Very low temperature,natural deformation of fine grained limestone: a case study from the Lucania region,southern Apennines,Italy

Abstract

The deformation behavior of fine grained limestones from the Monte Sirino area (Lucania region) of the southern Apennines has been analysed by constraining microstructural observations and crystallographic fabrics with data on the metamorphic conditions of deformation. X-ray and infrared analysis of clay minerals, together with illite ‘crystallinity’ data, suggest that the studied rocks underwent very low grade metamorphism in the deep diagenetic zone. The limestones consist of very fine grained (<10 μm) aggregates of micrite. Elliptically-shaped radiolarians, preserved as moulds with coarser (>20 μm) crystalline fillings, provide common strain markers. Optical microstructures and strain analysis indicate heterogeneous intracrystalline strain in the coarser (>50 μm) calcite. On the other hand, SEM and TEM observations, and crystallographic fabrics determined by X-ray texture goniometry, indicate a deformation involving not only intracrystalline slip, but also an important component of grain boundary sliding in the fine grained matrix. The inferred microscopic deformation mechanisms are compared with constitutive flow laws derived from experimental studies. For the maximum inferred temperature of deformation of 250 °C and geologic strain rates of 10^?13?10^?15 s^?1, deformation mechanism maps for calcite suggest twinning and other glide mechanisms to be active in grains larger than about 5?10 μm. Smaller grains would be mostly deformed by grain size sensitive creep mechanisms, which include both diffusion mass transfer processes and grain boundary sliding. Deformation features observed in the study limestones are compatible with the prediction of such temperature-dependent mechanism maps. © 2001 Éditions scientifiques et médicales Elsevier SAS     

Regional and global projections of twenty-first century glacier mass changes in response to climate scenarios from global climate models

A large component of present-day sea-level rise is due to the melt of glaciers other than the ice sheets. Recent projections of their contribution to global sea-level rise for the twenty-first century range between 70 and 180 mm, but bear significant uncertainty due to poor glacier inventory and lack of hypsometric data. Here, we aim to update the projections and improve quantification of their uncertainties by using a recently released global inventory containing outlines of almost every glacier in the world. We model volume change for each glacier in response to transient spatially-differentiated temperature and precipitation projections from 14 global climate models with two emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) prepared for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The multi-model mean suggests sea-level rise of 155 ± 41 mm (RCP4.5) and 216 ± 44 mm (RCP8.5) over the period 2006–2100, reducing the current global glacier volume by 29 or 41 %. The largest contributors to projected global volume loss are the glaciers in the Canadian and Russian Arctic, Alaska, and glaciers peripheral to the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Although small contributors to global volume loss, glaciers in Central Europe, low-latitude South America, Caucasus, North Asia, and Western Canada and US are projected to lose more than 80 % of their volume by 2100. However, large uncertainties in the projections remain due to the choice of global climate model and emission scenario. With a series of sensitivity tests we quantify additional uncertainties due to the calibration of our model with sparsely observed glacier mass changes. This gives an upper bound for the uncertainty range of ±84 mm sea-level rise by 2100 for each projection.     

Environmental impacts of household appliances in Europe and scenarios for their impact reduction

Assessing the environmental impact due to consumption of goods and services is a pivotal step towards achieving the sustainable development goal related to responsible production and consumption (i.e. SDG 12). Household appliances plays a crucial role and should be assessed in a systemic manner, namely considering all life cycle stages, technological efficiency, and affluence aspects. The present study assess the impact of such household appliances used in Europe, and tests scenarios of potential impact reduction at various scales. Life cycle assessment is applied to 14 different household appliances (ranging from dishwashers to television devices) selected to build a set of representative products, based on their economic value and diffusion in households in Europe. Related impacts are calculated with the Environmental Footprint method for calculating a Consumer Footprint “appliances” for the baseline year 2010. A number of scenarios encompassing eco-solutions on a technical level, changes in consumption pattern, behavioral changes, as well as the combination of all these aspects are run to estimate the Consumer Footprint related to household appliances for the year 2030, compared against this baseline scenario. The baseline Consumer Footprint is confirming the importance of the use phase in leading the impacts in almost all impact categories. Testing different scenarios concludes that there is a reduction of the impact for most of the categories (with up to 67% for the ozone depletion potential, and still around 35% for the global warming potential), while two of the here examined impact categories (i.e. land-use and mineral resource depletion) show an overall potential that is even negative – i.e. the results of all scenarios are higher than the ones of the 2010 baseline scenario. The increase in purchase and use of such appliances may offset energy efficiency benefits in some of the examined categories. Hence, the assessment of sustainability of appliances consumption should always include several scales, from the efficiency of the products (micro scale), to the improvement of the energy mix (meso scale), up to accounting for socio-economic drivers and patterns of consumption affecting the overall appliances stock (macro scale).     

Applying an Automatic Image-Processing Method to Synoptic Observations

We used an automatic image-processing method to detect solar-activity features observed in white light at the Kislovodsk Solar Station. This technique was applied to automatically or semi-automatically detect sunspots and active regions. The results of this automated recognition were verified with statistical data available from other observatories and revealed a high detection accuracy. We also provide parameters of sunspot areas, of the umbra, and of faculae as observed in Solar Cycle 23 as well as the magnetic flux of these active elements, calculated at the Kislovodsk Solar Station, together with white-light images and magnetograms from the Michaelson Doppler Imager onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO/MDI). The ratio of umbral and total sunspot areas during Solar Cycle 23 is ≈?0.19. The area of sunspots of the leading polarity was approximately 2.5 times the area of sunspots of the trailing polarity.     

