The Little Ice Age recorded in sediments of a small dystrophic mountain lake in southern Poland

We inferred the temperature and environmental conditions of Smreczynski Staw Lake in the Tatra Mountains, southern Poland, from a sediment record covering the last 1,500 years. Paleobiological methods (cladocera, chironomid, and diatom analyses) were used together with sedimentological analysis and dating. These studies provide new information about the timing and character of climate fluctuations during the Little Ice Age (LIA). The Medieval Warm Period ended in the Tatra region at the beginning of the thirteenth century, followed by the first episode of the LIA. The LIA was a relatively long but unstable period. The first part of the LIA was cold in the Tatra Mountains, without evidence of increasing precipitation, while the second part, after AD 1540, was cold and humid. The LIA terminated in the Tatra Mountains at the beginning of the twentieth century, although some aspects of its climatic and sedimentological regime continued until the 1920s. We also found some evidence of warming and acidification during the twentieth century.     

Rate of sedimentation in Lake Kinneret,Israel: spatial and temporal variations

The rate of sedimentation in Lake Kinneret was measured over several years by means of sediment traps, in up to seven different locations in the lake. Gross sedimentation rates measured in the sediment traps vary from about 1·5 kg m⁻² a⁻¹ in the deepest part of the lake up to 10 kg m⁻² a⁻¹ near the mouth of the upper Jordan river. The rate of sedimentation near the Jordan's inflow is highly correlated to flow discharge in the river, while in the centre of the lake the seasonal sedimentation pattern is mainly correlated to the bloom period of Peridinium gatunense. During the bloom period of Peridinium gatunense sedimentation rates all over the lake are very similar, indicating that the Peridinium is evenly distributed in the lake. The average suspended sediment discharge of the upper Jordan river flowing into the lake is 41 000 ton a⁻¹.Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulating pathways of subsurface oil in the Faroe–Shetland Channel using an ocean general circulation model

Little is known about the fate of subsurface hydrocarbon plumes from deep-sea oil well blowouts and their effects on processes and communities. As deepwater drilling expands in the Faroe–Shetland Channel (FSC), oil well blowouts are a possibility, and the unusual ocean circulation of this region presents challenges to understanding possible subsurface oil pathways in the event of a spill. Here, an ocean general circulation model was used with a particle tracking algorithm to assess temporal variability of the oil-plume distribution from a deep-sea oil well blowout in the FSC. The drift of particles was first tracked for one year following release. Then, ambient model temperatures were used to simulate temperature-mediated biodegradation, truncating the trajectories of particles accordingly. Release depth of the modeled subsurface plumes affected both their direction of transport and distance travelled from their release location, and there was considerable interannual variability in transport.     

Testing the anelastic nonhydrostatic model EULAG as a prospective dynamical core of a numerical weather prediction model Part II: Simulations of supercell

The anelastic nonhydrostatic model EULAG is a candidate for the future dynamical core of a numerical weather prediction model. Achieving such an objective requires a number of experiments focused on testing correctness of the solutions and robustness of the solver. In the spirit of this idea, a set of tests related to standard atmospheric problems was performed, of which the two regarding development and evolution of a supercell were employed as benchmarks of moist dynamics of the model. Their results are discussed in this paper. Development and evolution of a stormsystem with a set of characteristic features such as stormsplitting along with the generation of horizontal vorticity and cold pool formation is investigated. In addition, the influence of domain geometry, boundary conditions and subgrid-scale mixing is examined.     

A tale of two institutions: Shaping O?wi?cim-Auschwitz

For the last sixty years, two institutions have shaped the destiny of the town of O?wi?cim in southern Poland. One of these institutions is globally recognised, its history and development widely researched; the other is well known only amongst Polish industrialists, perhaps Polish economic geographers, and amongst the people of O?wi?cim. These two institutions are the Auschwitz State Museum and the chemical firm Dwory SA. Both institutions have their roots in the German Occupation of Poland 1939-1945. This paper presents the tale of these two institutions in order not only to highlight the need to embed memorial sites in their wider contexts, but also to indicate the impact of such sites as political-economic institutions, with the influence to shape social and economic landscapes. In laying out the geographies of the town and its two major institutions, we draw attention to the ways in which Holocaust memorialisation and post-socialist transformation are articulated with each other, not only here in O?wi?cim, and also with wider processes of social, economic, political and cultural change.     

