The major-ion composition of Permian seawater

The major-ion (Mg²⁺, Ca²⁺, Na⁺, K⁺, SO₄²⁻, and Cl⁻) composition of Permian seawater was determined from chemical analyses of fluid inclusions in marine halites. New data from the Upper Permian San Andres Formation of Texas (274-272 Ma) and Salado Formation of New Mexico (251 Ma), analyzed by the environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) X-ray energy-dispersive spectrometry (EDS) method, along with published chemical compositions of fluid inclusions in Permian marine halites from North America (two formations of different ages) and the Central and Eastern European basins (eight formations of four different ages) show that Permian seawater shares chemical characteristics with modern seawater, including SO₄²⁻ > Ca²⁺ at the point of gypsum precipitation, evolution into Mg²⁺-Na⁺-K⁺-SO₄²⁻-Cl⁻ brines, and Mg²⁺/K⁺ ratios ∼5. Permian seawater, however, is slightly depleted in SO₄²⁻ and enriched in Ca²⁺, although modeling results do not rule out Ca²⁺ concentrations close to those in present-day seawater. Na⁺ and Mg²⁺ in Permian seawater are close to (slightly below) their concentrations in modern seawater. Permian and modern seawater are both classified as aragonite seas, with Mg²⁺/Ca²⁺ ratios >2, conditions favorable for precipitation of aragonite and magnesian calcite as ooids and cements.The chemistry of Permian seawater was modeled using the chemical composition of brine inclusions for three periods: Lower Permian Asselian-Sakmarian (296-283 Ma), Lower Permian Artinskian-Kungurian (283-274 Ma), and Upper Permian Tatarian (258-251 Ma). Parallel changes in the chemistry of brine inclusions from equivalent age evaporites in North America, Central Europe, and Eastern Europe show that seawater underwent secular variations in chemistry over the 50 million years of the Permian. Modeled SO₄²⁻ concentrations are 20 mmol per kg H₂O (mmolal) and 19 mmolal in the Asselian-Sakmarian and Artinskian-Kungurian, with higher concentrations in the Upper Permian Tatarian (23 mmolal). Modeled Ca²⁺ is at or above its concentration in modern seawater throughout the Permian. Mg²⁺ is close to (slightly below) its concentration in modern seawater (55 mmolal) in the Asselian-Sakmarian (52 mmolal), and Tatarian (52 mmolal), but slightly higher than modern seawater in the Artinskian-Kungurian (60 mmolal). Mg²⁺/Ca²⁺ ratios are 3.5 (total range = 2.7 to 5.5) in the Lower Permian and rose slightly to 3.7 (total range = 3.1 to 5.8) in the Upper Permian, primarily due to decreases in Ca²⁺. These results are consistent with models that predict oscillations in the major-ion composition of Phanerozoic seawater on the basis of changes in the midocean ridge/river water flux ratio driven by changes in the rate of midocean ridge crust production.The Permian was characterized by low sea levels, icehouse conditions, and southern hemisphere glaciation. Such conditions, analogous to the present ice age, and the similarities between Permian seawater and modern seawater, all suggest that general Phanerozoic supercycles, driven by mantle convection and global volcanicity, also control the major-ion chemistry of seawater.     

'This is like my comfort zone': Senses of place and belonging within Oruāmo/Beachhaven, New Zealand

Abstract:  This paper examines the culturally specific experiences of belonging within Oruāmo/Beachhaven, a suburb in North Shore City. In-depth interviews with 32 caregivers of young children expose the fact that the ethnic groups represented – Māori, Samoan and Pākehā– vary in their uses and understandings of, as well as feelings for, residential neighbourhood. Examination of the themes of natural environment, social relations, continuity of residence, facilities, organisations and place transformation reveal that, while representatives of all groups had views on these matters, there was a variable degree of engagement with and priority afforded to these concerns.     

Confronting hysteresis: Wood based river rehabilitation in highly altered riverine landscapes of south-eastern Australia