Evolution and instabilities of disks harboring super massive black holes

The bar formation is still an open problem in modern astrophysics. In this paper we present numerical simulations performed with the aim of analyzing the growth of the bar instability inside stellar-gaseous disks, where the star formation is triggered, and a central black hole is present. The aim of this paper is to point out the impact of such a central massive black hole on the growth of the bar. We use N-body-SPH simulations of the same isolated disk-to-halo mass systems harboring black holes with different initial masses and a different energy feedback on the surrounding gas. We compare the results of these simulations with the one of the same disk without a black hole in its center. We make the same comparison (disk with and without black hole) for a stellar disk in a fully cosmological scenario. A stellar bar, lasting 10 Gyrs, is present in all our simulations.     

Some results of the investigation of geomagnetic field variation in the Urals and the Carpathians

Summary. A precision magnetic survey for the investigation of current activity in the Earth's lithosphere has been carried out in the Urals and in the Carpathians. As a result of this research three types of time variation of the total field were discovered. These are:
(1) The normal field variation reflecting the general pattern of secular variation. The difference of initial and repeat observation where only this type of variation operates, is rather small and usually does not exceed 0.2–0.3 nT. The field changes in such regions can be used only to evaluate the observation errors and to provide the regional pattern of secular variation.
(2) The slow but localized'anomalous field'change from year to year corresponding, presumably, to anomalies of a tectonomagnetic nature. The normal pattern of the secular variation field here is disturbed by sources located in the upper part of the lithosphere.
(3) Irregular time changes of the field with rather large amplitudes (up to 10–20 nT). Repeated observations of such anomalies show that the field changes significantly here even during one day. Both in the Urals and Carpathians these anomalies form extended elongated structures with widths up to 10–30 km. These anomalies usually coincide with those deep faults where the strongest recent crustal movements have been determined by means of geodetic observations. The analysis of the results of precision geomagnetic surveys in the Urals and in the Carpathians shows that geomagnetic investigations can be used for the exploration of tectonically active zones.     

Climate and water budget change of a Mediterranean coastal watershed, Ravenna, Italy

It is generally difficult to quantify exactly the freshwater going in or out of the coastal watersheds along the northern Adriatic Sea because, on one hand, excess water is drained and pumped into the sea to prevent flooding but, on the other hand, water is brought onto the land from far away for irrigation. Fragmentation of water authorities makes it difficult to collect all the necessary information. Climate change and increasing salinization of the coastal aquifers make it imperative, however, to better know the quantities of freshwater involved in these small basins. The water budget of a small coastal agricultural watershed along the Adriatic Sea in Italy (The Quinto Basin near Ravenna) is presented here considering different land uses. The evaporation of open water and the evapotranspiration of wetlands, pine forests, bare soil and irrigated agriculture are calculated based on the Penman–Monteith equation and the Cropwat program. The current water budget is based on average climate data from 1989 to 2008 and drainage and irrigation data. Predictions for future evapotranspiration, net irrigation and hydrologic deficit are calculated with climate data from IPCC (The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) 200, Climate change 2007). From the study results, the soil type may determine whether or not a crop will need more or less irrigation in the future. Regulations on land use should therefore consider which crop type can be grown on a specific soil type. Water budget analysis in scenarios A1b and A2 both show an increase of water deficits in the summer and an increase of water surplus in the winter. This is explained by the fact that a larger percentage of the rain will fall in winter and not during the growth season. The open water evaporation will decrease under future climate scenarios as a result of increased relative humidity in winter and decreased wind velocity. This may have a positive effect on the water cycle. The current irrigation is very abundant, but has beneficial effects in contrasting soil salinization and saltwater intrusion into the coastal aquifer.     

Polynomial chaos expansion for global sensitivity analysis applied to a model of radionuclide migration in a randomly heterogeneous aquifer

We perform global sensitivity analysis (GSA) through polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) on a contaminant transport model for the assessment of radionuclide concentration at a given control location in a heterogeneous aquifer, following a release from a near surface repository of radioactive waste. The aquifer hydraulic conductivity is modeled as a stationary stochastic process in space. We examine the uncertainty in the first two (ensemble) moments of the peak concentration, as a consequence of incomplete knowledge of (a) the parameters characterizing the variogram of hydraulic conductivity, (b) the partition coefficient associated with the migrating radionuclide, and (c) dispersivity parameters at the scale of interest. These quantities are treated as random variables and a variance-based GSA is performed in a numerical Monte Carlo framework. This entails solving groundwater flow and transport processes within an ensemble of hydraulic conductivity realizations generated upon sampling the space of the considered random variables. The Sobol indices are adopted as sensitivity measures to provide an estimate of the role of uncertain parameters on the (ensemble) target moments. Calculation of the indices is performed by employing PCE as a surrogate model of the migration process to reduce the computational burden. We show that the proposed methodology (a) allows identifying the influence of uncertain parameters on key statistical moments of the peak concentration (b) enables extending the number of Monte Carlo iterations to attain convergence of the (ensemble) target moments, and (c) leads to considerable saving of computational time while keeping acceptable accuracy.     

Ecological status in the Ligurian Sea: the effect of coastline urbanisation and the importance of proper reference sites

The assessment of the ecological status, as required by the Water Framework Directive (WFD), plays an important role in coastal zone management, but only a small number of ecological indices are applicable on rocky bottoms. In this study, we apply a previously defined ecological quality index based on the cartography of littoral and upper-sublittoral rocky-shore communities (CARLIT), based on the sensitivity of algae dominated communities to anthropogenic impacts along a moderate urban gradient. We also apply this index in four Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), proposed as reference sites at a regional scale. After comparing the outputs with water variables and other quality indices, we can affirm that (1) the CARLIT index is suitable to detect different kinds of anthropogenic pressures, that (2) the choice of proper reference sites is a focal point in the fulfilment of the WFD (Water Framework Directive) and that (3) historical data are important to define reference conditions and the degradation of ecological status.