Geochemistry of subsurface Late Quaternary ironstones in Rajshahi and Bogra Districts,Bangladesh: implications for genetic and depositional conditions

The present study deals with the geochemistry of Late Quaternary ironstones in the subsurface in Rajshahi and Bogra districts, Bangladesh with the lithological study of the boreholes sediments. Major lithofacies of the studied boreholes are clay, silty clay, sandy clay, fine to coarse grained sand, gravels and sands with(fragmentary) ironstones. The ironstones contain major oxides, Fe_2 O_3*(*total Fe)(avg. 66.6 wt%), SiO_2(avg. 15.3 wt%), Al_2 O_3(avg. 4.0 wt%), MnO(avg. 7.7 wt%), and CaO(avg. 3.4 wt%). These geochemical data imply that the higher percentage of Fe_2 O_3* along with Al_2 O_3 and MnO indicate the ironstone as goethite and siderite, which is also validated by XRD data. A comparatively higher percentage of SiO_2 indicates the presence of relative amounts of clastic quartz and manganese-rich silicate or clay in these rocks. These ironstones also have significant amounts of MnO(avg. 7.7 wt%) suggesting their depositional environments under oxygenated condition. Chemical data of these ironstones suggest that the source rock suffered deep chemical weathering and iron was mostly carried in association with the clay fraction and organic matter. Iron concretion was mostly formed by bacterial build up in swamps and marshes, and was subsequently embedded in clayey mud.Within the coastal environments, the water table fluctuates and goethite and siderite with mud and quartz became dry and compacted to form ironstone.     

Vicissitudes experienced by the oldest urban center in Bangladesh in relation to the migration of the Brahmaputra River

Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. There are 57 trans-frontier rivers in the country, the widest being the Brahmaputra River. The river's channels have frequently changed course, but the relationship between such river migrations and human settlement patterns has remained unstudied. In this paper, optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon dating techniques were applied to sedimentary and organic materials in the oldest urban center (Wari-Bateshwar) in Bangladesh. The results showed that the landscape around the urban center was dominated by floodplain and peatland facies between 7.9–7.6 and 4.7–1.6 ka, respectively. Humans occupied this area at ~3.2 ka, and manufactured delicate semi-precious gemstone beads between ~2.4 and 1.8 ka. The urban center might be the same as an important city of the Gangaridai described in historical records. Due to fluvial migration at ~1.8 ka, the area surrounding the urban center was covered by fluvial sand. Humans might have been forced to abandon the urban center, leading to the bead processing technology in Bangladesh being lost forever.     

Variations of Surface Air Temperature Over the Land Areas in and Around the Bay of Bengal

The inter-annual variation and linear trends of the surface air temperature in the regions in and around the Bay of Bengal have been studied using the time series data of monthly and annual mean temperature for 20–40 years period within 1951–1990. The study area extends from Pusma Camp of Nepal in the north and Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia in the south and between 80--100 ° E. The annual variation of temperature has also been studied using the mean monthly temperature for the variable time frames 1961–1975, 1976–1990 and 1961–1990. The trend of temperature has been analyzed using linear regression technique with the data from 1961–1990, which showed that the warming trend is dominant over the study areas except for a few stations. It has been found that Nepal shows predominant warming trends. Bangladesh and the adjacent areas of India and the northern part of Bay of Bengal adjacent to the Bangladesh coast have shown strong warming trends of the annual temperature with maximum at Dhaka (0.037 °C/year). The near equatorial zone, i.e., southern India, Sri Lanka and part of Thailand and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) shows warming trends in the annual mean temperature with strong warming at Pamban and Anuradhapura (around 0.04 °C/year). The cooling trends have been observed at a few stations including Port Blair, Yangoon and Cuttack. Further analysis shows the presence of prominent ENSO scale of variations with time period 4–7 years and 2–3 years for almost all the stations. The decadal mode with T >7 years is present in some data series. The results of the variations of temperature with respect to the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) show that SOI has some negative correlation with temperature for most of the stations except those in the extreme northeast. It has been found that positive anomaly of temperature has been observed for El Niño events and negative anomaly for the La Nina events.     

