Latitudinal gradients and poleward expansion of mangrove ecosystems in South Africa: 50 years after Macnae’s first assessment

Mangroves occur in South African estuaries at their poleward distribution limits, extending into temperate habitats. In 1963, William Macnae published the first comprehensive assessment of mangrove swamps in South Africa and made firsthand observations of these mangrove ecosystems. This article reassesses South African mangrove habitats, highlighting changes since Macnae’s assessment, through a literature review of research done in the past 50 years and using the results of a dedicated mangrove survey spanning 2012–2017. Until now, changes have been recorded mostly for mangrove vegetation, including a change in mangrove cover and a poleward shift of mangrove species. While some mangrove-associated fauna have disappeared from most sites (e.g. the gastropod Terebralia palustris), others, such as fiddler crabs, have spread farther south. The effects of decreasing diversity with an increase in latitude were not observed along the South African coast. Instead, habitat quality and estuarine mouth state seem to exert greater influence on species diversity in the mangroves, and a poleward shift in species distribution is now evident not just for the mangrove flora but for the fauna as well. South African mangrove research needs to include a continuous monitoring plan, especially if we are to contribute to global knowledge on blue carbon, the effects of sea-level rise, and the resilience of the mangrove ecosystem.     

Crack fusion as a model for repetitive seismicity

A renormalization group treatment of a skeletal, hierarchical model of crack fusion and suturing yields the experimental stress versus time-to-fracture law. We construct a model that eliminates the intervening size states in the hierarchy but retains the time delay that represents the time-to-fracture observations. We add a source term to replenish microcracks lost by promotion due to fusion. The system is found to be stable for all values of time delay if the rate of replenishment is steady. If we allow the rate of replenishment of microcracks to be coupled to the rate of appearance of the largest size cracks, which we interpret as large-scale seismicity, then a Hopf bifurcation appears and the system is describable as a limit cycle attractor.     

Theory of convective saturation of Langmuir waves during ionospheric modification of a barium cloud

In recent experiments (Djuth, F. T., Sulzer, M. P., Elder, J. H. and Groves, K. M. (1995) Journal of Geophysical Research, 100, 17,347), a parametric decay instability was excited by an ordinarywave HF pump during an ionospheric chemical release from a rocket over Arecibo, PR, which created an artificial ‘barium ionosphere,’ with peak plasma frequency above the pump frequency, and a density gradient with a (short) 5 km scale length. Simultaneous incoherent scattering measurements revealed a strong initial asymmetry in the amplitudes of almost vertically upgoing versus downgoing measured plasma waves. We can account for this asymmetry in terms of linear convective saturation of parametrically unstable plasma waves propagating over a range of altitudes along geometric optics ray paths. Qualitative features of the frequency spectrum of the measured downgoing wave are in agreement with this model, although the theoretically predicted spectrum is narrower than observed. The observed altitude localization of the enhanced spectrum to a few range cells is consistent with the theory.     

Vlasov simulations of electron heating by Langmuir turbulence near the critical altitude in the radiation-modified ionosphere

One-dimensional Vlasov equations are solved numerically for conditions appropriate to the ionospheric F-region during the initial stages of HF-radiation modification experiments at two altitudes: one at the critical altitude, the other approximately 1.5 km lower. Numerical simulations of wave growth and saturation with self-consistent evolution of particle distributions are run past the point at which a statistically steady state is reached. At the critical altitude the wave turbulence is dominated by coherent collapsing wave packets or ‘cavitons’ and at the lower altitude by a combination of coherent (strong) and incoherent (weak) turbulence. Our results are consistent with the predictions of Hanssen et al. [Journal of Geophysical Research, 97, 12,073 (1992)]. Semi-open boundary conditions, in which a small fraction of the hot electrons generated by interactions with the strong localized caviton fields are replaced by electrons from the cool background distribution, are employed to model a heated region of finite length that is large compared to the simulation domain. The resultant steady-state electron distributions are characterized by power-law tails of hot electrons superposed on an approximately Maxwellian bulk distribution. The Langmuir-wave dissipation spectra are found to be in good agreement with predictions based on linear Landau damping on the nonthermal electron tails.     

Bifurcation structure of a wind-driven shallow water model with layer-outcropping

The steady state bifurcation structure of the double-gyre wind-driven ocean circulation is examined in a shallow water model where the upper layer is allowed to outcrop at the sea surface. In addition to the classical jet-up and jet-down multiple equilibria, we find a new regime in which one of the equilibrium solutions has a large outcropping region in the subpolar gyre. Time dependent simulations show that the outcropping solution equilibrates to a stable periodic orbit with a period of 8 months. Co-existing with the periodic solution is a stable steady state solution without outcropping.A numerical scheme that has the unique advantage of being differentiable while still allowing layers to outcrop at the sea surface is used for the analysis. In contrast, standard schemes for solving layered models with outcropping are non-differentiable and have an ill-defined Jacobian making them unsuitable for solution using Newton’s method. As such, our new scheme expands the applicability of numerical bifurcation techniques to an important class of ocean models whose bifurcation structure had hitherto remained unexplored.     

Influence of sample manipulation on contaminant flux and toxicity at the sediment-water interface

Toxicities of sediments from San Diego and San Francisco Bays were compared in laboratory experiments using sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) embryos exposed to pore water and at the sediment-water interface (SWI). Toxicity was consistently greater to embryos exposed at the SWI to intact (unhomogenized) sediment samples relative to homogenized samples. Measurement of selected trace metals indicated considerably greater fluxes of copper, zinc, and cadmium into overlying waters of intact sediment samples. Inhibition of sea urchin embryo development was generally greater in sediment pore waters relative to SWI exposures. Pore water toxicity may have been due to elevated unionized ammonia concentrations in some samples. The results indicate that invertebrate embryos are amenable to SWI exposures, a more ecologically relevant exposure system, and that sediment homogenization may create artifacts in laboratory toxicity experiments.     

Absorption of wave energy by elongated bodies

Slender-body approximations are used to predict the maximum rate of energy absorption by an elongated floating vessel which performs vertical motions of varying amplitude and phase along its length. Simple estimates are derived for the amplitude and phase of particular mode shapes, and for the corresponding power absorption. Specific mode shapes considered include polynomials, trigonometric functions, and piecewise-linear functions intended to represent an articulated raft. An articulated raft with two hinges appears to be optimum from the engineering standpoint.     

Infrared limb darkening of the Venus atmosphere

An analysis of the limb darkening component obtained by Ingersoll and Orton [Icarus21 (1974), 121–128] from the thermal infrared maps of Venus published by Murray, Wildey, and Westphal [J. Geophys. Res.68 (1963), 4813–4818] and Westphal, Wildey, and Murray [Astrophys. J.142 (1965), 799–802] shows that the Cytherean cloud tops were close to radiative equilibrium in 1962. A method for obtaining the optical depth, the extinction coefficient, and the extinction scale height from such data is derived and values are extracted from Marov's [Icarus16 (1972), 415–461] standard model of the Venus atmosphere.