Repeated Geodetic Measurements in the West Bohemia Seismoactive Region: Period 1993 - 1996

The western part of the Bohemian Massif is characterized by repeated occurrences of intraplate earthquake swarms. To study surface deformations of this anomalous region, a network covering about 2000 square kilometres for repeated geodetic measurements was established in 1993 - 1994. The positions of the individual points of the network were carefully picked with respect to local tectonic structure and earthquake foci distribution. GPS and precise levelling measurements were performed 1-2 times a year. The GPS data were processed by Bernese GPS software. No tendency to any displacement - either horizontal or vertical - of geological blocks was derived from the geodetic data for the period 1993 - 96. Only displacements of less than 5 mm/year in average could occur in the whole region in that period; larger displacements would have been revealed by our measurements.     

Book Review : Global Change and History of Geophysics. Edited by W. Schröder and M. Colacino. Interdivisional Commission on History of IAGA and History Commission of the German Geophysical Society,Bremen - Roennebeck 1996, 293 pp.

Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica -     

The Frequency Dependence of Harmonic Fluid Flow Through Networks of Cracks and Pores

—The "dynamic" permeability k(ω) of heterogeneous networks of cracks, tubes and spheres, was determined by numerically simulating the harmonic flow of an interstitial fluid for a wide range of frequencies. For comparison with previous works, this procedure was applied to the 100 network realizations used in Bernabé (1995). In most cases, the calculated frequency dependence of the real and imaginary parts of k(ω) was consistent with the JKD model (Johnson et al., 1987), showing a transition from "viscous", macroscopic flow at low frequencies to "inertial" flow at high frequencies. The viscous skin depth δ _c at the transition was found to be proportional to the critical capillary radius r _c from a capillary invasion (Katz and Thompson, 1986). A simple explanation is that these two length scales arise from the same percolation problem. On the other hand, δ _c was not well correlated with the JKD parameter Λ. The conclusion is that Λ and δ _c (or r _c ?) are two independent parameters, derived from two unrelated approaches (i.e., weighted averaging and percolation theory). Finally, an attempt was made to relax the initial assumptions of a rigid solid matrix and an incompressible fluid. It was observed that the effect of the fluid compressibility could occasionally be very large, especially when networks with large amounts of storage pore space were considered.     

Do CRISTA Experiment/Campaign Data Represent a Typical Situation or Not?

Data from four A3 radio wave circuits in central Europe are used to analyse the representativeness of the ionization and gravity wave activity pattern in the lower ionosphere (85 – 100 km) in the CRISTA experiment interval (3 – 12 November 1994) for the given conditions. It has been found that the CRISTA experiment interval was run under conditions, which are highly representative both of October – November 1994 and autumn, low-moderate solar activity, the descending phase of solar cycle conditions, i.e. CRISTA measurements may be considered to provide values identical with, or close to climatological values (at least for central Europe, h = 85 – 100 km).     

The Fernow Experimental Forest,West Virginia,USA: Insights,datasets, and opportunities

Long-term experimental watershed studies have significantly influenced our global understanding of hydrological processes. The discovery and characterization of how stream water quantity and quality respond to a changing environment (e.g. land-use change, acidic deposition) has only been possible due to the establishment of catchments devoted to long-term study. One such catchment is the Fernow Experimental Forest (FEF) located in the headwaters of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, a region that provides essential freshwater ecosystem services to eastern and mid-western United States communities. Established in 1934, the FEF is among the earliest experimental watershed studies in the Eastern United States that continues to address emergent challenges to forest ecosystems, including climate change and other threats to forest health. This data note describes available data and presents some findings from more than 50 years of hydrologic research at the FEF. During the first few decades, research at the FEF focused on the relationship between forest management and hydrological processes—especially those related to the overall water balance. Later, research included the examination of interactions between hydrology and soil erosion, biogeochemistry, N-saturation, and acid deposition. Hydro-climatologic and water quality datasets from long-term measurements and data from short-duration studies are publicly available to provide new insights and foster collaborations that will continue to advance our understanding of hydrology in forested headwater catchments. As a result of its rich history of research and abundance of long-term data, the FEF is positioned to continue to advance understanding of forest ecosystems in a time of unprecedented change.     

