The Upper Middle Rhine Valley as a risk area

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley, granted the status of a World Heritage site, is well known for its unique inner narrow valley of Quaternary age with its historical legacy of numerous medieval castles and old towns. Less known is that this has always been a risk area of floods and gravitative mass movements. Up to the recent past, mainly ice floods caused enormous damage. The inhabitants of the valley were well aware that they lived in a risk area, but they had learned to handle the flood hazard. With the demise of ice floods over the last 40 years, due to climate change and because of the additional heating of the river water by power plants, the awareness of flood hazards has been much diminished, in contrast to that of potential damage by rockfalls and landslides which were also much feared in the past, though at the local level only. Still in the people’s memory is the Kaub catastrophe of March 10, 1876, when 28 persons were killed by a landslide. Nowadays, even minor rockfalls are a major threat, as they will affect the much-used traffic lines on both banks of the river, in particular the railroads. Therefore, since 2002, on behalf of German Rail (Deutsche Bahn, DB), all problematic slopes have been protected by costly steel-ring nets, although they are an aesthetic problem by UNESCO standards. The feeling of absolute safety created among the public is only subjective, though, as planners are well aware of. Moreover, the impact of modern climate change on slope stability is nearly unknown. Therefore, it is still necessary to develop a risk map for the narrow valley, with emphasis on gravitational hazards.     

GEOELECTRIC MODELS IN ENGINEERING GEOPHYSICS*

Man's engineering activities are concentrated on the uppermost part of the earth's crust which is called engineering-geologic zone. This zone is characterized by a significant spatialtemporal variation of the physical properties status of rocks, and saturating waters. This variation determines the specificity of geophysical and, particularly, geoelectrical investigations. Planning of geoelectric investigations in the engineering-geologic zone and their subsequent interpretation requires a priori) geologic-geophysical information on the main peculiarities of the engineering-geologic and hydrogeologic conditions in the region under investigation. This information serves as a basis for the creation of an initial geoelectric model of the section. Following field investigations the model is used in interpretation. Formalization of this a priori) model can be achieved by the solution of direct geoelectric problems. An additional geologic-geophysical information realized in the model of the medium allows to diminish the effect of the “principle of equivalence” by introducing flexible limitations in the section's parameters. Further geophysical observations as well as the correlations between geophysical and engineering-geologic parameters of the section permit the following step in the specification of the geolectric model and its approximation to the real medium. Next correction of this model is made upon accumulation of additional information. The solution of inverse problems with the utilization of computer programs permits specification of the model in the general iterational cycle of interpretation.     

地磁低点位移异常类型特征与地震活动

通过对大量的地磁低点位移异常震例研究,结果表明: ① 地磁低点位移异常的形态、空间展布有明显的地区特征。异常大致可分为: 大范围异常和区域性异常二大类, 还可细分为 5个类型 ; ② 地磁低点位移异常与我国的地质活动构造有较密切的联系。 异常范围的大小、形态与异常所在地区的活动构造的规模、展布形态特征,以及这一地区即将发生的地震强度有关。     

Archaeal Communities of Frozen Quaternary Sediments of Marine Origin on the Coast of Western Spitsbergen

Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics - The archaeal composition of permafrost samples taken during the drilling of frozen marine sediments in the area of the Barentsburg coal mine on the east...     

Resolving the landfill siting impasse: modelling technocratic and indigenous perspectives using GIS multicriteria approach

Increase in waste generation calls for an effective waste management as this has become a necessity for environmental sustainability. Several methods are adopted in managing waste, which include waste reduction, reuse, thermal treatment, recycling and landfilling. The landfill method is recognised as the most used of all the waste management methods in developing countries such as Ghana. However, the selection of a suitable landfill site is very difficult and tedious. This is because it involves a consideration of many factors such as environmental, topographic, economic, socio-cultural and civil engineering. This research sought to identify a suitable landfill site by applying GIS multicriteria and weighted overlay approach in the Bongo District of Northern Ghana. The analysis relied on criteria and weights provided by the technocrats and the indigenes in the district as a way of demonstrating how landfill siting impasse can be resolved by incorporating the various stakeholders. The results obtained provided clear areas for landfill sites in the study area from the technocratic and the indigenous perspectives. However, the technocratic perspective failed to include an important cultural criterion, sacred groves, as a factor. The indigenous perspective also compromised on the factor related to nearness to residential areas, and is equally not sufficient on its own. The optimal landfill sites, which meets the expectations of both the technocrats and indigenes, was identified. This perspective has produced technically favourable and socio-culturally acceptable landfill site. However, it is recommended an environmental impact assessment (EIA) be conducted to identify the full environmental and social cost of the site. It is concluded that in landfill site selection much attention be given to cultural factors in the same way as the technical factors.     

Rock salt mass in the Paleoproterozoic sequence of the Onega trough in Karelia (from the Onega parametric well data)

A thick (200 m) rock salt mass covering Late Archean granitoids was exposed for the first time in the Early Proterozoic volcanogenic-sedimentary formations in the Onega trough of the east Baltic Shield by the Onega parametric well. The mineral composition of salts, their geochemical features, and the isotopic composition of carbonate carbon and oxygen have been studied. After fluid inclusions present in salts, their metamorphism temperature and isotopic composition of helium and argon were determined. The obtained results give evidence of the fact that rock salts and magnesites associated with them were formed in an evaporate basin with participation of deep crustal processes. The age of the underlying granitoids (2.716 ± 9 Ma) is determined using the Pb—Pb method.     

Focusing and spatial resolution of electromagnetic three-coil sounders

Doklady Earth Sciences - Distribution density functions for the sensitivity of a three-coil sounder are constructed as the weighted mean rock volume between the in-phase surfaces of running...     

Linear and planar structure in ordered multivariate data as applied to progressive demagnetization of palaeomagnetic remanence

Summary. Consider a sequence of, say, 10 to 20 vector observations in three-dimensional space. It is suspected that a few subsets of consecutive observations are made up of collinear points. The purpose of this paper is to construct a statistically based algorithm to find such linear segments and to assess their accuracy. A similar assessment is made for coplanar sets of points.
This algorithm is applied here to palaeomagnetic data and is claimed to be superior to previous methods of palaeomagnetic analysis in terms of completeness and balance of analysis, treatment of measurement errors and other sources of scatter, criteria for identification of linear and planar sets of points, and statistical rigour. Stability spectra, with statistically based confidence limits, are obtained as a by-product.