Distribution,habitat and movement of juvenile smooth hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna zygaena) in northern New Zealand

The smooth hammerhead shark, Sphyrna zygaena, occurs in warm temperate waters around the northern North Island of New Zealand. Commercial fishing records and research trawl survey data were used to determine their distribution. Highest catch rates were recorded in relatively sheltered bays and coastlines along the northeast coast of North Island. Neonate and juvenile sharks use shallow coastal waters and large harbours and estuaries as nursery areas up to an age of two years and total length of 150?cm. Five sharks were electronically tagged but two apparently died and three (137–160?cm total length) returned useful data. Two tagged sharks remained in or near the Bay of Islands for 6–55 days after tagging, moving extensively through the bay. A third shark moved about 155?km southeast in 250 days. That shark spent 70 days mostly shallower than 10?m (94% of time) with occasional dives to 40?m. Thereafter, it oscillated between the surface and depths of 60?80?m, with most time (55%) being spent at 40?60?m. Maximum recorded depth was 144?m.     

Structural inversion and its controls : examples from the Alpine foreland and the French Alps

Abstract

Positive structural inversion involves the uplift of rocks on the hanging-walls of faults, by dip slip or oblique slip movements. Controlling factors include the strike and dip of the earlier normal faults, the type of normal faults — whether they were listric or rotated blocks, the time lapsed since extension and the amount of contraction relative to extension. Steeply dipping faults are difficult to invert by dip slip movements; they form buttresses to displacement on both cover detachments and on deeper level but gently inclined basement faults. The decrease in displacement on the hanging-walls of such steep buttresses leads to the generation of layer parallel shortening, gentle to tight folds — depending on the amount of contractional displacement, back-folds and back-thrust systems, and short-cut thrust geometries — where the contractional fault slices across the footwall of the earlier normal fault to enclose a “floating horse”. However, early steeply dipping normal faults readily form oblique to strike slip inversion structures and often tramline the subsequent shortening into particular directions.

Examples are given from the strongly inverted structures of the western Alps and the weakly inverted structures of the Alpine foreland. Extensional faulting developed during the Triassic to Jurassic, during the initial opening of the central Atlantic, while the main phases of inversion date from the end Cretaceous when spreading began in the north Atlantic and there was a change of relative motion between Europe and Africa. During the mid-Tertiary well over 100 km of Alpine shortening took place; Alpine thrusts, often detached along, or close to, the basement-cover interface, stacking the late Jurassic to Cretaceous sediments of the post-extensional subsidence phase. These high level detachments were joined and breached by lower level faults in the basement which, in the external zones of the western Alps, generally reactivated and rotated the earlier east dipping half-graben bounding faults. The external massifs are essentially uplifted half-graben blocks. There was more reactivation and stacking of basement sheets in the eastern part of this external zone, where the faults had been rotated into more gentle dips above a shallower extensional detachment than on the steeper faults to the west.

There is no direct relationship between the weaker inversion of the Alpine foreland and the major orogenic contraction of the western Alps; the inversion structures of southern Britain and the Channel were separated from the Alps by a zone of rifting from late Eocene to Miocene which affected the Rhone, Bresse and Rhine regions. Though they relate to the same plate movements which formed the Alps, the weaker inversion structures must have been generated by within plate stresses, or from those emanating from the Atlantic rather than the Tethyan margin.     

Surge zones in the Moine thrust zone of NW Scotland

The Caledonian thrust zones of Assynt show several examples of large fault-bounded structures, surge zones, up to 8 km² in extent, which have moved further than adjacent rocks. Extensional faults can be traced into strike-slip faults and then to contractional imbricate faults. There are also zones of extensional and contractional flow as shown by strained bioturbation marks in the Cambrian Pipe Rock.Several other low-angle extensional fault zones have been recognized along the length of the Moine thrust zone, notably in the Kinlochewe district. Recognition of these extensional faults and local surge zones has solved several local problems such as the lack of continuity of the Glencoul thrust and the out-of-sequence character of some of the large low-angle faults. Though the thrust propagation direction was generally from east to west, in the transport direction, several of the eastern faults have been reactivated later and locally cut down as extensional faults. The ‘so-called’ Moine thrust shows extensional fault movement at several localities along its length.The extensional structures and the surge zones suggest that body forces have been important in driving the faults rather than just a push from the rear. The Moines and Moine thrust zone were presumably driven to the WNW by gravity spreading and thinning of the main Scottish Caledonides.     

The Okahandja Lineament and its significance for Damaran tectonics in Namibia

The Okahandja Lineament is considered to represent the southern margin of a magmatic arc produced by the northerly subduction of the Damran Ocean between 750 and 520 Ma ago. Sediments of the Orogen and granitoid intrusives produced by subduction and crustal melting, underwent shear deformation between 675 and 575 Ma in a low angle zone of sinistral sense shear.The Okahandja Lineament represents a zone of differential movement between the Central and Southern Zones of the Orogen during this simple shear deformation. Both overriding and overriden plates were deformed at about 550 and 520 Ma. Production of open S.E. verging structures on the northern plate was accompanied by more intense thrust and fold nappe production on the southern margin of the Damaran Orogen. During this last deformation event, the Central magmatic Zone was downfolded under the southern zone. This fold is the present expression of the Okahandja Lineament. Two tectonic models are proposed for the structures identified within the Central and Southern Zones of the Orogen, combined with evidence from the northern coastal arm of the Orogen.