The information system of the French Peatland Observation Service: Service National d'Observation Tourbières – A valuable tool to assess the impact of global changes on the hydrology and biogeochemistry of temperate peatlands through long term monitoring

Mitigating and adapting to global changes requires a better understanding of the response of the Biosphere to these environmental variations. Human disturbances and their effects act in the long term (decades to centuries) and consequently, a similar time frame is needed to fully understand the hydrological and biogeochemical functioning of a natural system. To this end, the ‘Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique’ (CNRS) promotes and certifies long-term monitoring tools called national observation services or ‘Service National d'Observation’ (SNO) in a large range of hydrological and biogeochemical systems (e.g., cryosphere, catchments, aquifers). The SNO investigating peatlands, the SNO ‘Tourbières’, was certified in 2011 ( https://www.sno-tourbieres.cnrs.fr/ ). Peatlands are mostly found in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere and French peatlands are located in the southern part of this area. Thus, they are located in environmental conditions that will occur in northern peatlands in coming decades or centuries and can be considered as sentinels. The SNO Tourbières is composed of four peatlands: La Guette (lowland central France), Landemarais (lowland oceanic western France), Frasne (upland continental eastern France) and Bernadouze (upland southern France). Thirty target variables are monitored to study the hydrological and biogeochemical functioning of the sites. They are grouped into four datasets: hydrology, fluvial export of organic matter, greenhouse gas fluxes and meteorology/soil physics. The data from all sites follow a common processing chain from the sensors to the public repository. The raw data are stored on an FTP server. After operator or automatic processing, data are stored in a database, from which a web application extracts the data to make them available ( https://data-snot.cnrs.fr/data-access/ ). Each year at least, an archive of each dataset is stored in Zenodo, with a digital object identifier (DOI) attribution ( https://zenodo.org/communities/sno_tourbieres_data/ ).     

Regional extreme‐dry‐spell frequency analysis using the L‐moments method in the middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin,China

In this research, the regional extreme‐dry‐spell frequency in the middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin (YRB) is studied by the L‐moments method. The research area has been divided into three subregions (regions 1, 2 and 3), which have been identified as homogenous regions. The results of a goodness‐of‐fit test indicate that a generalized normal distribution is the optimal regional model for regions 1 and 2 whereas a generalized Pareto distribution is the optimal regional model for region 3. The return period analysis figures out that the maximum length‐of‐dry‐spell (MxDS) values increase from south to north in the southern part and increase from northeast to southwest in the northern part of the middle reaches of the YRB under different return periods. The increments of quantiles of dry spell under different return levels indicate that drought risk in region 1 is higher than that in regions 2 and 3. The analysis of the occurrence day of MxDS shows that MxDS mostly occurred during winter of 1998 and spring of 1999 in most stations during the considered period. By comparing summer MxDS events, it can be found that mean MxDS values have slightly increased in regions 1 and 2 during the last five decades. The maximum mean MxDS values appeared in the 2000s for regions 1 and 2 and in the 1990s for region 3. The atmospheric circulation shows that the positive anomaly centre in the west of North China, negative anomaly centre in the east of North China and the strong western Pacific subtropical high led to the decrease of precipitation in North China during the summer of 1997. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

3D simultaneous joint PP‐PS prestack seismic inversion at Schiehallion field,United Kingdom Continental Shelf

A workflow for simultaneous joint PP‐PS prestack inversion of data from the Schiehallion field on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf is presented and discussed. The main challenge, describing reasonable PS to PP data registration before any prestack or joint PP‐PS inversion, was overcome thanks to a two‐stage process addressing the signal envelope, then working directly on the seismic data to estimate appropriate time‐variant time‐shift volumes. We evaluated the benefits of including PS along with PP prestack seismic data in a joint inversion process to improve the estimated elastic property quality and also to enable estimation of density compared with other prestack and post‐stack inversion approaches. While the estimated acoustic impedance exhibited a similar quality independent of the inversion used (PP post‐stack, PP prestack or joint PP‐PS prestack inversion) the shear impedance estimation was noticeably improved by the joint PP‐PS prestack inversion when compared to the PP prestack inversion. Finally, the density estimated from joint PP and PS prestack data demonstrated an overall good quality, even where not well‐controlled. The main outcome of this study was that despite several data‐related limitations, inverting jointly correctly processed PP and PS data sets brought extra value for reservoir delineation as opposed to PP‐only or post‐stack inversion.     

Derivative‐Assisted Classification of Fractured Zones Crossing a Deep Borehole

In this study, the derivative analysis using the derivative of drawdown with respect to log‐time was utilized to determine candidates for hydraulic conductor domains (HCDs). At a 500‐m deep borehole in the study site, the fractured rocks crossing the borehole were first classified in fractured and nonfractured zones by core logging and geophysical loggings, such as acoustic televiewing, density, and flow loggings. After conducting the hydraulic tests such as constant head withdrawal and recovery tests at the fractured zones and the nonfractured zones, the derivative analyses were carried out, of which the results were evaluated to determine the candidates for HCDs. For the nonfractured zones, the diagnostic plot has only a big hump indicating poor connection of the background fractures to the permeable geologic media, while those of the candidates for HCDs show various flow regimes. On the basis of these results, the candidates for HCDs among the fractured zones were determined. From discussion on the results, the combination of the spacing analysis and derivative analysis following a hydraulic test is recommended for determining the candidates for HCDs rather than other geophysical loggings.