular to the WSW flow direction type B units are lenticular, and in ENE-WSW trending sections they can be traced for over 80 m at a constant thickness. Type B sand units are interpreted as the product of low stage channels which flowed across bar fronts and tops. The sandstone described herein is interpreted as a braided-type river deposit but is atypical, because it is fine grained and has an internal structure dominated by ripple cross-lamination and upper phase plane beds. The palaeoriver is thought to have been of low sinuosity, 7–10 m deep, with a high suspended load and large rapidly fluctuating discharge. At low stage a braided-type flow pattern developed around submerged bars. The regime of the palaeoriver was probably controlled by the fine sediment grain size and humid tropical climate.     

The visualization of socio-economic GIS data using virtual reality tools

This paper addresses two issues: the use of 'realistic' environments for the visualization of socio-economic data, and the use of virtual reality tools for the exploration of data from existing GIS databases. 'Realistic' is here used in a narrow sense to imply the reconstruction of real-world scenes in which major components of the physical environment are reconstructed to facilitate geographical visualization. A review of visualization techniques for geographically-referenced 3-D data is presented, and the translation of an existing urban GIS database into virtual reality modelling language (VRML) demonstrated for a study area in Cardiff, UK. This work shows that the export of conventional 2-D GIS data into virtual reality toolkits can be relatively straightforward, and offers exciting new avenues for visualization and exploration. We argue that some of the parameters of the true scene such as colour, building shape, and texture may be directly modified in order to represent otherwise unobservable socio-economic characteristics, in the spirit of exploratory data analysis. These issues are of particular importance in the context of current advances towards the dynamic linkage of GIS and virtual reality modelling.     

High‐pressure phases in shock‐induced melt veins of the Umbarger L6 chondrite: Constraints of shock pressure

Abstract— We report a previously undocumented set of high‐pressure minerals in shock‐induced melt veins of the Umbarger L6 chondrite. High‐pressure minerals were identified with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) using selected area electron diffraction and energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy. Ringwoodite (Fa₃₀), akimotoite (En₁₁Fs₈₉), and augite (En₄₂Wo₃₃Fs₂₅) were found in the silicate matrix of the melt vein, representing the crystallization from a silicate melt during the shock pulse. Ringwoodite (Fa₂₇) and hollandite‐structured plagioclase were also found as polycrystalline aggregates in the melt vein, representing solid state transformation or melting with subsequent crystallization of entrained host rock fragments in the vein. In addition, Fe₂SiO₄‐spinel (Fa₆₆‐Fa₉₉) and stishovite crystallized from a FeO‐SiO₂‐rich zone in the melt vein, which formed by shock melting of FeO‐SiO₂‐rich material that had been altered and metasomatized before shock. Based on the pressure stabilities of the high‐pressure minerals, ringwoodite, akimotoite, and Ca‐clinopyroxene, the melt vein crystallized at approximately 18 GPa. The Fe₂SiO₄‐spinel + stishovite assemblage in the FeO‐SiO₂‐rich melts is consistent with crystallization of the melt vein matrix at the pressure up to 18 GPa. The crystallization pressure of ?18 GPa is much lower than the 45–90 GPa pressure one would conclude from the S6 shock effects in melt veins (Stöffler et al. 1991) and somewhat less than the 25–30 GPa inferred from S5 shock effects (Schmitt 2000) found in the bulk rock.