A percent-of-flow approach for managing reductions of freshwater inflows from unimpounded rivers to Southwest Florida estuaries

The Southwest Florida Water Management District has implemented a management approach for unimpounded rivers that limits withdrawals to a percentage of streamflow at the time of withdrawal. The natural flow regime of the contributing river is considered to be the baseline for assessing the effects of withdrawals. Development of the percent-of-flow approach has emphasized the interaction of freshwater inflow with the overlap of stationary and dynamic habitat components in tidal river zones of larger estuarine systems. Since the responses of key estuarine characteristics (e.g., isohaline locations, residence times) to freshwater inflow are frequently nonlinear, the approach is designed to prevent impacts to estuarine resources during sensitive low-inflow periods and to allow water supplies to become gradually more uvailable as inflow increases. A high sensitivity to variation at low inflow extends to many invertebrates and fishes that move upstream and downstream in synchrony with inflow. Total numbers of estuarine-resident and estuarine-dependent organisms have been found to decrease during low-inflow periods, including mysids, grass shrimp, and juveniles of the bay anchovy and sand seatrout. The interaction of freshwater inflow with seasonal processes, such as phytoplankton production and the recruitment of fishes to the tidal-river nursery, indicates that withdrawal percentages during the springtime should be most restrictive. Ongoing efforts are oriented toward refining percentage withdrawal limits among seasons and flow ranges to account for shifts in the responsiveness of estuarine processes to reductions in freshwater inflow.     

Formation of freshwater Fe-Mn coatings on gravel and the behavior of 60Co, 90Sr,and 137Cs in a small watershed

Iron and manganese oxide coatings are actively forming on stream substrates in the White Oak Creek watershed in East Tennessee. Although oxidizing conditions are required for Fe-Mn oxide precipitation, coatings accumulate only if dissolved iron and manganese exceed 50 μg/L. Below this, coatings are lost by abrasion as fast as or faster than they form. Annual rates of formation of 3 mg/g on substrate (gravel) were observed. Manganese is dissolved from coatings between Eh values of 100 to 300 mV and below 1 mg/L dissolved O₂ at pH 6.5 to 7.5. Iron oxides can be precipitated under these conditions.Uncontaminated gravels with oxide coatings (composed of illite, quartz, and feldspar) adsorbed radionuclides rapidly from waters below MPC (Maximum Permissible Concentration) levels. Contaminated gravels placed in uncontaminated waters lost ⁶⁰Co by abrasion in oxidizing conditions and by dissolution of manganese coatings in reducing conditions. Exchangeable ⁹⁰Sr was completely lost after one month whereas nonexchangeable ⁹⁰Sr was lost more slowly; ¹³⁷Cs was totally retained by the gravels. Gravels such as these can be used to monitor the radionuclide content of waters in the environment.     

Stable isotopes and cellulase activity as evidence for detritus as a food source for juvenile Gulf menhaden

Menhaden are one of the most abundant components of fish communities in Gulf and Atlantic estuaries. Juvenile menhaden have been reported to have zooplankton, phytoplankton, andSpartina-derived detritus in their guts. However, there has been disagreement over the importance of the detritus as a food source. We show, using physiological and stable isotope evidence, that detritus can be used by juvenile Gulf menhaden. Their diet is very roughly 30% detritus- and 70% plankton-based.     

Magnetics in geoexploration

The magnetic method is the oldest and one of the most widely used geophysical techniques for exploring the earth’s subsurface. It is a relatively easy and inexpensive tool to employ, being applicable to a wide variety of subsurface exploration problems involving horizontal magnetic property variations occurring from near the base of the crust to within the uppermost meter of soil. Successful applications of the magnetic method require an in-depth understanding of its basic principles and careful field work, data reduction, and interpretation. Commonly, interpretations are limited to qualitative approaches which simply map the spatial location of anomalous subsurface conditions, but under favourable circumstances the technological status of the method will permit more quantitative interpretations involving specification of the nature of the anomalous sources. No other geophysical method provides critical input to such a wide variety of problems. However, seldom does the magnetic method provide the complete answer to an investigation problem. As a result, it is generally used in concert with other geophysical and geological data to limit its interpretational ambiguities.     

