The Norwegian plan for integrated ecosystem-based management of the marine environment in the Norwegian Sea

A White Paper on a new integrated management plan for the Norwegian Sea was launched by the Norwegian government in May 2009. Following international guidelines for ecosystem-based management, the plan provides an overall framework for managing all human activities (mainly oil and gas industry, fishing, and shipping) in the area to ensure the continued production and function of the ecosystem. The plan is based on an assessment of the present and projected future impact of human activities and of the interactions between them, taking into account deficits in current knowledge of ecosystem state and dynamics. Areas of particular value in terms of biodiversity or biological production were identified. In each of these valuable areas, any access for substantial human activity is to be carefully managed. To monitor the overall development of the Norwegian Sea, a set of indicators with associated environmental quality objectives have been selected. The approach used builds upon experience gained from the first integrated Norwegian management plan for a marine area, the Barents Sea–Lofoten region, developed in 2002–2006. Work towards a Norwegian management plan for the North Sea, including Skagerrak, was initiated in 2009.     

Sediment accumulation rates in European lakes since AD 1850: trends,reference conditions and exceedence

Sediment accumulation rate (SAR) is an important physical parameter in all lakes and increases have been observed in many over the last c.100 years. This has been ascribed to changes in land-use and land-management causing accelerated catchment soil erosion and an increase in autochthonous organic matter production. The EU Water Framework Directive requires that assessment of biological, hydromorphological and chemical elements of water quality should be based on the degree to which present day conditions deviate from those expected in the absence of significant anthropogenic influence, termed reference conditions. Currently however, the reference condition for sediment accumulation rate for lakes of different types is undefined. To improve our understanding of the controls on SARs we compiled SAR and lake typology data for 207 European lakes derived from ²¹⁰Pb dated cores to assess how rates have changed through time (in 25 year classes) both overall and for lakes of different types. Seventy-one percent of these sediment cores showed surface SARs higher than “basal” (mainly nineteenth century) rates, 11% showed no change while 18% showed a decline. Lakes were then classified into lake-types using four variables: alkalinity (3 classes), altitude (3 classes), maximum depth (2 classes) and lake area (2 classes). This generated a possible 36 lake classes of which 25 were represented in the dataset. Nine lake-types contained >10 lakes. Little change in SAR occurred prior to 1900 and most increases occurred in more recent periods, in particular 1950–1975 and post-1975. This indicates a general acceleration in SAR in European lakes during the second half of the twentieth century. Reference SARs were estimated for six lake-types with the highest number of sites. European mountain lakes had the lowest reference SAR (0.005 ± 0.003 g cm⁻² yr⁻¹) while lowland, high alkalinity sites had the highest (0.03–0.04 g cm⁻² yr⁻¹). SARs for other lake-types ranged between 0.012 and 0.024 g cm⁻² yr⁻¹. Using the mountain lake-type as an example, the 1850 reference SAR appears to show good agreement with available data for lakes beyond Europe indicating these values may be more broadly applicable. Contemporary SARs in lakes of all classes showed exceedence over their defined reference SAR. This may be partly due to diagenetic processes. Greatest exceedences were found in shallow, low altitude lakes and these are considered to be the ones under the greatest threat from continued elevation of SAR. It is considered that climate change may play a progressively more important role in driving SAR in the future.     

Thermal state of the Roer Valley Graben,part of the European Cenozoic Rift System

We performed a detailed analysis of the thermal state of the Cenozoic Roer Valley Graben, the north–western branch of the European Cenozoic Rift System, based on a new set of temperature data. We developed a numerical technique for correcting bottom hole temperatures, including an evaluation of the uncertainty of thermal parameters. Comparison with drill stem test temperatures indicated that the uncertainty in corrected bottom hole temperatures using a two‐component numerical model is approximately ± 4 °C, which is much more accurate than the up to 15 °C errors encountered in often‐used line‐source or Horner correction methods. The subsurface temperatures and the derived regional heat flow estimates of 53 ± 6 to 63 ± 6 mW m^?2 show no significant difference between the central rift and the adjacent structural highs. The absence of an elevated heat flow is attributed to the low amount of lithospheric thinning during the Cenozoic rifting phase (β=1.06–1.15). A local thermal anomaly exceeding +10 °C was found in five wells in the north–western part of the rift basin at depths of 1000–1500 m, and is most likely caused by the upward flow of fluids along faults, whereas lower temperatures in the upper 1500 m in the southern part of the rift basin could indicate cooling by topography‐driven groundwater flow. Conflicting ideas exist on the active or passive rifting mechanisms responsible for the formation of the different rift basins of European Cenozoic Rift System. The low spatial variation in heat flow found in this study suggests that the mechanism responsible for forming the Roer Valley Graben is passive rifting.     

