Impact of Climate Change on the Regional Hydrology – Scenario-Based Modelling Studies in the German Rhine Catchment

The aim of the study is an impact analysis of global climate change on regional hydrology with special emphasis on discharge conditions and floods. The investigations are focussed on the major part of the German Rhine catchment with a drainage area of approx. 110,000 km². This area is subdivided into 23 subcatchments. In a first step, the hydrological model HBV-D serves to simulate runoff conditions under present climate for the individual subbasins. Simulated, large scale atmospheric fields, provided by two different Global Circulation Models (GCMs) and driven by the emission scenario IS95a (“business as usual”) are then used as input to the method of expanded downscaling (EDS). EDS delivers local time series of scenario climate as input to HBV-D. In a final step, the investigations are focussed on the assessment of possible future runoff conditions under the impact of climate change. The study indicates a potential increase in precipitation, mean runoff and flood discharge for small return intervals. However, the uncertainty range that originates from the application of the whole model chain and two different GCMs is high. This leads to high cumulative uncertainties, which do not allow conclusions to be drawn on the development of future extreme floods.     

Porphyry-Type Mineralization at Selogiri Area, Wonogiri Regency, Central Java, Indonesia

The Selogiri area, situated in Wonogiri regency, Central Java, is one of several gold prospecting areas in the Southern areas Mountain Range in Java, Indonesia. Three types of dioritic–andesitic intrusive rocks occur in the Selogiri area, namely, hornblende andesite porphyry, hornblende diorite porphyry and hornblende diorite, exposed in a half‐circular depression where volcanic breccia and tuff are widely distributed. The occurrence of stockwork quartz veinlets and associated with magnetite and malachite coating along the cracks in the diorite porphyry suggests porphyry type mineralization. This is also supported by the occurrence of polyphase hypersaline fluid inclusions in the stockwork veinlet quartz. Small‐scale miners are mining NS‐trending quartz veins for gold associated with base metal sulfides. These veins are probably epithermal‐type mineralization that overprinted porphyry‐type mineralization. The Neogene intermediate to silicic hydrous magmatism in Java could have formed the porphyry‐type mineralization in Selogiri, as in the rest of the Sunda–Banda arc.     

Stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at low levels: an assessment of reduction strategies and costs

On the basis of the IPCC B2, A1b and B1 baseline scenarios, mitigation scenarios were developed that stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at 650, 550 and 450 and – subject to specific assumptions – 400 ppm CO₂-eq. The analysis takes into account a large number of reduction options, such as reductions of non-CO₂ gases, carbon plantations and measures in the energy system. The study shows stabilization as low as 450 ppm CO₂-eq. to be technically feasible, even given relatively high baseline scenarios. To achieve these lower concentration levels, global emissions need to peak within the first two decades. The net present value of abatement costs for the B2 baseline scenario (a medium scenario) increases from 0.2% of cumulative GDP to 1.1% as the shift is made from 650 to 450 ppm. On the other hand, the probability of meeting a two-degree target increases from 0%–10% to 20%–70%. The mitigation scenarios lead to lower emissions of regional air pollutants but also to increased land use. The uncertainty in the cost estimates is at least in the order of 50%, with the most important uncertainties including land-use emissions, the potential for bio-energy and the contribution of energy efficiency. Furthermore, creating the right socio-economic and political conditions for mitigation is more important than any of the technical constraints.     

Evaluation of susceptibility for terrain collapse and subsidence in karst areas,municipality of Iraquara,Chapada Diamantina (BA), Brazil

The morphological evolution of the karstic systems is associated with a set of physical and chemical processes, triggered by the dissolution of the rocks, related to percolation of groundwater and surface water, which consequently open underground voids and carve out peculiar forms of relief. Due to environmental and geotechnical aspects, this system is naturally more fragile and vulnerable than other natural systems and, therefore, has increasingly received the attention of the scientific community over the past decades. The objective of the study was to delimit zones with varying degrees of susceptibility for collapses and subsidence of sinkholes in the municipality of Iraquara, Chapada Diamantina (BA), Brazil, and to understand their geological and morphological determinant factors. Geological data, karst phenomenon map, and visual analysis in the field were used to categorize zones with different types of susceptibilities to the nucleation of new sinkholes based on a Hazard Index. This index was defined from the sum of geological hazard factors, lineament density, and sinkhole density. The areas that presented the highest susceptibility for terrain collapse and subsidence corresponded to regions where carbonate rocks outcrop, with high density of photolineaments and 2.62 sinkholes/km². Processes associated with terrain collapse and subsidence in karst areas consisted of a combination of various factors, hindering precise predictions. However, zones of different types of susceptibilities to terrain collapse and subsidence can be delimited when the relationships between these processes and their factors are understood. The Hazard Index proposed does not provide quantitative values for the probability of hazard susceptibility, but rather indicates areas that are more susceptible to terrain subsidence and collapse.     

Reworked Middle Jurassic sandstones as a marker for Upper Cretaceous basin inversion in Central Europe—a case study for the U–Pb detrital zircon record of the Upper Cretaceous Schmilka section and their implication for the sedimentary cover of the Lausitz Block (Saxony,Germany)

International Journal of Earth Sciences - The Saxonian–Bohemian Cretaceous Basin (Elbsandsteingebirge, E Germany and Czech Republic, Elbtal Group) comprises Upper Cretaceous sedimentary rocks...     