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Zusammenfassung Das Okahandja-Lineament wird als der Südrand eines magmatischen Bogens (Wurzelzone eines Inselbogens) verstanden, der auf die nordwÄrts gerichtete Subduktion des Damara Ozeans von 750 bis 520 Ma zurückgeführt wird. Die Sedimente des Orogens und die granitoiden Intrusiva, die durch Subduktion und daraus folgender Aufschmelzung der Kruste entstanden, erlitten mehrfache linksgerichtete Scherdeformation entlang einer flachliegenden Zone zwischen 675 und 575 Ma.Das Okahandja-Lineament stellt eine Zone von Teilbewegungen dar für die einfachen Scherdeformationen zwischen der zentralen und der südlichen Zone des Orogens. Die hangende und die liegende Platte wurden zwischen ca. 550 und 520 Ma deformiert. In der nördlichen Platte wurden offene SE-vergente Strukturen gebildet, wÄhrend gleichzeitig am südlichen Rand des Damara-Orogens durch die grö\ere Beanspruchung Falten-Decken entstanden. Dabei wurde die zentrale magmatische Zone unter die südliche Zone gebogen. Diese Falte ist das heutige Erscheinungsbild des Okahandja Lineaments.Zwei tektonische Modelle werden dargelegt, um die erkannten Strukturen in der zentralen und südlichen Zone des Orogens unter Verwendung der Evidenz vom nördlichen Küstenarm des Orogens zu erklÄren.

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Résumé Le linéament de Okahandja est considéré comme la marge bordant au sud un «arc magmatique» résultant de la subduction vers le nord de l'Océan damaranique durant l'intervalle 750-520 M. a. - Les sédiments de l'orogène et les intrusions granitoÏdes produites par la subduction et par la fusion de la croûte subirent, entre 675 et 575 M. a., de nobreuses déformations cisaillantes, sénestres, le long d'une zone faiblement inclinée.Le linéament de Okahandja représente, pour les déformations cisaillantes simples une zone de déplacements partiels entre la zone centrale et la zone méridionale de l'orogène. Les deux plaques, celle du toit et celle du mur, de ce chevauchement furent déformées entre approximativement 550 et 520 M. a. Ces structures ouvertes, déversées vers le nord, se formèrent dans la plaque septentrionale, pendant que des nappes en plis naissaient simultanément, sous l'influence d'une forte so sollicitation, dans la marge méridionale de l'orogène damaranique, ce qui entraÎna le ploiement de la zone magmatique centrale sous la zone méridionale. Ce pli est la forme sous laquelle apparaÎt aujourd'hui le linéament de Okahandja.Deux modèles tectoniques sont proposés pour expliqeur les structures ainsi reconnues dans les zones centrale et méridionale de l'orogène, sur la base du fait d'un bras le long de la cÔte septentrionale de l'orogène.

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Karst springs in the Vale of Kashmir

The Vale of Kashmir is an ovoid basin surrounded by Triassic limestone mountains rising to over 4000 m. At the eastern end of the Vale a group of five large karst springs occurs with a combined mean annual discharge of 9 m³/sec. Two of the springs could be supplied by their immediate limestone hinterlands. Leakage from clastic rocks into the limestone mass must partially supply two other springs. A dye test was carried out to confirm the hydrologic connection between the fifth spring and sinks along the bank of the Bringi River, 14 km from this spring. There was no structural or lithologic control for the spring positions, which were at the lowest hydrologic points of the limestone blocks.     

Snapper (Chrysophrys auratus): a review of life history and key vulnerabilities in New Zealand

Snapper (Chrysophrys auratus) is an important coastal fish species in New Zealand for a variety of reasons, but the large amount of research conducted on snapper has not been reviewed. Here, we review life history information and potential threats for snapper in New Zealand. We present information on snapper life history, defining stages (eggs and larvae, juvenile and adult), and assess potential threats and knowledge gaps. Overall we identify six key points: 1. post-settlement snapper are highly associated with certain estuarine habitats that are under threat from land-based stressors. This may serve as a bottleneck for snapper populations; 2. the largest knowledge gaps relate to the eggs and larvae. Additional knowledge may help to anticipate the effects of climate change, which will likely have the greatest influence on these early life stages; 3. ocean acidification, from land-based sources and from climate change, may be an important threat to larval snapper; 4. a greater understanding of population connectivity would improve certainty around the sustainability of fishery exploitation; 5. the collateral effects of fishing are likely to be relevant to fishery productivity, ecosystem integrity and enduser value; 6. our understanding of the interrelationships between snapper and other ecosystem components is still deficient.     

Simulating a stochastic background of gravitational waves from neutron star formation at cosmological distances

We develop a temporal simulation of the potentially detectable gravitational wave background from neutron star formation at cosmological distances. By using a recent model for the evolving star formation rate, we investigate the statistical distribution of gravitational wave amplitudes due to supernovae that result in neutron star formation in the Einstein–de Sitter cosmology. We find that the gravitational wave amplitude distribution in our frame is highly skewed, with skewness related to the distribution of sources, and that the potentially detectable gravitational wave strain is dominated by sources at a redshift of     . Time traces of the simulation, using selected waveforms, are presented graphically and are also made available as web-based audio files. The method developed can readily be extended to different cosmologies, as well as to incorporate other waveforms and source types. This type of simulation will be useful in testing and optimizing detection strategies for gravitational wave backgrounds due to various types of individually undetectable astrophysical sources.