Jason-1: Assessment of the System Performances

On 7 December 2001, Jason-1 was successfully launched by a Boeing Delta II rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The Jason-1 satellite will maintain the high accuracy altimeter service provided since 1992 by TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), ensuring the continuity in observing and monitoring the Ocean Dynamics (intraseasonal to interannual changes, mean sea level, tides, etc.). Despite one-fourth the mass and power, the Jason-1 system has been designed to have basically the same performance as T/P, measuring sea surface topography at a centimetric level. This new CNES/NASA mission also provides near real-time data for sea state and ocean forecast. The first two months of the Jason-1 mission have been dedicated to the assessment of the overall system. The goals of this assessment phase were:

1. To assess the behavior of the spacecraft at the platform and payload levels (Jason-1 being the first program to call on the PROTEUS versatile multimission platform for Low and Medium Earth Orbit Missions developed in partnership between Alcatel Space and CNES);

2. To verify that platform performance requirements are met with respect to Jason-1 requirements;

3. To verify that payload instruments performance requirements evaluated at instrument level are met;

4. To assess the performance of the Jason-1 Ground System.

This article will display the main outputs of the assessment of the system. It will demonstrate that all the elements of the onboard and ground systems are within the specifications. Provision of data to the Jason-1 Science Working Team started at the end of March 2002. This is the goal of a six-month phase after closure of the initial assessment phase to derive the error budget of the system in terms of altimetry user products.     

Spatial and seasonal patterns of flood change across Brazil

Brazil has some of the largest rivers in the world and has the second greatest flood loss potential among the emergent countries. Despite that, flood studies in this area are still scarce. In this paper, we used flood seasonality and trend analysis at the annual and seasonal scales in order to describe flood regimes and changes across the whole of Brazil in the period 1976–2015. We identified a strong seasonality of floods and a well-defined spatio-temporal pattern for flood occurrence. There are positive trends in the frequency and magnitude of floods in the North, South and parts of Southeast Brazil; and negative trends in the North-east and the remainder of Southeast Brazil. Trends in the magnitude (frequency) were predominant in the winter (summer). Overall, floods are becoming more frequent and intense in Brazilian regions characterized by wet conditions, and less frequent and intense in drier regions.     

A record of accelerated erosion in the recent sediments of Blelham Tarn in the English Lake district

Two frozen cores from Blelham Tarn were subsampled and measured using mineral magnetic, loss-on-ignition (LOI), radiometric, granulometric and diatom analyses. A detailed chronology was established using varves, radioisotopes and diatoms. This has enabled an accurately dated reconstruction of sedimentation over the past forty years. Despite a large increase in lake productivity, evidence suggests that the observed exponential increase in sedimentation rates can be attributed to erosion within the catchment. The predominant sediment source has been identified as surface soil. A comparison between the trend of accelerated sedimentation and the record of increased sheep stocking density for the area within which the most of the catchment lies, as well as observations of contemporary surface processes within the catchment, both suggest that much of the recent erosion is a direct response to increased pressure from sheep grazing.     

Electrical conductivity of some rocks from the Indian subcontinent

Summary Results on electrical conductivity, chemical analysis and age of the rock samples from the Indian Subcontinent are presented. The old Precambrian Indian rocks tend to be less conductive than characteristic rocks of crustal and upper mantle structures.

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An application of Mie's series to soft particles

Summary The scattering of electromagnetic radiation from soft particles has been studied by a new method which allows to transform the Mie series into a simplified form through the use of some auxiliary expansions derived in the Appendix of this article. This simplified form (eq. 1) converts into the Hulst and Rayleigh-Debye-Gans' formulae if the parameters of eq. I are properly restricted. A further simplified form (eq. II), improves the well-known Hulst approximation.     

On the observations of Mount St Helens volcanic emissions: Research note

Abstract

The envelopes of dust clouds from the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington State, U.S.A. were plotted as they traversed the northern United States and southern Canada. Visibility observations at many meteorological stations indicated the presence of volcanic ash and smoke and verified trajectory calculations. In addition, sulphur dioxide released by the volcano was detected as it passed over Toronto, Ontario, while satellite photographs showed dust clouds in the upper atmosphere.     

Landslide risk assessment and management: an overview

Landslides can result in enormous casualties and huge economic losses in mountainous regions. In order to mitigate landslide hazard effectively, new methodologies are required to develop a better understanding of landslide hazard and to make rational decisions on the allocation of funds for management of landslide risk. Recent advances in risk analysis and risk assessment are beginning to provide systematic and rigorous processes to enhance slope management. In recent years, risk analysis and assessment has become an important tool in addressing uncertainty inherent in landslide hazards.This article reviews recent advances in landslide risk assessment and management, and discusses the applicability of a variety of approaches to assessing landslide risk. Firstly, a framework for landslide risk assessment and management by which landslide risk can be reduced is proposed. This is followed by a critical review of the current state of research on assessing the probability of landsliding, runout behavior, and vulnerability. Effective management strategies for reducing economic and social losses due to landslides are described. Problems in landslide risk assessment and management are also examined.     

Element mobility during continental collision: insights from polymineralic metamorphic vein within UHP eclogite in the Dabie orogen

Metamorphic dehydration and partial melting are two important processes during continental collision. They have significant bearing on element transport at the slab interface under subduction‐zone P–T conditions. Petrological and geochemical insights into the two processes are provided by a comprehensive study of leucocratic veins in ultrahigh‐pressure (UHP) metamorphic rocks. This is exemplified by this study of a polymineralic vein within phengite‐bearing UHP eclogite in the Dabie orogen. The vein is primarily composed of quartz, kyanite, epidote and phengite, with minor accessory minerals such as garnet, rutile and zircon. Primary multiphase solid inclusions occur in garnet and epidote from the both vein and host eclogite. They are composed of quartz ± K‐feldspar ± plagioclase ± K‐bearing glass and exhibit irregular to negative crystal shapes that are surrounded by weak radial cracks. This suggests their precipitation from solute‐rich metamorphic fluid/melt that involved the reaction of phengite breakdown. Zircon U–Pb dating for the vein gave two groups of concordant ages at 217 ± 2 and 210 ± 2 Ma, indicating two episodes of zircon growth in the Late Triassic. The same minerals from the two rocks give consistent δ¹⁸O and δD values, suggesting that the vein‐forming fluid was directly derived from the host UHP eclogite. The vein is much richer in phengite and epidote than the host eclogite, suggesting that the fluid is associated with remarkable concentration of such water‐soluble elements as LILE and LREE migration. Garnet and rutile in the vein exhibit much higher contents of HREE (2.2–5.7 times) and Nb–Ta (1.8–2.0 times) than those in the eclogite, indicating that these normally water‐insoluble elements became mobile and then were sunken in the vein minerals. Thus, the vein‐forming agent would be primarily composed of the UHP aqueous fluid with minor amounts of the hydrous melt, which may even become a supercritical fluid to have a capacity to transport not only LILE and LREE but also HREE and HFSE at subduction‐zone metamorphic conditions. Taken together, significant amounts of trace elements were transported by the vein‐forming fluid due to the phengite breakdown inside the UHP eclogite during exhumation of the deeply subducted continental crust.