River basin approach and integrated water management: Governance pitfalls for the Dutch Space-Water-Adjustment Management Principle

This article describes the turn to new integrative water management strategies in the Netherlands. It illustrates that some of the new and the general objectives and principles are not easily applied in practice. First, the article focuses on the development of integrative management of water and spatial development. A main policy line, the ‘Room for the River’ directive, was originally an ad hoc reaction to unexpected floods, but accompanied by other policy reforms it grew into an application of the river basin approach with an emphasis on its spatial consequences. The resulting Space-Water-Adjustment Management Principle (SWAMP) emphasizes the mutual adjustments in policy that must be made in both water policy and spatial development. Officially, water is proclaimed as an ordering element, yet actual spatial developments still follow lines of economic and social priorities as executed by institutional powers. Three case studies are presented to illustrate the emergence of new principles and governance issues linked to these management approaches. In practice, the paper concludes, spatial planning and land use decisions show a centralization tendency that is not in line with the proclaimed prevalence of local identity, resilience and open decentralized and deliberative governance in the SWAMP-based integrated river basin management.     

Scour holes and ripples occur below the hydraulic smooth to rough transition of movable beds

Scour holes often form in shallow flows over sand on the beach and in morphodynamic scale experiments of river reaches, deltas and estuarine landscapes. The scour holes are on average 2 cm deep and 5 cm long, regardless of the flow depth and appear to occur under similar conditions as current ripples: at low boundary Reynolds numbers, in fine sand and under relatively low sediment mobility. In landscape experiments, where the flow is only about 1 cm deep, such scours may be unrealistically large and have unnatural effects on channel formation, bar pattern and stratigraphy. This study tests the hypotheses that both scours and ripples occur in the same conditions and that the roughness added by sediment saltation explains the difference between the ripple–dune transition and the clear‐water hydraulic smooth to rough transition. About 500 experiments are presented with a range of sediment types, sediment mobility and obstructions to provoke scour holes, or removal thereof to assess scour hole persistence. Most experiments confirm that ripples and scour holes both form in the ripple stability field in two different bedform stability diagrams. The experiments also show that scours can be provoked by perturbations even below generalized sediment motion. Moreover, the hydraulic smooth to rough transition modified with saltation roughness depending on sediment mobility was similar in magnitude and in slope to ripple–dune transitions. Given uncertainties in saltation relations, the smooth to rough transitions modified for movable beds are empirically equivalent to the ripple–dune transitions. These results are in agreement with the hypothesis that scours form by turbulence caused by localized flow separation under low boundary Reynolds numbers, and do not form under generalized flow separation over coarser particles and intense sediment saltation. Furthermore, this suggests that ripples are a superposition of two independent forms: periodic bedforms occurring in smooth and rough conditions plus aperiodic scours occurring only in hydraulic smooth conditions.     

Effects of in situ remediation on the speciation and bioavailability of zinc in a smelter contaminated soil

We report results from an extensive study on the speciation of zinc (Zn) and its relation to the mobility and bioavailablity of this element in a smelter contaminated soil and an in situ remediated area of this soil 12 yr after the application of cyclonic ash and compost. Emphasis was placed on the role of neoformed precipitates in controlling Zn speciation, mobility and bioavailability under different environmental conditions. Twelve years after remediation, the pH of the treated and non-treated soil differed by only 0.5 pH unit. Using state-of-the-art electron and X-ray microscopies in combination with micro-focused extended X-ray absorption fine structure (μ-EXAFS) spectroscopy, no major differences in Zn speciation were found between samples of the treated and non-treated soil. In both soils, 30% to 50% of Zn was present in smelter related minerals (willemite, hemimorphite or gahnite), while 50% to 70% of Zn was incorporated into newly formed Zn precipitates. Contrary to the non-treated soil, the treated soil did not contain gahnite or sphalerite; it is possible that these minerals were dissolved under the higher pH conditions at the time of treatment. Desorption experiments, using a stirred flow technique with a 0.1 mol/L CaCl₂ (pH 6.5) and a HNO₃ (pH 4.0) solution were employed to determine the exchangeable Zn fraction and the Zn fraction which will be mobilized under more extreme weathering conditions, respectively. No significant differences were found in desorption behavior between the treated vs. non-treated soil. Bioavailability tests, using the R. metallidurans AE1433 biosensor showed that ∼8% of total Zn was bioavailable in both the treated and non-treated soils. It was concluded that the incorporation of Zn into newly formed precipitates in both the treated and non treated soils leads to a significant natural attenuation of the exchangeable/bioavailable Zn fraction at near neutral pH conditions. At lower pHs, conditions not favorable to the formation of Zn precipitates, the pool of Zn associated with the secondary Zn precipitates is potentially more bioavailable.     