This study evaluates an experiment in river rehabilitation which uses large wood to stimulate and emulate natural system processes in an effort to reverse channel degradation, excess sediment transport and habitat simplification that has resulted from two centuries of human induced disturbances, particularly desnagging. The experiment involved the reintroduction of 436 logs (350 t) within 20 engineered log jams (ELJs) over an 1100 m reach. Commencing in 1999, the experiment was set up as a standard BACI design, with a control reach 3 km upstream. In the 5 years since implementing the rehabilitation strategy, the study reach has experienced five floods greater than the mean annual, and a further five events capable of mobilising the gravel bed. Five surveys of channel terrain have been completed since treatment implementation, and the changes to net sediment storage and morphologic diversity assessed in comparison to the control reach. Seven surveys of the fish population in the reach have also been undertaken during the project to measure the ecological response to the introduced wood. The experiment has demonstrated the effectiveness of ELJ technology in achieving engineering and geomorphic goals. To date, the treatment has halted further degradation of the river and increased sediment storage, with the test reach now storing, on average, 40 m³/1000 m² more sediment than in the control. These values, it would appear, represent a new reach-scale dynamic equilibrium storage level over decadal timescales. Additional sediment storage amounts to 3.5 m³/m³ of wood added. At the reach scale this additional storage represents a reduction of just 2% or less of the post-European expansion in channel capacity, suggesting far greater efforts are required than those employed here to reverse the cumulative effects of 180 years of channel erosion and simplification.Pool and bar area in the test reach increased by around 5% and 3.5%, respectively, while the corresponding values in the control were around 1.5% and 1%, respectively. Two indices of morphologic diversity were measured for each bed survey: the standard deviation of 3D residuals of change compared with the baseline survey (SD_iΔ3D); and the standard deviation of thalweg residuals from the line of best fit (SD_iTR). The SD_iΔ3D index shows both reaches increased in complexity through the study with the treatment increasing more than the control (0.37 and 0.29, respectively). The SD_iTR index does not detect clear changes because of the low signal to noise ratio, however, it does suggest the test reach was more complex than the control at the outset. The observed increase in fish abundance after the first 12 months of monitoring, reported previously, is now far less distinct 4 years on — a pattern seemingly reflecting the relatively minor increases in critical pool habitat and habitat diversity over the same period. Although no significant differences were detectable in fish species richness or total abundance from the reach aggregate data after 4 years, analysis of individual structures show them to be high quality habitat for native fish compared to the rest of the reach and the upstream control.These results highlight the challenges river managers face in achieving measurable improvements in the health of aquatic ecosystems in highly altered rivers. Managers must confront hysteresis in a biophysical and institutional sense when attempting to reverse the degradation of rivers. The scale of treatment implemented in this experiment was at the upper end of the spectrum of rehabilitation efforts currently being undertaken in Australia, suggesting that far greater resources and longer timescales are required to achieve the levels of improvement in the diversity of stream habitat expected by the community. The study also highlights problems with the strategy of attempting to meet multiple objectives within a reach scale rehabilitation project. While this treatment successfully met some geomorphic study objectives, maximising the benefits for fish habitat would require a strategy focused primarily on the creation of complex woody habitat within deeper pools, particularly pools immediately below riffles.     

The Charisma of Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing the Imbalance

Coastal ecosystems including coral reefs, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and salt marshes are being lost at alarming rates, and increased scientific understanding of causes has failed to stem these losses. Coastal habitats receive contrasting research effort, with 60% of all of the published research carried out on coral reefs, compared to 11–14% of the records for each of salt marshes, mangrove forests, and seagrass meadows. In addition, these highly connected and interdependent coastal ecosystems receive widely contrasting media attention that is disproportional to their scientific attention. Seagrass ecosystems receive the least attention in the media (1.3% of the media reports) with greater attention on salt marshes (6.5%), considerably more attention on mangroves (20%), and a dominant focus on coral reefs, which are the subject of three in every four media reports on coastal ecosystems (72.5%). There are approximately tenfold lower reports on seagrass meadows in the media for every scientific paper published (ten), than the 130–150 media reports per scientific paper for mangroves and coral reefs. The lack of public awareness of losses of less charismatic ecosystems results in the continuation of detrimental practices and therefore contributes to continued declines of coastal ecosystems. More effective communication of scientific knowledge about these uncharismatic but ecologically important coastal habitats is required. Effective use of formal (e.g., school curricula, media) and informal (e.g., web) education avenues and an effective partnership between scientists and media communicators are essential to raise public awareness of issues, concerns, and solutions within coastal ecosystems. Only increased public understanding can ultimately inform and motivate effective management of these ecologically important coastal ecosystems.     

Disruption of Routine Behaviors Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

This paper frames the unfolding impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as a process of lifeway disruption, analyzing the degree to which residents of spill affected communities were prevented from undertaking routine behaviors during the disaster. Special attention is paid to the influence of time, natural resource employment, and community sentiment. Drawing on data from the Louisiana Community Oil Spill Survey, the results show that people in the spill impacted region were prevented from engaging in routine behaviors, though this disruption has steadily decreased over time, suggesting a general trend toward recovery. Consistent with the renewable resource community concept, the results also show that those with ties to the fishing industry were more likely to be prevented from undertaking routine behaviors than were nonfishers. Finally, community sentiment is shown to ameliorate routine behavior disruption, thus, promoting resilience. Overall, these results challenge notions of monolithic paths to disaster recovery.     