Flux of nutrients and heavy metals from the Melai River sub-catchment into Lake Chini, Pekan, Pahang, Malaysia

This study was carried out to determine the flux of nutrients and heavy metals from the Melai sub-catchment into Lake Chini through the process of erosion. Melai River is one of the seven feeder rivers that contributed to the present water level of Lake Chini. Three properties of soils, such as particle size, organic matter content, and soil hydraulic conductivity and three chemical soil properties, such as available nutrients, dissolved nutrients, and heavy metals, were analyzed and interpreted. Potential soil loss was estimated using the revised universal soil loss equation model. The results show that the soil textures in the study area consist of clay, silty clay, clay loam, and sandy silt loam. The organic matter content ranges from 3.40 to 9.92 %, while the hydraulic conductivity ranges from 5.2 to 25.3 cm/h. Mean values of available P, K, and Mg amount was 8.5 ± 3.7 μg/g, 24.5 ± 3.4 μg/g, and 20.7 ± 18.6 μg/g, respectively. The highest concentration of soluble nutrients was SO ₄ ^?2 (815.8 ± 624.1 μg/g), followed by NO₃ ^?-N (295.5 ± 372.7 μg/g), NH₄ ⁺-N (24.5 ± 22.1 μg/g) and PO₄ ^3? (2.0 ± 0.8 μg/g). The rainfall erosivity value was 1658.7 MJ mm/ha/h/year. The soil erodibility and slope factor ranges from 0.06 to 0.26 ton h/MJ/mm and 7.63 to 18.33, respectively. The rate of soil loss from the Melai sub-catchment in the present condition is very low (0.0028 ton/ha/year) to low (18.93 ton/ha/year), and low level flow of nutrients and heavy metals, indicating that the Melai River was not the contaminant source of sediments, nutrients, and heavy metals to the lake.     

A new ophiolite occurrence in NW Sudan – constraints on Late Proterozoic tectonism

Mafic–ultramafic sequences in the Jebel Rahib fold-and-thrust belt of NW Sudan comprise the metamorphosed equivalents of obducted oceanic lithosphere. Primary features like pillow-structures, quenchtextures, igneous layering and primary minerals like chromian spinels and pyroxenes are partly preserved. Geochemical investigations confirm the field evidence and reveal the occurrence of harzburgites, ophiolitic chromites, gabbros, gabbroic cumulates and basalts of primitive tholeiitic compositions resembling transitional MORBs. The age of low-grade overprint of the basaltic rocks can be limited to 860–740 Myr (K–Ar). The existence of an ophiolite, as well as its close interfingering with highly deformed basin sediments, provides unambiguous evidence for a cycle of extensional and compressional tectonics in NW Sudan during Pan-African times. Consequently, the concept of an older, stable Proterozoic, or even Archaean, ‘African Craton’onto which the juvenile Pan-African Nubian Shield assemblages were accreted, needs revision.     

Pollutant migration from deeply buried repositories

Semi-analytic solutions are developed for the migration of pollutants from cylindrical and spherical repositories buried deep in a homogeneous and isotropic soil in the presence of a uniform and unidirectional advection. The techniques adopted involves taking the Laplace transform of the governing equations, finding an analytic solution in transform space and then numerically inverting the transform to obtain the concentrations of the contaminants at selected positions and times. Numerical results are presented, and practical implications discussed.     

A semi-analytical method for the wave-induced seabed response

A general semi-analytical method is presented for the analysis of seabed response under wave action during a storm. The seabed is idealized as a poro-elastic medium filled with a single compressible fluid with anisotropic flow. The coupled process of fluid flow and deformation of soil skeleton is formulated in the framework of Biot's theory. The analysis for the response of homogeneous seabed of finite thickness under a plane progressive wave is developed first, followed by an extension for the case of a layered seabed. A generalization for three-dimensional response of seabed is also developed for a general wave field which provides the analyses for seabed response under short-crested or standing waves in the vicinity of a structure. Some numerical examples illustrating the proposed analyses are also presented.     

