Millennial timescale resolution of rhyolite magma recharge at Tarawera volcano: insights from quartz chemistry and melt inclusions

Most rhyolite eruption episodes of Tarawera volcano have emitted several physiochemically distinct magma batches (∼1–10 km³). These episodes were separated on a millennial timescale. The magma batches were relatively homogeneous in temperature and composition at pumice scale (>4 cm), but experienced isolated crystallisation histories. At the sub-cm scale, matrix glasses have trace element compositions (Sr, Ba, Rb) that vary by factors up to 2.5, indicating incomplete mixing of separate melts. Some quartz-hosted melt inclusions are depleted in compatible trace elements (Sr, Ti, Ba) compared to enclosing matrix glasses. This could reflect re-melting of felsic crystals deeper in the crystal pile. Individual quartz crystals display a variety of cathodoluminescence brightness and Ti zoning patterns including rapid changes in melt chemistry and/or temperature (∼50–100°C), and point to multi-cycle crystallisation histories. The Tarawera magma system consisted of a crystal-rich mass containing waxing and waning melt pockets that were periodically recharged by silicic melts driven by basaltic intrusion. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Toward a participatory VGI methodology: crowdsourcing information on regional food assets

Local knowledge has been underrepresented in food-related policies and planning. The goal of this research was to engage members of a local food community and generate volunteered geographic information (VGI) on community food assets. During active data collection, over 200 food assets were reported. This paper details the systematic approach used to create VGI, which emphasizes the socio-cultural context surrounding the mapping technology. The project began with an identified need to connect to and learn from the local food community. The participants were drawn from active food system stakeholders, and a Geoweb infrastructure was selected based on publicly available crowdsourcing tools. The resulting VGI is presented according to system functions: input (Web traffic, contributors, input types), management (contribution vetting, privacy), analysis (typology of input), and presentation (sharing the submitted data). Despite limitations, this study revealed a hyper-local and community-driven perspective on food assets, opened access to government and private data, and increased the transparency and accessibility of information on the regional food system. This research also revealed that there is a growing need for intermediaries who can bridge the gap between experts in the subject matter and experts in digitally enabled participation, and a need for non-government open data repositories.     

The socio-environmental data explorer (SEDE): a social media–enhanced decision support system to explore risk perception to hazard events

ABSTRACT

Social media are increasingly recognized as a useful data source for understanding social response to hazard events in real time and in post-event analysis. This article establishes social media–enhanced decision support systems (SME-DSS) as a synergistic integration of social media and decision support systems (DSSs) to provide structured access to native, near real-time data from a large and diverse population to assess social response to social, environmental, and technological risk and hazard events. We introduce a prototype SME-DSS entitled socio-environmental data explorer (SEDE) to explore the opportunities and challenges of leveraging social media for decision support. We use a winter storm during 25–28 January 2015 that accumulated record amounts of snow along the East Coast of the United States as a case study to evaluate SEDE in helping assess social response to environmental risk and hazard events as well as evaluate social media as a theoretical component within the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) that serves as a theoretical foundation for SME-DSS.     

Source rock potential of the Middle Jurassic to Middle Pliocene,onshore Nile Delta Basin,Egypt

Organic geochemical characterization of cutting samples from the Abu Hammad-1 and Matariya-1 wells elucidates the depositional environment and source rock potential of the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous successions and the Middle Miocene to Pleistocene section in the southern and eastern Nile Delta Basin. The burial and thermal histories of the Mesozoic and Miocene sections were modeled using 1D basin modeling based on input data from the two wells. This study reveals fair to good gas-prone source rocks within the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous sections with total organic carbon (TOC) averaging 2.7% and hydrogen index (HI) up to 130 mg HC/g TOC. The pristane/n-C₁₇ versus phytane/n-C₁₈ correlation suggests mixed marine and terrestrial organic matter with predominant marine input. Burial and thermal history modeling reveals low thermal maturity due to low heat flow and thin overburden. These source rocks can generate gas in the western and northern parts of the basin where they are situated at deeper settings. In contrast, the thick Middle Miocene shows fair source rock quality (TOC averaging at 1.4%; HI maximizing at 183 mg HC/g TOC). The quality decreases towards the younger section where terrestrial organic matter is abundant. This section is similar to previously studied intervals in the eastern Nile Delta Basin but differs from equivalents in the central parts where the quality is better. Based on 1D modeling, the thick Middle Miocene source rocks just reached the oil generation stage, but microbial gas, however, is possible.     

The framing of climate change and development: A comparative analysis of the Human Development Report 2007/8 and the World Development Report 2010

The Human Development Report 2007/8 (HDR) and the World Development Report 2010 (WDR) are both devoted to the connections between climate change and development. The reports provide very different perspectives on where the key challenges reside. Their policy proposals are also different, but much less so. Using a combination of frame and content analysis complemented with attention to how these institutions and their knowledge production processes operate, the paper develops a structured comparison of the problem-framing and solution-framing in the Overviews of the two reports. It compares the reports’ conceptions of development; their normative content and the roles given to human rights; the pathways and solutions the agencies defend, and how protective they are of the poor; the status given to proposed market solutions; what types of information and expert perspective are prioritized and why, and which issues are neglected. Following its stress on human rights and ethical principles, the HDR does not unsettle the market driven solutions to climate change that dominate the global policy arena. Different policy instruments and a fuller institutionalization of its human rights concerns is required, in organizations, processes, methodologies and knowledge networks that could move the ideas forward and continually press for their use. This may require a different model of report preparation.     