Southwest African climate independent of Atlantic sea surface temperatures during the Younger Dryas

To investigate land–sea interactions during deglaciation, we compared proxies for continental (pollen percentages and accumulation rates) and marine conditions (dinoflagellate cyst percentages and alkenone-derived sea surface temperatures). The proxies were from published data from an AMS-radiocarbon-dated sedimentary record of core GeoB 1023-5 encompassing the past 21,000 years. The site is located at ca. 2000 m water depth just north of the Walvis Ridge and in the vicinity of the Cunene River mouth. We infer that the parallelism between increasing sea surface temperatures and a southward shift of the savanna occurred only during the earliest part of the deglaciation. After the Antarctic Cold Reversal, southeast Atlantic sea surface temperatures no longer influenced the vegetation development in the Kalahari. Stronger trade winds during the Antarctic Cold Reversal and the Younger Dryas period probably caused increased upwelling off the coast of Angola. A southward shift of the Atlantic anti-cyclone could have resulted in both stronger trade winds and reduced impact of the Westerlies on the climate of southwestern Africa.     

Hybrid analytical and finite element numerical modeling of mass and heat transport in fractured rocks with matrix diffusion

Quantification of mass and heat transport in fractured porous rocks is important to areas such as contaminant transport, storage and release in fractured rock aquifers, the migration and sorption of radioactive nuclides from waste depositories, and the characterization of engineered heat exchangers in the context of enhanced geothermal systems. The large difference between flow and transport characteristics in fractures and in the surrounding matrix rock means models of such systems are forced to make a number of simplifications. Analytical approaches assume a homogeneous system, numerical approaches address the scale at which a process is operating, but may lose individual important processes due to averaging considerations. Numerical stability criteria limit the contrasts possible in defining material properties. Here, a hybrid analytical–numerical method for transport modeling in fractured media is presented. This method combines a numerical model for flow and transport in a heterogeneous fracture and an analytical solution for matrix diffusion. By linking the two types of model, the advantages of both methods can be combined. The methodology as well as the mathematical background are developed, verified for simple geometries, and applied to fractures representing experimental field conditions in the Grimsel rock laboratory.     

Reducing the Uncertainties in Direct Aerosol Radiative Forcing

Direct aerosol radiative forcing (DARF) remains a leading contributor to climate prediction uncertainty. To monitor the spatially and temporally varying global atmospheric aerosol load, satellite remote sensing is required. Despite major advances in observing aerosol amount, type, and distribution from space, satellite data alone cannot provide enough quantitative detail, especially about aerosol microphysical properties, to effect the required improvement in estimates of DARF and the anthropogenic component of DARF. However, the combination of space-based and targeted suborbital measurements, when used to constrain climate models, represents an achievable next step likely to provide the needed advancement.     

Allochthonous individuals in managed populations of the fire-bellied toad Bombina bombina: Genetic detection and conservation implications

The ongoing global amphibian decline calls for an increase of habitat and population management efforts. Pond restoration and construction is more and more accompanied by breeding and translocation programs. However, the appropriateness of translocations as a tool for conservation has been widely debated, as it can cause biodiversity loss through genetic homogenization and can disrupt local adaptation, eventually leading to outbreeding depression. In this study, we investigated the genetic structure of two translocated populations of the critically endangered fire-bellied toad Bombina bombina at its north western distribution edge using supposedly neutral genetic markers (variation in the mitochondrial control region and microsatellites) as well as a marker under selection (major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes). While one of the newly established populations showed the typical genetic composition of surrounding populations, the other was extremely diverged without clear affinity to its putative source. In this population we detected a profound impact of allochthonous individuals: 100% of the analyzed individuals exhibited a highly divergent mitochondrial haplotype which was otherwise found in Austria. 83% of them were also assigned to Austria by the analysis of microsatellites. Interestingly, for the adaptive marker (MHC) local alleles were predominant in this population, while only very few alleles were shared with the Austrian population. Probably Mendelian inheritance has reshuffled genotypes such that adaptive local alleles are maintained (here, MHC), while presumably neutral allochthonous alleles dominate at other loci. The release of allochthonous individuals generally increased the genetic variability of the affected population without wiping out locally adaptive genotypes. Thus, outbreeding depression might be less apparent than sometimes thought and natural selection appears strong enough to maintain locally adaptive alleles, at least in functionally important immune system genes.     

Multistage, stochastic models of the cancer process: A general theory for calculating tumor incidence

 The use of complicated models of the cancer process has been limited by the need to have a mathematical framework allowing for a general expansion of the theory of carcinogenesis while maintaining numerically tractable results. A system of ordinary differential equations is derived for calculating tumor incidence in multistage models of carcinogenesis. The resulting system of equations is applicable to nonhomogenous processes (i.e. ones in which the rates change with time, age, etc.). In addition, a solution is given for the case of instantaneous initiation. These formulae can easily be coupled with physiologically-based pharmacokinetic models to link biomarkers of exposure to cancer risks. An example is presented.