Recent Sea Level and Sea Surface Temperature Trends Along the Bangladesh Coast in Relation to the Frequency of Intense Cyclones

Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, is a victim of frequent natural calamities like tropical cyclones, tornadoes, floods, storm surges and droughts. Now the sea level rise (SLR) has also been included in these natural calamities. The SLR is likely to have greater impact on that part of Bangladesh having low topography and a wide flood plain. Since 21% of the population lives in the low coastal belt, any increase in sea level will be a problem of ominous proportion for Bangladesh. Since the cyclogenesis enhances over the Bay of Bengal during May and November, the sea level and sea surface temperature (SST) trends of these two months have been analyzed and calculated. The results of the selected stations one in the eastern coast and another in the western coast of Bangladesh show that Bangladesh coastal sea level is rising in the same way as the global sea level, but the magnitude is quite different. The difference in the behavior of sea level rise along the Bangladesh coast and the global trend may be due to the tectonic activity such as subsidence of the land. The mean tide level at Hiron Point (in Sunderbans) has shown an increasing trend of about 2.5 mm/year in May and 8.5 mm/year in November. Similarly near Cox?s Bazar (in the eastern coast of Bangladesh) it has registered a positive trend of about 4.3 mm/year in May and 10.9 mm/year in November. Thus the increment in the sea level along the Bangladesh coast during cyclone months is much more pronounced. In coastal waters near Hiron Point the SST has registered an increasing trend of about 1°C in May and 0.5°C in November during the 14-year period from 1985?1998. Near Cox?s Bazar, SST has shown a rising trend of about 0.8°C in May and about 0.4°C in November during the same 14-year period. The magnitude of SST trend is slightly more along the west coast. Any change in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones will have far reaching implications in the South Asian region. The rise in SST in the cyclone months seems to be correlated with the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones. During these months, an increasing trend in the frequency and intensity of severe cyclones has been observed.     

The interrelationship between travel behavior and life choices in adapting to flood disasters

Disasters resulting from climate change are shown to be important determinants of people’s life choice decisions. In the literature, travel behavior choice and life choices are usually addressed separately under disasters such as flood and cyclone. However, travel behavior may be interdependent with other life choices, jointly shaping people’s adaptation decisions. To this end, the paper advances the literature by exploring the interrelationship between changes in travel behavior and job and residential location under flood disasters, while separating coastal and inland observations. For this purpose, a stated preference survey was conducted in 14 cities of Bangladesh in early 2013. An analysis approach based on structural equation modeling was developed to investigate the correlations between travel behavior change and job and residential location changes. Model estimation results suggest that flood impacts have significant influences on inland people’s life choices, while coastal people’s life choices are mainly affected by flood adaptation responses and attitudes. Significant correlations between travel behavior change and job and residential location changes are found for both observations. Moreover, both coastal and inland people tend not to change residential locations if changes in job location and travel behavior are made. Inland people may not change travel behavior if their job and/or residential locations are changed, but coastal people’s job and residential location changes are associated with changes in travel behavior. Travel behavior change is found to have more of an effect on residential location change than job location change in both regions. These findings conclude that the two-way relationship between travel behavior and life choices should be taken into account in future analyses, and thus adaptation policies to climate change disasters could be better linked with people’s behavioral responses.     

Insights on the small tsunami from January 28, 2020, Caribbean Sea MW7.7 earthquake by numerical simulation and spectral analysis

A major left-lateral strike-slip Mw7.7 earthquake occurred in the vicinity of the Caribbean Sea on January 28, 2020. As a result, a small-scale tsunami was generated. The properties of the seismogenic source were described using observational data gathered for the earthquake and tsunami, as well as information on the regional tectonic setting. The tsunami was simulated with the COMCOT model and Okada’s dislocation model from finite fault solutions for M_W7.7 Caribbean Sea earthquakes published by the United States Geological Survey. The simulation results were compared to tide gauge records to validate whether the seafloor’s vertical displacement generated by the strike-slip fault caused a small-scale tsunami. We conducted a spectral analysis of the tsunami to better understand the characteristics of tsunami records. The tsunami simulation results showed that the co-seismic vertical displacement caused by a strike-slip M_W7.7 earthquake could have contributed to the small-scale tsunami, but the anomalously large high-frequency tsunami waves recorded by the George Town tide gauge 11 min after the earthquake were unrelated to the earthquake-generated tsunami. According to the spectrum analysis, the predominant period of noticeable high-frequency tsunami waves recorded by the George Town tide gauge occurred only two minutes after the earthquake. This indicates that the source of the small-scale tsunami was close to the George Town station and the possible tsunami source was 150 km away from George Town station. These facts suggest that a submarine landslide was caused by the strike-slip earthquake. The comprehensive analysis showed that the small-scale tsunami was not caused solely by co-seismic seafloor deformation from the strike-slip event but that an earthquake-triggered submarine landslide was the primary cause. Therefore, the combined impact of two sources led to the small-scale tsunami.