Unusual reaction of diatom assemblage on climate changes during the last millennium: a record from Spitsbergen lake

A sediment core from the Arctic Revvatnet (Hornsund area, SW Spitsbergen, Svalbard) provided data on environmental changes over the last 3100 years. Diatom analysis showing the domination of planktonic Cyclotella forms suggested good edaphic conditions until the middle of the nineteenth century, even during the Little Ice Age. A thermally stratified and relatively stable water column with good mixing allowed small, less heavily silicified Cyclotella sensu lato to develop during this time. The climate warming at the beginning of the twentieth century induced intensification of erosion processes in the catchment of the lake and caused an increase in the sedimentation rate. These processes have caused a lack of thermal stratification by disturbances in the water column and an increase of nutrients, consequently driving changes in the diatom species composition, which became dominated by benthic forms. In this period, almost all planktonic taxa disappeared or abruptly decreased in frequency. Higher temperatures accelerated the melting of nearby glaciers, which caused an increase in the activity of diatoms typical of running waters. Also a few Cladocera species appeared at the first time in the youngest samples.     

Microconchids

Microconchids are a group of tiny, encrusting tubeworms. They appeared in the Late Ordovician, some 450 Myr ago, flourished during the rest of Palaeozoic and Triassic, and became extinct in the Middle Jurassic. Their morphological resemblance to the sedentary polychaete genus Spirorbis, very common in marine environments, misled various authors for decades. This mistake originally gave the genus Spirorbis an enormous stratigraphical range, from Ordovician to Recent. Indeed, microconchids provide an excellent example of evolutionary convergence with respect to both their morphology and ecology. In the late 1970s these ‘spirorbids’ were interpreted as vermetid gastropods on the basis of the inner architecture and microstructure of their tubes. This idea, however, was challenged in the 1990s when detailed microstructural investigation showed them to be neither polychaetes nor gastropods, but closely related to an extinct Palaeozoic enigmatic group of organisms called tentaculitids. No thorough investigation of their origin, phylogeny and ecology has ever been conducted, but new data concerning their palaeobiology has come to the light during the last few years.     

Constraining the degree of the dominant mode in QQ Vir

We present early results of the application of a method which uses multicolor photometry and spectroscopy for ? discrimination. This method has been successfully applied to the pulsating hot subdwarf Balloon?090100001. Here we apply the method to QQ?Vir (PG1325+101). This star was observed spectroscopically and photometrically in 2008. Details on spectroscopy can be found in Telting et al. (Astrophys. Space Sci. 2010, this volume), while photometry and preliminary results on ? discrimination are provided here. The main aim of this work was to compare the value of the ? parameter derived for the main mode in QQ?Vir to previously published values derived by using different methods.     

Barnacle fouling in the Mediterranean sponges Axinella polypoides and Axinella verrucosa

Secondary metabolites protect many marine sponges (Phylum: Porifera) from settlement by fouling organisms. Previous studies on the subtidal demosponge Axinella verrucosa collected in the Western Mediterranean led to the isolation of compounds that inhibited the settlement of cyprids larvae of the intertidal barnacle Balanus amphitrite, and the enzyme chitinase, which plays a key role in the molting cycle of crustaceans. However, in a field survey conducted at three locations in Israel, Eastern Mediterranean Sea, we observed that A. verrucosa is fouled by the subtidal barnacle Balanus trigonus, a previously unknown association. Settlement inhibition assays using B. amphitrite with chemical extracts from Israeli A. verrucosa and Axinella polypoides, a sympatric, congeneric sponge that seems not to be fouled by B. trigonus, showed that cyprid larvae of B. amphitrite were inhibited by the extracts of both sponges from settlement at concentrations several magnitudes lower than natural volumetric extract concentration in the sponges. These results indicate that, unlike the intertidal barnacle B. amphitrite, the subtidal B. trigonus is unaffected by the compounds from A. verrucosa, stressing and underlining the importance of using suitable target organisms (i.e. from the same habitat) to test for ecologically relevant antifouling activities.