Paleomagnetism of the Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian carbonates of New York State: evidence for secondary magnetizations residing in magnetite

Paleomagnetic directions for the Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian carbonates of the Helderberg escarpment (New York State) differ from expected Late Silurian and Early Devonian directions for cratonic North America. The mean direction (D = 165°, I = −10°; paleopole at 50°N 129°E) is similar to Late Carboniferous and Early Permian results. Negative fold tests, and a lack of reversals, suggest that the magnetization is secondary. However, low coercivities, low blocking temperatures, the thermomagnetic curves (T_C near 570°C) and the acquisition of isothermal remanent magnetizations all suggest that the remanence is carried by magnetite. If a detrital origin of these magnetites is assumed, the secondary nature of the remanence would argue for thermal resetting as a result of deep burial of the rocks. However, no evidence for such thermal resetting is seen in the alteration of conodonts. More likely perhaps is a chemical or thermochemical origin of the remanence; this would require the magnetites to be authigenic.     

Foreign policy ‘trilemmas’: understanding China's stance on international cap-and-trade

This article uses a policy analogy approach to explore China's attitude toward the possibility of global carbon market integration, including the development of a common cap-and-trade market for the global civil aviation industry. Like in other foreign policy domains, in international cap-and-trade, China faces a ‘trilemma’ between carbon market integration, state sovereignty and policy flexibility. By referring to how China has approached a comparable trilemma in foreign exchange policy making, we analyse China's possible stance on international cap-and-trade. We argue that China will prefer to gradually establish and strengthen, to a limited extent, intergovernmental governance mechanisms, which allow nation-states to prioritize sovereignty and policy flexibility in carbon trading policy making. In the conclusion we use this argument to explain China's responses to the carbon-trading initiatives of Australia, the EU, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and the World Bank.

Policy relevance

The international community has reached a consensus on the use of market mechanisms for mitigating climate change. While opposing the EU's plan to include Chinese airlines in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, China has started to co-explore with Australia the possibility of linking their carbon markets, and has adopted a supportive attitude toward the carbon trading initiatives led by the ICAO and the World Bank. Considering China's status as the largest emitting country of GHGs and its interdependence with major developed and developing countries, China's substantial participation would be crucial to the success of the global market-based efforts to reduce GHG emissions. This article presents an initial attempt to develop a better understanding of China's stance on international cap-and-trade.     

Evolution and strike variability of early post-rift deep-marine depositional systems: Lower to Mid-Cretaceous, North Viking Graben, Norwegian North Sea

The controls and development of early-post-rift, deep-water depositional systems are poorly understood due to their commonly deeply-buried nature. As a consequence, in the subsurface there is usually a lack of well penetrations and/or weak seismic imaging. At outcrop, early post-rift strata have commonly been deformed beyond reasonable recognition by later inversion tectonics. In contrast to these systems, the North Viking Graben shows a well-imaged Cretaceous early post-rift package with good well control and little effect from inversion. Therefore, this paper examines the early post-rift, deep-water depositional systems of the North Viking Graben to determine the controls on their stratigraphic position, geometry and evolution, and thus provide an analogue for comparable systems. Greater understanding of such systems will allow for the enhanced prediction of reservoir units in the subsurface and development of new play models since post-rift intervals are generally under-explored.The basin configuration inherited by the Cretaceous early post-rift in the northern North Sea was set up by Permo-Triassic and Late Jurassic rifting. In the North Viking Graben this established considerable along-strike variability, resulting in a northern basin segment surrounded by steep slopes and faulted-bounded structural highs and a southern basin segment margined by slopes with noticeably gentler gradients. Associated with the Cretaceous post-rift is an overall transgressional trend, which drowned local source areas, resulting in prevalent carbonate and hemipelagic mudstone deposition in the basins. In the North Viking Graben, the uplifted Oseberg fault-block provided the sub-aerial clastic source area until it was submerged in the early Upper Cretaceous.The early post-rift infill of the North Viking Graben was divided into four key seismic stratigraphic units (K1, K2, K3 and K4) using an integration of seismic and well data. Inside this stratigraphic framework, the depositional systems within each K-unit were resolved from characteristic seismic facies, amplitude anomalies, relationship with adjacent reflections, and geomorphologies. In the northern basin segment, the early post-rift stratigraphy contains basin-floor fans, a channel complex and a shoreline-like geometry, whereas the southern basin segment is solely characterised by hemipelagic and carbonate deposition. This spatial variability indicates that one of the dominant controls on the development of the early post-rift depositional systems in the North Viking Graben was the inherited syn-rift fault-controlled topography. The steep slopes bounding the northern basin segment aided the delivery of sediment from the sub-aerial Oseberg source area to the graben whereas the submerged, gentle slopes in the southern basin segment were relatively sediment-starved.Long- and short-term changes in relative sea-level also heavily influenced the evolution of the early post-rift basin stratigraphy. Short-term relative sea-level fall allowed basin-floor fan emplacement whereas short-term relative sea-level stand-still favoured deposition of a channel complex. Deposition of the shoreface-like geometry is associated with a short-term relative sea-level rise. This temporal difference in the style and scale of the depositional systems is also interpreted to reflect the gradual denudation and drowning of the Oseberg source area. Regional short-term trangressive and anoxic events in the northern North Sea further influenced the early post-rift strata, resulting in the deposition of stratigraphic units that can be correlated across the North Sea.     

