Including spatial distribution in a data‐driven rainfall‐runoff model to improve reservoir inflow forecasting in Taiwan

Multi‐step ahead inflow forecasting has a critical role to play in reservoir operation and management in Taiwan during typhoons as statutory legislation requires a minimum of 3‐h warning to be issued before any reservoir releases are made. However, the complex spatial and temporal heterogeneity of typhoon rainfall, coupled with a remote and mountainous physiographic context, makes the development of real‐time rainfall‐runoff models that can accurately predict reservoir inflow several hours ahead of time challenging. Consequently, there is an urgent, operational requirement for models that can enhance reservoir inflow prediction at forecast horizons of more than 3 h. In this paper, we develop a novel semi‐distributed, data‐driven, rainfall‐runoff model for the Shihmen catchment, north Taiwan. A suite of Adaptive Network‐based Fuzzy Inference System solutions is created using various combinations of autoregressive, spatially lumped radar and point‐based rain gauge predictors. Different levels of spatially aggregated radar‐derived rainfall data are used to generate 4, 8 and 12 sub‐catchment input drivers. In general, the semi‐distributed radar rainfall models outperform their less complex counterparts in predictions of reservoir inflow at lead times greater than 3 h. Performance is found to be optimal when spatial aggregation is restricted to four sub‐catchments, with up to 30% improvements in the performance over lumped and point‐based models being evident at 5‐h lead times. The potential benefits of applying semi‐distributed, data‐driven models in reservoir inflow modelling specifically, and hydrological modelling more generally, are thus demonstrated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Field-Scale Evaluation of Bioaugmentation Dosage for Treating Chlorinated Ethenes

A field demonstration was performed to evaluate the impacts of bioaugmentation dosage for treatment of chlorinated ethenes in a sandy-to-silty shallow aquifer. Specifically, bioaugmentation using a commercially available Dehalococcoides (DHC)-containing culture was performed in three separate groundwater recirculation loops, with one loop bioaugmented with 3.9 × 10¹¹ DHC, the second loop bioaugmented with 3.9 × 10¹² DHC, and the third loop bioaugmented with 3.9 × 10¹³ DHC. Groundwater monitoring was performed to evaluate DHC growth and migration, dechlorination rates, and aquifer geochemistry. The loop inoculated with 3.9 × 10¹² DHC showed slower dechlorination rates and DHC migration/growth compared with the other loops. This relatively poor performance was attributed to low pH conditions. Results for the loops inoculated with 3.9 × 10¹¹ and 3.9 × 10¹³ DHC showed similar timeframes for dechlorination, as evaluated at a monitoring well approximately 10 feet downgradient of the DHC injection well. Application of a recently developed one-dimensional bioaugmentation fate and transport screening model provided a reasonable prediction of the data in these two loops. Overall, these results suggest that increasing bioaugmentation dosage does not necessarily result in decreased dechlorination timeframes in the field. The ability to predict results suggests that modeling potentially can serve as an effective tool for determining bioaugmentation dosage and predicting overall remedial timeframes.     

Assessing the effectiveness of non-structural flood management measures in the Thames Estuary under conditions of socio-economic and environmental change

Risk analysis and appraisal of the benefits of structural flood risk management measures such as embankments is well established. Here, a method to quantify, over extended timescales, the effectiveness of non-structural measures such as land use spatial planning, insurance and flood resilient construction is presented. The integrated approach couples socio-economic and climate change scenarios with long term land use modelling and flood risk analysis to generate maps and time series of expected annual damages. The analysis has been applied on a case study in the Thames Estuary in the UK. Stakeholders helped develop a number of scenarios that might lead to substantial changes in existing planning and insurance policies in the UK. The effectiveness of these changes was analysed and showed the substantial benefits in terms of reduction of future flood risks that are achievable with changes in planning policy, financial incentives and resilient property construction in the floodplain. Moreover, the reward can be increased through earlier action. Subsequently, the benefits of a range of policies are explored under the UK Foresight socio-economic scenarios. Different structural and non structural flood management interventions are tested and the results demonstrate that despite the potential for large increases in flood risk in the Thames Estuary, in all scenarios substantial flood risk reductions are possible. The effectiveness of non-structural measures is however sensitive to socio-economic changes and governance arrangements. The analysis described here will help to identify portfolios of non-structural and structural options that are robust to uncertainties.     

