Holocene ethnobotanical and paleoecological record of human impact on vegetation in the Little Tennessee River Valley, Tennessee

Human occupation and utilization of plant resources have affected vegetation in the lower Little Tennessee River Valley of East Tennessee for 10,000 yr. Changes in Indian cultures and land use are documented by radiocarbon chronologies, lithic artifacts, ceramics, settlement patterns, and ethnobotanical remains from 25 stratified archaeological sites within the Holocene alluvial terrace. The ethnobotanical record consists of 31,500 fragments (13.7 kg) of wood charcoal identified to species and 7.7 kg of carbonized fruits, seeds, nutshells, and cultigens from 956 features. Pollen and plant macrofossils from small ponds both in the uplands and on lower stream terraces record local vegetational changes through the last 1500 to 3000 yr. Human impact increased after cultigens, including squash and gourd, were introduced ca. 4000 yr B.P. during the Archaic cultural period. Forest clearance and cultivation disturbed vegetation on both the floodplain and lower terraces after 2800 yr B.P., during the Woodland period. Permanent Indian settlements and maize and bean agriculture extended to higher terraces 1.5 km from the floodplain by the Mississippian period (1000 to 300 yr B.P.). After 300 yr B.P., extensive land clearance and cultivation by Historic Overhill Cherokee and Euro-Americans spread into the uplands beyond the river valley.     

A 3500 Ma plutonic and volcanic calc-alkaline province in the Archaean East Pilbara Block

Variably foliated, predominantly granodioritic plutonic rocks from the northern part of the Shaw Batholith in the east Pilbara Archaean craton are dated at 3,499±22 Ma (2σ errors) by a whole-rock Pb-Pb isochron. These rocks intrude the surrounding greenstone sequence, and their age is indistinguishable from that sequence. High strain grey gneisses which occupy much of the western and southern Shaw Batholith are chemically and isotopically similar to the North Shaw suite and are inferred to have been derived from this suite by tectonic processes. Felsic volcanics within the greenstones together with a major portion of the granitic batholiths apparently formed in a calc-alkaline volcanic and plutonic province at ～3,500 Ma. This volcanic and plutonic suite is similar to modern calc-alkaline suites on the basis of major element, rare earh element and most other trace element contents. The Archaean suite contrasts with modern equivalents only in having lower concentrations of HREE and higher concentrations of Ni and Cr. The average composition of the North Shaw suite is similar to that of Archaean gneiss belts for most elements and is consistent with the previously formulated hypothesis that the Shaw Batholith is transitional to the upper crustal level of a high-grade gneiss belt. Enrichment of the gneissic crust in the Shaw Batholith in alkali and heat-producing elements is inferred to have taken place by both igneous and hydrothermal processes over a protracted time interval. Late- and post-tectonic adamellite and granite melts intrude the gneissic rocks and there is isotopic evidence consistent with the gneisses being substantially enriched in Rb by pegmatite injection at ～3,000 Ma.     

The incorporation of environmental considerations into the analysis of industrial agglomerations — Examples from the petrochemical industry in Texas and Louisiana

Most analyses of agglomeration in manufacturing evaluate the merits of clustered and dispersed spatial arrangements of plants in terms of their effects upon the profitability of individual enterprises. However, the problem of defining optimal levels of agglomeration becomes very much more acute if the costs and benefits are considered with reference to society as a whole. Examples of air and water pollution from petrochemical plants in Texas and Louisiana are used to illustrate these difficulties. It is argued that the technology and economics of pollution control have tended to reinforce the cost advantages to industry of agglomeration in large complexes despite the fact that major concentrations of polluting industries may be regarded, from a broader environmental perspective, as intrinsically undesirable.     

The influence of fluid-sensitive dispersion and attenuation on AVO analysis

Analysis of seismic data suggests that hydrocarbon deposits are often associated with higher than usual values of attenuation, but this is generally ignored during amplitude-versus-offset (AVO) analysis. The effect can be modelled with equivalent medium theory based on the squirt flow concept, but the excess attenuation is associated with strong velocity dispersion. Consequently, when we study reflections from the interface between such an equivalent medium and an elastic overburden we find that the reflection coefficient varies with frequency. The impact of this variation depends on the AVO behaviour at the interface; class I reflections tend to be shifted to higher frequency while class III reflections have their lower frequencies amplified. We calculate synthetic seismograms for typical models using the reflectivity method for materials with frequency dependent velocities and attenuations, and find that these effects are predicted to be detectable on stacked data. Two field data sets show frequency anomalies similar to those predicted by the analysis, and we suggest that our modelling provides a plausible explanation of the observations.     

An experimental evaluation of cleaning methods for fossil ostracod Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca determination

To evaluate the effect of sample preparation on the trace element composition of ostracod shells, fossil shells subjected to various cleaning steps were analyzed by ICP-AES. The variations in ostracod Mg/Ca ratios reveal that fossil ostracod samples cleaned by ultrasonic methanol yield lower values than those by other methods, including increasingly rigorous reductive cleaning. In our sample sets, shell Mg/Ca decreases ∼ ∼1.5 mmol/mol during clay removal. Sample Sr/Ca results do not seem to vary significantly under the equivalent cleaning steps. For ostracod analysis, pre-treatment using multiple methanol ultrasonic cleaning is suggested to be used for gaining an appropriate result.     

Exact and Approximate Generalized Ray Theory in Vertically Inhomogeneous Media

The generalized ray method in a vertically inhomogeneous model is formulated without any approximation by homogeneous layers. The solution is obtained as an infinite series in multiply 'reflected' waves. Each term can be solved using the exact method or the plane-wave, first-motion or geometrical approximations. It is shown that the first-motion approximation of the series converges rapidly, the ratio of successive terms in the infinite series being-(2 l + 1)(2 l )(6/π)².
In addition it is shown that the first-motion approximation, which reduces to the geometrical approximation when the latter is valid, is a useful alternative to geometrical ray theory, being more generally valid and being almost as simple to compute.     

An analysis of full-disk observations of facular contrast in the blue and red

Full-disk images from the Cartesian Full-Disk Telescope no. 2 (CFDT2) were used to study the center-to-limb (CLV) variation of facular contrast in two colors. The CFDT2 images, which have 2.5 arc sec pixels, were obtained during the summer months of 1993, 1994 and 1995. In order to minimize the bias in finding faint facular features in continuum images, we have used coaligned images obtained in the Ca K-line to identify faculae. Faculae were sorted into 20 annular bins of equal width. To reduce the effects of seeing, faculae were not identified closer to the limb than =0.2. The facular pixel contrasts were fitted to various trial functions. The contrast in the blue filter (470.6 nm) rose from 0.122% at disk center to 12.2% at =0.2. The contrast in the red filter (672.3 nm) rose from 0.13% at disk center to 8.16% at =0.2. We have also analyzed the facular contrasts multiplied by their -value to obtain an estimate of facular flux tube contrasts. These flux tube contrasts increased roughly linearly from =0.95 to 0.25. The blue flux tube contrast reached a maximum of 2.48% near =0.25. The red flux tube contrast reached a maximum of 1.59% at =0.2. These contrast values are not corrected for the filling factor. The blue curve leveled off slightly betwen =0.25 and 0.2 while the red curve showed no deviation from its linear trend. These results may provide some support for the hot wall model of facular flux tubes.