Space Physics Interactive Data Resource—SPIDR

SPIDR (Space Physics Interactive Data Resource) is a standard data source for solar-terrestrial physics, functioning within the framework of the ICSU World Data Centers. It is a distributed database and application server network, built to select, visualize and model historical space weather data distributed across the Internet. SPIDR can work as a fully-functional web-application (portal) or as a grid of web-services, providing functions for other applications to access its data holdings.

Syn-folding remagnetization of Cambro-Ordovician carbonates from the Pennsylvania Salient post-dates oroclinal rotation

Paleomagnetic directions of 35 sites of Cambro-Ordovician carbonates from 10 anticlines were analyzed to test models of curvature along the Pennsylvania Salient of the Appalachians and to constrain the relative timing of magnetization acquisition. The sites yield directions of magnetization that are almost all reversed with near-horizontal inclinations upon appropriate structural correction. The common, Late Paleozoic (Kiaman-aged) direction and incremental fold tests show that these directions represent remagnetizations carried by authigenic magnetite, acquired just before or during the earlier phases of folding. No convincing indications were found of primary magnetizations. Mean declinations from the northeastern and southwestern limbs of the salient differ by a few degrees, indicating negligible, if any, rotation between the limbs. The results are similar to prior studies of overlying Siluro-Devonian carbonates, showing coherent behavior of the entire Paleozoic cratonic cover. We conclude that the statistically negligible difference in declination indicates that (previously demonstrated) oroclinal bending occurred before carbonates of the Paleozoic stratigraphic cover were remagnetized during the Permian and before regional folding was completed.     

Architecture and emplacement of the Nebo–Babel gabbronorite-hosted magmatic Ni–Cu–PGE sulphide deposit,West Musgrave,Western Australia

The Nebo–Babel Ni–Cu–platinum-group element (PGE) sulphide deposit in the West Musgrave Block, Western Australia, is the largest nickel sulphide discovery in the last 10 years. The deposit is hosted within a concentrically zoned, olivine-free, tube-like (chonolithic), gabbronorite intrusion associated with the, approximately, 1,078-Ma Giles Complex-layered intrusions in the Warakurna large igneous province. Emplaced into sulphide-free amphibolite facies orthogneiss, the fault-offset Nebo–Babel chonolith extends for 5 km and has a cross-section of 1 × 0.5 km. Igneous mineralogy, fabrics, and textures are well preserved. The lithostratigraphy includes variably textured leucogabbronorites (VLGN) that form an outer shell around mineralised gabbronorite (MGN), with barren gabbronorite (BGN) and oxide–apatite gabbronorite (OAGN) in the middle and lower parts of the chonolith. Mineral and whole-rock geochemistry indicate that the units become progressively evolved in the order: VLGN, MGN, BGN, and OAGN, and that incompatible trace-element concentrations increase downwards within the MGN and BGN. The mineralisation, which is confined to the early, more primitive units (VLGN and MGN), occurs as massive sulphide breccias and stringers and as disseminated gabbronorite-hosted sulphides. The massive sulphides were emplaced late in the intrusive sequence, have different PGE chemistry and Cu tenor to the disseminated sulphides, and have undergone sulphide fractionation. The distribution of disseminated sulphides, which are primary magmatic in origin, is related to chonolith geometry and magma flow regimes, rather than to gravitational settling. Sulfur-bearing country rocks are absent in the Nebo–Babel deposit area, and thus, local crustal S addition was unlikely to have been the major mechanism in achieving sulphide immiscibility. The Nebo–Babel intrusion is part of an originally continuous magma chonolith with multiple and related magma pulses. The parental magma was medium- to low-K tholeiite with 8–9 wt% MgO. The initial magma pulse (VLGN), the most primitive and sulphide saturated, was probably emplaced along a linear weakness in the country rock. After crystallisation of VLGN, marginally more fractionated, sulphide-saturated magma was injected through the thermally insulated core of the conduit, forming the MGN. Successive pulse(s) of more fractionated magma (BGN) were emplaced in the core of the intrusion. After magma flow ceased, closed system crystal fractionation produced consistent mineral and chemical fractionation trends within BGN and OAGN. After crystallisation, the intrusion was overturned and then offset by the Jameson Fault resulting in the apparent ‘reverse’ chemical and mineral trends in Nebo–Babel.     