Effect of Baroclinicity on Vortex Axisymmetrization. Part Ⅰ:Barotropic Basic Vortex

The barotropic and baroclinic disturbances axisymmetrized by the barotropic basic vortex are examined in an idealized modeling framework consisting of two layers. Using a Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approach, the radial propagation of a baroclinic disturbance is shown to be slower than a barotropic disturbance, resulting in a slower linear axisymmetrization for baroclinic disturbances. The slower-propagating baroclinic waves also cause more baroclinic asymmetric kinetic energy to be transferred directly to the barotropic symmetric vortex than from barotropic disturbances, resulting in a faster axisymmetrization process in the nonlinear baroclinic wave case than in the nonlinear barotropic wave case.     

Winners and Losers in Marine Conservation: Fishers' Displacement and Livelihood Benefits from Marine Reserves

Marine reserves can create both benefits and costs to fishers. This article explores the perceptions of fishers in Kenya and Seychelles about displacement, spillover, and overall impacts of local marine reserves on their livelihoods. We test whether these perceptions are different among fishers from different geographic and socioeconomic conditions. Sixty-six percent of fishers had been displaced from marine reserves or coastal development and 90% believed they had caught fishes that spilled over from marine reserves. Poorer fishers in Kenya were both displaced from, and also felt like they benefited from, marine reserves. This highlights how people's experiences with marine reserves, both positive and negative, are affected by a range of social considerations that may not be incorporated in typical evaluations of ecological and economic marine reserve success.     

Anomalous passive subsidence of deep‐water sedimentary basins: a prearc basin example,southern New Caledonia Trough and Taranaki Basin,New Zealand

Stratigraphic data from petroleum wells and seismic reflection analysis reveal two distinct episodes of subsidence in the southern New Caledonia Trough and deep‐water Taranaki Basin. Tectonic subsidence of ~2.5 km was related to Cretaceous rift faulting and post‐rift thermal subsidence, and ~1.5 km of anomalous passive tectonic subsidence occurred during Cenozoic time. Pure‐shear stretching by factors of up to 2 is estimated for the first phase of subsidence from the exponential decay of post‐rift subsidence. The second subsidence event occured ~40 Ma after rifting ceased, and was not associated with faulting in the upper crust. Eocene subsidence patterns indicate northward tilting of the basin, followed by rapid regional subsidence during the Oligocene and Early Miocene. The resulting basin is 300–500 km wide and over 2000 km long, includes part of Taranaki Basin, and is not easily explained by any classic model of lithosphere deformation or cooling. The spatial scale of the basin, paucity of Cenozoic crustal faulting, and magnitudes of subsidence suggest a regional process that acted from below, probably originating within the upper mantle. This process was likely associated with inception of nearby Australia‐Pacific plate convergence, which ultimately formed the Tonga‐Kermadec subduction zone. Our study demonstrates that shallow‐water environments persisted for longer and their associated sedimentary sequences are hence thicker than would be predicted by any rift basin model that produces such large values of subsidence and an equivalent water depth. We suggest that convective processes within the upper mantle can influence the sedimentary facies distribution and thermal architecture of deep‐water basins, and that not all deep‐water basins are simply the evolved products of the same processes that produce shallow‐water sedimentary basins. This may be particularly true during the inception of subduction zones, and we suggest the term ‘prearc’ basin to describe this tectonic setting.     

A Framework for Quantitative Assessment of Impacts Related to Energy and Mineral Resource Development

Natural resource planning at all scales demands methods for assessing the impacts of resource development and use, and in particular it requires standardized methods that yield robust and unbiased results. Building from existing probabilistic methods for assessing the volumes of energy and mineral resources, we provide an algorithm for consistent, reproducible, quantitative assessment of resource development impacts. The approach combines probabilistic input data with Monte Carlo statistical methods to determine probabilistic outputs that convey the uncertainties inherent in the data. For example, one can utilize our algorithm to combine data from a natural gas resource assessment with maps of sage grouse leks and piñon-juniper woodlands in the same area to estimate possible future habitat impacts due to possible future gas development. As another example: one could combine geochemical data and maps of lynx habitat with data from a mineral deposit assessment in the same area to determine possible future mining impacts on water resources and lynx habitat. The approach can be applied to a broad range of positive and negative resource development impacts, such as water quantity or quality, economic benefits, or air quality, limited only by the availability of necessary input data and quantified relationships among geologic resources, development alternatives, and impacts. The framework enables quantitative evaluation of the trade-offs inherent in resource management decision-making, including cumulative impacts, to address societal concerns and policy aspects of resource development.