Assessment of water quality and pollution of the Lake Seyfe basin, Kırşehir, Turkey

Lake Seyfe is located in a closed basin near K?r?ehir in the central Anatolian region, Turkey. The aim of this study is to evaluate the groundwater quality and effects of lithogenic contamination carried out in the Lake Seyfe basin, which is represented by various lithologies and groundwater types. Seyfe, Horla and Akp?nar springs are recharged through marbles at the western and southwestern of the basin are ultimately and discharged into the K?z?l?rmak Formation and Lake Seyfe. The waters of deep wells drilled into the marbles are of bicarbonate type (type I) in the Ca²⁺–Mg²⁺–HCO₃ ^? and Ca²⁺–HCO₃ ^? facies. Özlühüyük spring and waters from most of trenches and shallow wells, which are fed by the K?z?l?rmak Formation, have a mixed (type II) composition in the Ca²⁺–Mg²⁺–HCO₃ ^?–Cl^? facies. Groundwater in the alluvium and K?z?l?rmak Formation along Lake Seyfe has a salty (type III) character in the Na⁺–Cl^? facies. The main reasons of formation and change of the groundwater salinity and hydrochemical facies in the Seyfe basin are causing the various (a) lithogenic pollution and heterogeneity of the K?z?l?rmak Formation, (b) salinity of the upper soil zones, and (c) evaporation of the trench and channel waters open to the atmosphere. Considering parameters such as sodium hazard, specific conductivity, bicarbonate and carbonate hazards, waters in the study area are generally suitable for agricultural usage.     

The expansion of negative powers of the mutual distance between two planets

An outline of a new method is given to obtain the expansion of ^–S by the method of W. M. Smart, using Taylor theorem and neglecting powers higher than the fourth in the eccentricity and inclination.     

Smoothed minima baseflow separation tool for perennial and intermittent streams

The United Kingdom Institute of Hydrology (UKIH) smoothed minima baseflow separation method originally developed for the daily flow data of perennial streams and adopted for intermittent streams is presented. The adopted method (AdUKIH) is the generalized version of the UKIH and hence applicable not only to intermittent streams but also to perennial streams. The AdUKIH method is applied on three daily streamflow gauging stations from the European part of Turkey, the Thrace region. The AdUKIH enables one to change the parameter 0·9 in the UKIH method and also introduces different block sizes, which is limited to five days in the original UKIH method. The AdUKIH method is considered a useful tool in helping practitioners and researchers to separate continuous baseflow from the daily flow in perennial and intermittent streams. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimation of compaction parameters of fine‐grained soils in terms of compaction energy using artificial neural networks

The determination of the compaction parameters such as optimum water content (w_opt) and maximum dry unit weight (γ_dmax) requires great efforts by applying the compaction testing procedure which is also time consuming and needs significant amount of work. Therefore, it seems more reasonable to use the indirect methods for estimating the compaction parameters. In recent years, the artificial neural network (ANN) modelling has gained an increasing interest and is also acquiring more popularity in geotechnical engineering applications. This study deals with the estimation of the compaction parameters for fine‐grained soils based on compaction energy using ANN with the feed‐forward back‐propagation algorithm. In this study, the data including the results of the consistency tests, standard and modified Proctor tests, are collected from the literature and used in the analyses. The optimum structure of a network is determined for each ANN models. The analyses showed that the ANN models give quite reliable estimations in comparison with regression methods, thus they can be used as a reliable tool for the prediction of w_opt and γ_dmax. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Groundwater discharge mechanism in semi‐arid regions and the role of evapotranspiration

The present study examined groundwater recharge/discharge mechanisms in the regional Central Sudan Rift Basins (CSRB). Aquifers in CSRB constitute poorly sorted silisiclastics of sand, clay and gravels deposited in closed hydrologic systems of the Cretaceous–Pleistocene fluviolacustrine environments. CSRB are bounded to the north by the highlands of the Central African Shear Zone (CAZS) that represents the surface and groundwater divides. Sporadic recharge in the peripheries of the basins along the CASZ occurs subsequent to decadal and centennial storm events. Inflow from the Nile into the aquifers represents an additional source of recharge. Thus, groundwater resources cannot be labelled fossil nor can they be readily recharged. Closed hydrologic troughs located adjacent to the influent Nile system mark areas of main groundwater discharge characterized by lower hydraulic heads. This study has examined mechanisms that derive the discharge of the groundwater in these closed basins and concluded that only evapotranspirative discharge can provide a plausible explanation. Groundwater abstraction is mainly through deep‐rooted trees and effective evaporation. The increase of TDS along the flow indicates local recharge at the peripheries of basins and shows the influence of evaporation and rock/water interaction. The decline in groundwater level along a flow path was calculated using Darcy's law to estimate average recharge and evapotranspirative discharge, which are equal under natural equilibrium and make the only fluxes in CSRB. Steady‐state 2D flow modelling has demonstrated that an average recharge of 4–8 mm yr^?1 and evapotranspirative discharge of 1–22 mm yr^?1 will maintain natural equilibrium in CSRB. Sporadic storms provide recharge in the highlands to preserve the current hydraulic gradient and maintain aquifer dynamics. Simulated recharge from the Nile totals about 17·5 mm yr^?1 and is therefore a significant contributor to the water balance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Boltzmann Equilibrium of Endothermic Heavy Nuclear Synthesis in the Universe and a Quark Relation to the Magic Numbers

As laser–plasma interactions access ever-increasing ranges of plasma temperatures and densities, it is interesting to consider whether they will some day shed light on questions concerning nuclear synthesis. One such open question is the process of endothermic nuclear synthesis for elements with A > 60, thought to have taken place at a point in time during the big bang, or currently in supernovae. We present an explanation based on a Boltzmann equilibrium condition, in combination with the change of the Fermi-statistics from the relativistic branch for hadrons from higher than nuclear densities to the lower density subrelativistic branch. The Debye length confinement of nuclei breaks down at the relativistic change, thus leading to the impossibility of nucleation of the quark-gluon state at higher than nuclear densities. Taking the increment for the proton number Z as Z′ = 10 of the measured standard abundance distribution (SAD) of the elements for a Boltzmann probability for heavy element synthesis, a sequence 3 ⁿ was found with the exponent n for the sequence of the magic numbers. The jump between the magic numbers 20 and 28 does not need then the usual spin-orbit explanation.     

Evaporation from coastal and open waters of the central zone of the red sea

Abstract

Monthly evaporation was estimated from the coastal and open waters in the central region of the Red Sea between latitudes 21 and 22°N. A recent equation based on the bulk aerodynamic method was used to calculate the evaporation using two sets of observations collected over the coastal and open waters. The annual evaporation from coastal water was 194 cm with a maximum in May and a minimum in October; from open water, it was 144 cm with a maximum and a minimum in November and September, respectively. The application of Sverdrup's (1937) equation was attempted, first when the roughness parameter z₀ in his equation was set equal to 0.6 cm as he proposed, and when z₀ was set equal to the most acceptable value of 0.01 cm. Our study shows that the evaporation values obtained in the first case are closer to those obtained either from the recent equation or from direct measurements than those obtained in the second case.