Experimental Study of Factors Controlling Sorption of Heavy Metals on Ariake Clay and Implication for Practice

A series of batch tests have been presented to investigate the effects of solid-solution contact time, solid:solution ratio, and pH of solution on sorption of Cd²⁺ and Pb²⁺ on Ariake clay from Kyushu region of Japan. The results show that, among the three investigated factors, solid:solution ratio (SD/SN) seems to be the crucial controlling factor. The Freundlich sorption parameters determined from the batch tests were applied to a typical field landfill in which the Ariake clay was used as soil barrier. The impacts of the landfill were assessed by numerical analysis. Based on the analysis result, the significance of selecting proper solid:solution ratio for determining sorption parameters from batch test has been discussed.     

Spatial heterogeneity of epibenthos on artificial reefs: fouling communities in the early stages of colonization on an East Australian shipwreck

Artificial reefs are spatially complex habitats and serve as good model systems to study patterns of community succession and the response of epibiota to environmental clines over small spatial scales. Here, we quantified spatial heterogeneity in community composition and diversity of fouling communities across a number of environmental gradients that included water depth, surface orientation of habitats, exposure to currents, and shelter. Assemblage structure was quantified by spatially replicated photo transects on a recently scuttled large navy ship off the East Australian coast, lying in 27 m of water. A rich assemblage of epifauna had colonized the wreck within a year, dominated by barnacles, sponges and bryozoans. Community structure varied significantly over small spatial scales of meters to tens of meters. Depth, surface orientation and exposure were the major environmental drivers. Assemblages were substantially less diverse and abundant on the deepest (23 m near the seafloor) part of the hull with residual antifouling paint, on sheltered surfaces inside the wreck, and on the sediment‐laden horizontal surfaces. Overall, the wrecks’ habitat complexity corresponds with small‐scale heterogeneity in the fouling communities. This study supports the notion that wrecks enhance local diversity and biomass within the habitat mosaic of their location, and habitat complexity may be an important mechanism for this, as demonstrated by the large spatial variability in the assemblages documented here.     

Triassic palaeosols in the upper narrabeen group of New South Wales

Detailed study of palaeosols in the sea cliffs between Long Reef and Palm Beach, north of Sydney, has given a much clearer idea of the environment and climate of the area during the late Scythian to early Anisian portion of Triassic time.

At the base of the exposed succession, kaolinitic clayey soils with red B horizons were formed on volcanogenic sediments derived from the old Gerringong volcanic ridge to the east. The red Bald Hill Claystone consists largely of soil material, both in place and resorted. These were grey‐brown podzolic soils (ferrods) formed on well‐drained sites under coniferous forest. Humic gleys (fibrists) within the overlying Garie Formation were probably lowland catenary equivalents formed under Dicroidium, Voltziopsis, and equisetalean swamp woodland.

These soils were drowned by the relative rise of the Narrabeen lagoonal complex and the concomitant southward growth of sediments of the Gosford Delta. These sediments formed the lower Newport Formation, of clean quartz‐lithic sandstone and grey kaolinite‐illite shale, derived from an extensive source land to the north and west. The most widespread soils in the delta were gleyed podzolic soils (aquods) under Dicroidium heath. Younger soils of a similar type (alluvial soils or aquents) also supported Dicroidium heath in low‐lying areas and Pleuromeia meadows in interdistributary bays. On slightly more elevated areas a more oxidized gleyed podzolic soil (ochrept) developed. On clayey levees, grey clay soils (fluvents) formed under a Dicroidium flora locally dominated by Taeniopteris lentriculiformis.

Few palaeosols are preserved in the upper Newport Formation and Hawkesbury Sandstone because of the more frequent channel reworking of the floodplain during their deposition.

The dominance of podzols is compatible with a cool temperate climate.     