Late orogenic, large-scale rotations in the Tien Shan and adjacent mobile belts in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan

Most of Kazakhstan belongs to the central part of the Eurasian Paleozoic mobile belts for which previously proposed tectonic scenarios have been rather disparate. Of particular interest is the origin of strongly curved Middle and Late Paleozoic volcanic belts of island-arc and Andean-arc affinities that dominate the structure of Kazakhstan. We undertook a paleomagnetic study of Carboniferous to Upper Permian volcanics and sediments from several localities in the Ili River basin between the Tien Shan and the Junggar–Alatau ranges in southeast Kazakhstan. Our main goal was to investigate the Permian kinematic evolution of these belts, particularly in terms of rotations about vertical axes, in the hope of deciphering the dynamics that played a role during the latest Paleozoic deformation in this area. This deformation, in turn, can then be related to the amalgamation of this area with Baltica, Siberia, and Tarim in the expanding Eurasian supercontinent. Thermal demagnetization revealed that most Permian rocks retained a pretilting and likely primary component, which is of reversed polarity at three localities and normal at the fourth. In contrast, most Carboniferous rocks are dominated by postfolding reversed overprints of probably “mid-Permian” age, whereas presumably primary components are isolated from a few sites at two localities. Mean inclinations of primary components generally agree with coeval reference values extrapolated from Baltica, whereas declinations from primary as well as secondary components are deflected counterclockwise (ccw) by up to  90°. Such ccw rotated directions have previously also been observed in other Tien Shan sampling areas and in the adjacent Tarim Block to the south. However, two other areas in Kazakhstan show clockwise (cw) rotations of Permian magnetization directions. One area is located in the Kendyktas block about 300 km to the west of the Ili River valley, and the other is found in the Chingiz Range, to the north of Lake Balkhash and about 400 km to the north of the Ili River valley. The timing of the ccw as well as cw rotations is clearly later than the disappearance of any marine basins from northern Tarim, the Tien Shan and eastern Kazakhstan, so that the rotations cannot be attributed to island-arc or Andean-margin plate settings — instead we attribute the rotations to large-scale, east–west (present-day coordinates), sinistral wrenching in an intracontinental setting, related to convergence between Siberia and Baltica, as recently proposed by Natal'in and Şengör [Natal'in, B.A., and Şengör, A.M.C., 2005. Late Palaeozoic to Triassic evolution of the Turan and Scythian platforms: the pre-history of the palaeo-Tethyan closure, Tectonophysics, 404, 175–202.]. Our previous work in the Chingiz and North Tien Shan areas on Ordovician and Silurian rocks suggested relative rotations of  180°, whereas the Permian declination differences are of the order of 90° between the two areas. Thus, we assume that about 50% of the total post-Ordovician rotations are of pre-Late Permian age, with the other half of Late Permian–earliest Mesozoic age. The pre-Late Permian rotations are likely related to oroclinal bending during plate boundary evolution in a supra-subduction setting, given the calc-alkaline character of nearly all of the pre-Late Permian volcanics in the strongly curved belts.     

Minimum continental velocities with respect to the pole since the Archean

Paleomagnetic apparent polar wander paths provide a method for estimating minimum plate velocities which can be extended much further into the geologic past than can be estimated based on sea-floor magnetic anomalies. Minimum velocities can be determined from the rate of change of latitude as derived relative to a fixed pole. Such latitudinal velocities have been determined for the center of mass of the North American, Baltic, Siberian and African shields since the Archean. The results indicate that plate velocities in the past have at times easily exceeded those for present-day continents, and that they often were equivalent to present-day oceanic velocities, although there are peaks and troughs through time. North American velocities are significantly greater prior to one billion years ago than those of Siberia or Baltica.