Estimates of primary production by remote sensing in the Arctic Ocean: Assessment of accuracy with passive and active sensors

The Arctic Ocean, including its regional shelf seas, is assumed to play an important role in the global carbon cycle. However, the true magnitude of annual production is unknown, as in situ data are sparse in time and space. Remote sensing technology has the potential to provide large scale estimates of phytoplankton biomass at much higher frequency and spatial coverage than shipboard observations in this remote region. Subsurface peaks in both biomass and primary production (PP), which are the characteristics of the Arctic, are shown to limit the reliability of ocean color based integrated PP (IPP) models in the Chukchi Sea. Here we report that the retrievals of IPP from remotely sensed ocean color data were accurate only when limited to 1.2 optical depths, which severely constrains the utility of ocean color remote sensing for the assessment of Arctic Ocean dynamics.Active sensors such as LIDAR, can, in combination with passive ocean color, dramatically improve our ability to estimate IPP for the Arctic. IPP retrievals were improved to within a factor of 2–3 of the measured values, when the vertical distribution of Chl a was determined to a resolution of 1 m using modeled LIDAR retrievals of the beam attenuation coefficient. This was far better than models using only passive ocean color. The instrument specifications of the current NASA spaceborne LIDAR (CALIOP) allow for the retrieval of K_d at a depth resolution of 23 m. Even with this constraint, however, the accuracy of the modeled IPP was improved over passive ocean color retrievals to approximately a factor of 3. The Arctic is a perfect location to merge ocean color and LIDAR measurements as the polar orbit of CALIOP provides complete grid coverage of the area every 8 days, crossing the horizontal gradients in Chl a already known to exist from passive ocean color observations.     

Growth,dynamics and deglaciation of the last British–Irish ice sheet: the deep-sea ice-rafted detritus record

The evolution and dynamics of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) have hitherto largely been reconstructed from onshore and shallow marine glacial geological and geomorphological data. This reconstruction has been problematic because these sequences and data are spatially and temporally incomplete and fragmentary. In order to enhance BIIS reconstruction, we present a compilation of new and previously published ice-rafted detritus (IRD) flux and concentration data from high-resolution sediment cores recovered from the NE Atlantic deep-sea continental slope adjacent to the last BIIS. These cores are situated adjacent to the full latitudinal extent of the last BIIS and cover Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 2 and 3. Age models are based on radiocarbon dating and graphical tuning of abundances of the polar planktonic foraminifera Neogloboquadrina pachyderma sinistral (% Nps) to the Greenland GISP2 ice core record. Multiple IRD fingerprinting techniques indicate that, at the selected locations, most IRD are sourced from adjacent BIIS ice streams except in the centre of Heinrich (H) layers in which IRD shows a prominent Laurentide Ice Sheet provenance. IRD flux data are interpreted with reference to a conceptual model explaining the relations between flux, North Atlantic hydrography and ice dynamics. Both positive and rapid negative mass balance can cause increases, and prominent peaks, in IRD flux. First-order interpretation of the IRD record indicates the timing of the presence of the BIIS with an actively calving marine margin. The records show a coherent latitudinal, but partly phased, signal during MIS 3 and 2. Published data indicate that the last BIIS initiated during the MIS 5/4 cooling transition; renewed growth just before H5 (46 ka) was succeeded by very strong millennial-scale variability apparently corresponding with Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) cycles closely coupled to millennial-scale climate variability in the North Atlantic region involving latitudinal migration of the North Atlantic Polar Front. This indicates that the previously defined “precursor events” are not uniquely associated with H events but are part of the millennial-scale variability. Major growth of the ice sheet occurred after 29 ka with the Barra Ice Stream attaining a shelf-edge position and generating turbiditic flows on the Barra–Donegal Fan at ～27 ka. The ice sheet reached its maximum extent at H2 (24 ka), earlier than interpreted in previous studies. Rapid retreat, initially characterised by peak IRD flux, during Greenland Interstadial 2 (23 ka) was followed by readvance between 22 and 16 ka. Readvance during H1 was only characterised by BIIS ice streams draining central dome(s) of the ice sheet, and was followed by rapid deglaciation and ice exhaustion. The evidence for a calving margin and IRD supply from the BIIS during Greenland Stadial 1 (Younger Dryas event) is equivocal. The timing of the initiation, maximum extent, deglacial and readvance phases of the BIIS interpreted from the IRD flux record is strongly supported by recent independent data from both the Irish Sea and North Sea sectors of the ice sheet.     

A necessary voice: Climate change and lived experiences of youth in Rigolet,Nunatsiavut, Canada

Globally, youth voices and their experiences, observations, and perceptions about climatic and environmental change and variability are relatively absent in the published literature to date. To address this gap, the goal of this research was to explore the observations and perceptions of climate change held by youth (12–25 years old) in the Inuit community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Canada. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with youth in Rigolet to gather data about climatic and environmental changes young people have observed, and the subsequent impacts of these changes on their lives, culture, and community. Youth reported observing and experiencing climatic and environmental changes throughout their lives, with reported impacts falling within five main themes: changing travel conditions and access to hunting; challenges to Inuit culture; a concern for Elder and senior well-being; strong climate-related emotional responses; and youth-identified potential adaptation strategies. More broadly, this research demonstrated that young people have valuable knowledge and perspectives to offer. In particular, researchers, community leaders, and policy makers are encouraged to meaningfully engage youth as crucial stakeholders in future climate change work, research, dialogue, and policy.