Seasonal δS variations in two high elevation snow pits measured by S-S double spike thermal ionization mass spectrometry

δ³⁴S and sulfate concentrations were determined in snow pit samples using a thermal ionization mass spectrometric technique capable of 0.2‰ accuracy and requires ≈5 μg (0.16 μmol) natural S. The technique utilizes a ³³S-³⁶S double spike for instrumental mass fractionation correction, and has been applied to snow pit samples collected from the Inilchek Glacier, Kyrgyzstan and from Summit, Greenland. These δ³⁴S determinations provide the first high-resolution seasonal data for these sites, and are used to estimate seasonal sulfate sources. Deuterium (δD) and oxygen (δ¹⁸O) isotope data show that the Inilchek and Summit snow pit samples represent precipitation over ≈20 months.The δ³⁴S values for the Inilchek ranged from +2.6 ± 0.4‰ to +7.6 ± 0.4‰ on sample sizes ranging from 0.3 to 1.8 μmol S. δ³⁴S values for Greenland ranged from +3.6 ± 0.7‰ to +13.3 ± 5‰ for sample sizes ranging from 0.05 to 0.29 μmol S. The concentration ranged from 92.6 ± 0.4 to 1049 ± 4 ng/g for the Inilchek and 18 ± 9 to 93 ± 6 ng/g for the Greenland snow pit. Anthropogenic sulfate dominates throughout the sampled time interval for both sites based on mass balance considerations. Additionally, both sites exhibit a seasonal signature in both δ³⁴S and concentration. The thermal ionization mass spectrometric technique has three advantages compared to gas source isotopic methods: (1) sample size requirements of this technique are 10-fold less permitting access to the higher resolution S isotope record of low concentration snow and ice, (2) the double spike technique permits δ³⁴S and S concentration to be determined simultaneously, and (3) the double spike is an internal standard.     

Structure of the crust and upper mantle in Canada

The seismic probing of the crust and upper mantle in Canada started in 1938 and since then has involved many government and university groups using a wide variety of techniques. These have included simple profiling with both wide and narrow station spacing, areal time-term surveys, detailed deep reflection experiments, very long-range refraction studies and the analysis of surface wave dispersion between stations of the Canadian Standard Network.

A review of the published interpretation leads to the general conclusion that:

1. (1) P_n-velocities vary from a value possibly as low as 7.7 km/sec under Vancouver Island to 8.6 km/sec and higher in the extreme eastern part of the shield and some parts of the Atlantic coast.

2. (2) Large areas of Canada have a crustal thickness of 30–40 km, with Vancouver Island, the southwestern Prairies, the Lake Superior basin and parts of the eastern shield of Quebec being thicker. No continental area in Canada is known to have a crust thinner than 29 km.

3. (3) The Riel discontinuity — a deep intra-crustal reflector and sometime refractor, is widely reported in the Prairies and Manitoba. It is not seen to the north in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake, nor in the Hudson Bay, Lake Superior and Maritime regions, nor in the interior of British Columbia. It may be present in some areas of the eastern shield.

4. (4) As experiments have become more detailed, crustal structures of greater complexity have been revealed. The concept that crustal structure becomes simpler with increasing depth is apparently unfounded.

Long-range refraction studies suggest that the Gutenberg P-wave low-velocity channel is poorly developed under the Canadian Shield. The analysis of the dispersion of surface waves, however, suggests that the channel is better developed for S-waves, and is present throughout the country. The lid of the channel is deepest under the central shield and shallowest under the Cordillera.     

Cloning of a chub metallothionein cDNA and development of competitive RT-PCR of chub metallothionein mRNA as a potential biomarker of heavy metal exposure

Metallothionein has been assayed in a range of aquatic animal tissues as an indicator of metal exposure. We sequenced chub (Leuciscus cephalus) metallothionein cDNA which showed over 90% homology to common carp, goldfish and stone loach and 77% homology to rainbow trout sequences for metallothionein. We then used the extended primer method to develop an accurate quantitative competitive RT-PCR assay for metallothionein mRNA. RT-PCR was used to measure metallothionein mRNA in feral chub from a range of field sites, with different levels of heavy metal pollution, in the West Midlands, UK. Measurements were complemented by analysis of liver and gill metallothionein protein by capillary electrophoresis. There was no significant difference in the metallothionein protein levels between fish of different rivers and there was no evidence of elevation of mRNA at the sites of highest metal exposure. The level of metal exposure (e.g. zinc, nickel and cadmium each ranging between 15 and 28 microg/l ) at the pH (7.5-8.5) of these rivers appears insufficient to elevate hepatic or gill metallothionein in chub. A lack of elevation of hepatic metallothionein mRNA in chub exposed to zinc, copper and manganese for 24 h and 10 days in the laboratory also suggests a non-responsiveness of this species.