Modeling Geospatial Uncertainty of Geometallurgical Variables with Bayesian Models and Hilbert–Kriging

Mathematical Geosciences - In mine planning, geospatial estimates of variables such as comminution indexes and metallurgical recovery are extremely important to locate blocks for which the energy...     

Multi-instrument remote and in situ observations of the Erebus Volcano (Antarctica) lava lake in 2005: A comparison with the Pele lava lake on the jovian moon Io

The stable, persistent, active lava lake at Erebus volcano (Ross Island, Antarctica) provides an excellent thermal target for analysis of spacecraft observations, and for testing new technology. In the austral summer of 2005 visible and infrared observations of the Erebus lava lake were obtained with sensors on three space vehicles Terra (ASTER, MODIS), Aqua (MODIS) and EO-1 (Hyperion, ALI). Contemporaneous ground-based observations were obtained with hand-held infrared cameras. This allowed a quantitative comparison of the thermal data obtained from different instruments, and of the analytical techniques used to analyze the data, both with and without the constraints imposed by ground-truth. From the thermal camera data, in December 2005 the main Erebus lava lake (Ray Lake) had an area of ≈ 820 m². Surface colour temperatures ranged from 575 K to 1090 K, with a broad peak in the distribution from 730 K to 850 K. Total heat loss was estimated at 23.5 MW. The flux density was ≈ 29 kW m^− 2. Mass flux was estimated at 64 to 93 kg s^− 1. The best correlation between thermal emission and emitting area was obtained with ASTER, which has the best combination of spatial resolution and wavelength coverage, especially in the thermal infrared. The high surface temperature of the lava lake means that Hyperion data are for the most part saturated. Uncertainties, introduced by the need to remove incident sunlight cause the thermal emission from the Hyperion data to be a factor of about two greater than that measured by hand-held thermal camera. MODIS also over-estimated thermal output from the lava lake by the same factor of two because it was detecting reflected sunlight from the rest of the pixel area. The measurement of the detailed temperature distribution on the surface of an active terrestrial lava lake will allow testing of thermal emission models used to interpret remote-sensing data of volcanism on Io, where no such ground-truth exists. Although the Erebus lava lake is four orders of magnitude smaller than the lava lake at Pele on Io, the shape of the integrated thermal emission spectra are similar. Thermal emission from this style of effusive volcanism appears to be invariant. Excess thermal emission in most Pele spectra (compared to Erebus) at short wavelengths (< 3 μm) is most likely due to disruption of the surface on the lava lake by escaping volatiles.     

Subglacial drumlins and englacial fractures at the surge-type glacier,Múlajökull,Iceland

The interaction between drumlins and overriding glacier ice is not well studied, largely due to the difficulty of identifying and accessing suitable active subglacial environments. The surge-type glacier Múlajökull, in central Iceland, overlies a known field of actively forming drumlins and therefore provides a rare opportunity to investigate the englacial structures that have developed in association with ice flow over the subglacial drumlins. In this study detailed ground-penetrating radar surveys are combined with field observations to identify clear sets of up-glacier and down-glacier dipping fractures at Múlajökull's margin. These are interpreted as conjugate shear planes or P- and R-type Reidel shears that developed and filled with saturated sediment derived from the glacier bed, during a previous surge. The fracture sets exhibit focused spatial distributions that are influenced by the subglacial topography. In particular, down-glacier dipping fractures are strongly focused over drumlin stoss slopes. These fractures, although well developed at depth, were mostly unable to transmit basal water and sediment up to the glacier surface during the surge cycle. In contrast, up-glacier dipping fractures formed over drumlin lee sides and in more gently sloping swales, and more frequently connected to the glacier surface, providing a pathway for the evacuation of basal water and water-saturated sediment. The study suggests that the subglacial drumlins under Múlajökull's margin have influenced the nature and distribution of englacial fractures, which could potentially contribute to spatial variations in basal water pressure during a surge. BGS © UKRI 2018     

Mineralogy and Geochemistry of Rural Road Dust and Nearby Mine Tailings: A Case of Ignored Pollution Hazard from an Abandoned Mining Site in Semi-arid Zone

Natural Resources Research - Abandoned mine tailings are considered as one of the main sources of potentially toxic elements. Because of the lack of supervision, particularly from small-scale or...     

Towards semantic‐aware multiple‐aspect trajectory similarity measuring

The large amount of semantically rich mobility data becoming available in the era of big data has led to a need for new trajectory similarity measures. In the context of multiple‐aspect trajectories, where mobility data are enriched with several semantic dimensions, current state‐of‐the‐art approaches present some limitations concerning the relationships between attributes and their semantics. Existing works are either too strict, requiring a match on all attributes, or too flexible, considering all attributes as independent. In this article we propose MUITAS, a novel similarity measure for a new type of trajectory data with heterogeneous semantic dimensions, which takes into account the semantic relationship between attributes, thus filling the gap of the current trajectory similarity methods. We evaluate MUITAS over two real datasets of multiple‐aspect social media and GPS trajectories. With precision at recall and clustering techniques, we show that MUITAS is the most robust measure for multiple‐aspect trajectories.