Observing Forbush decreases in cloud atShetland

Meteorological measurements from Lerwick Observatory, Shetland (60°09′N, 1°08′W), are compared with short-term changes in Climax neutron counter cosmic ray measurements. For transient neutron count reductions of 10–12%, broken cloud becomes at least 10% more frequent on the neutron minimum day, above expectations from sampling. This suggests a rapid timescale (～1 day) cloud response to cosmic ray changes. However, larger or smaller neutron count reductions do not coincide with cloud responses exceeding sampling effects. Larger events are too rare to provide a robust signal above the sampling noise. Smaller events are too weak to be observed above the natural variability.     

A tale of two planets: geomorphology applied to Mars' surface,fluvio‐deltaic processes and landforms

Deltas on planet Mars record past climate, but so far a wide range of hypotheses for their formation have been proposed. The objective of this paper is to understand martian fan deltas, their formative conditions, evolution and formative duration, and implications for the past climate. As an introduction to Mars, physiographic provinces are described and unambiguous proof is listed for the presence of flowing water in the past, such as certain minerals, groundwater, catastrophic outflow channels, alluvial fans and fan deltas, distributary networks and glaciers. The climate history of Mars differs from that of Earth by having had much drier conditions than on Earth, extreme intermittency and extreme events, most of them billions of years ago. Tens of fan deltas, unchannelized fan deltas and stepped fans have been found in impact crater and other lakes. The stepped fans were likely formed by backstepping under fast rising lake levels and have no known terrestrial equivalent. The fan deltas were formed once the lake overflowed. Alluvial fans are much more numerous and formed with less water. The delta studies illustrate how major challenges of martian morphology and reconstruction of past conditions can be taken up most effectively by combinations of the available high‐resolution images and digital elevation models, terrestrial analogues, laboratory experiments and physics‐based models gleaned from geomorphology. To resolve formative mechanisms and time scale of martian fans and deltas, morphological distinctions between dense debris flows and dilute fluvial flows must be identified for both source and sink areas. Furthermore, the properties of the martian surface material are very poorly constrained but can be explored by modelling various mass wasting, fluvial and glacial phenomena and hydrology, and by experimentation with slightly cohesive sediment. Finally, the highly debated role of groundwater sapping in valley and delta formation on Mars should be explored experimentally. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Late Holocene climatic changes in Tierra del Fuego based on multiproxy analyses of peat deposits

A ca. 1400-yr record from a raised bog in Isla Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, registers climate fluctuations, including a Medieval Warm Period, although evidence for the ‘Little Ice Age’ is less clear. Changes in temperature and/or precipitation were inferred from plant macrofossils, pollen, fungal spores, testate amebae, and peat humification. The chronology was established using a ¹⁴C wiggle-matching technique that provides improved age control for at least part of the record compared to other sites. These new data are presented and compared with other lines of evidence from the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. A period of low local water tables occurred in the bog between A.D. 960-1020, which may correspond to the Medieval Warm Period date range of A.D. 950-1045 generated from Northern Hemisphere tree-ring data. A period of cooler and/or wetter conditions was detected between ca. A.D. 1030 and 1100 and a later period of cooler/wetter conditions estimated at ca. cal A.D. 1800-1930, which may correspond to a cooling episode inferred from Law Dome, Antarctica.     

New perspectives on ethnic segregation over time and space. A domains approach

Ethnic segregation has most often been studied at the place of residence, segregation being defined on the basis of the relative presence of different groups within city neighbourhoods. It is increasingly recognized, however, that segregation occurs in different ways in different domains (such as the workplace, leisure, social media, etc.), the residential domain being just one of many in which segregation can occur. In this research note we present the domains approach to segregation and outline some its conceptual, methodological and empirical underpinnings and challenges.