Hydration of mantle olivine under variable water and oxygen fugacity conditions

The incorporation of H into olivine is influenced by a significant number of thermodynamic variables (pressure, temperature, oxygen fugacity, etc.). Given the strong influence that H has on the solidus temperature and rheological behavior of mantle peridotite, it is necessary to determine its solubility in olivine over the range of conditions found in the upper mantle. This study presents results from hydration experiments carried out to determine the effects of pressure, temperature, and the fugacities of H₂O and O₂ on H solubility in San Carlos olivine at upper mantle conditions. Experiments were carried out at 1–2 GPa and 1,200 °C using a piston-cylinder device. The fugacity of O₂ was controlled at the Fe⁰–FeO, FeO–Fe₃O₄, or Ni⁰–NiO buffer. Variable duration experiments indicate that equilibration is achieved within 6 h. Hydrogen contents of the experimental products were measured by secondary ion mass spectrometry, and relative changes to the point defect populations were investigated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Results from our experiments demonstrate that H solubility in San Carlos olivine is sensitive to pressure, the activity of SiO₂, and the fugacities of H₂O and O₂. Of these variables, the fugacity of H₂O has the strongest influence. The solubility of H in olivine increases with increasing SiO₂ activity, indicating incorporation into vacancies on octahedral lattice sites. The forsterite content of the olivine has no discernible effect on H solubility between 88.17 and 91.41, and there is no correlation between the concentrations of Ti and H. Further, in all but one of our experimentally hydrated olivines, the concentration of Ti is too low for H to be incorporated dominantly as a Ti-clinohumite-like defect. Our experimentally hydrated olivines are characterized by strong infrared absorption peaks at wavenumbers of 3,330, 3,356, 3,525, and 3,572 cm^?1. The heights of peaks at 3,330 and 3,356 cm^?1 correlate positively with O₂ fugacity, while those at 3,525 and 3,572 cm^?1 correlate with H₂O fugacity.     

Metabolic Responses of Estuarine Microbial Communities to Discharge of Surface Runoff and Groundwater from Contrasting Landscapes

Groundwater discharge is increasingly recognized as a significant source of nutrient input to coastal waters, relative to surface water inputs. There remains limited information, however, on the extent to which nutrients and organic matter from each of these two flowpaths influence the functional responses of coastal microbial communities. As such, this study determined dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nutrient concentrations of surface water runoff and groundwater from both an urbanized and a relatively pristine forested drainage basin near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and quantified the changes in production rates and biomass of phytoplankton and bacterioplankton in response to these inputs during two microcosm incubation experiments (August and October, 2011). Rainwater in the urbanized basin that would otherwise enter the groundwater appeared to be largely rerouted into the surface flowpath by impervious surfaces, bypassing ecosystem buffers and filtration mechanisms. Surface runoff from the developed basin was most enriched in nutrients and DOC and yielded the highest production rates of the various source waters upon addition to coastal waters. The metabolic responses of phytoplankton and bacterioplankton were generally well predicted as a function of initial chemical composition of the various source waters, though more so with bacterial production. Primary and bacterial productivities often correlated at reciprocal time points (24-h measurement of one with the 72-h measurement of the other). These results suggest human modification of coastal watersheds enhances the magnitude of dissolved constituents delivered to coastal waters as well as alters their distributions between surface and groundwater flowpaths, with significant implications for microbial community structure and function in coastal receiving waters.     

Spatiotemporal Variability in Dissolved Organic Matter Composition is More Strongly Related to Bacterioplankton Community Composition than to Metabolic Capability in a Blackwater Estuarine System

The composition and metabolic capability of bacterioplankton communities were examined over seasonal and spatial gradients and related to the source, composition, and quantity of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the blackwater estuary Winyah Bay, Georgetown County, SC, USA and its tributary rivers. Bacterial community composition (BCC) was measured by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, and bacterial metabolic capability (BMC) was measured by defined substrate utilization patterns (Biolog GN2 plates). Spatial patterns were not important, despite the anticipated watershed effects and the well-documented influence of salinity gradients on estuarine bacterioplankton, but DOM, BCC, and BMC all showed varying degrees of temporal patterns; DOM-based groupings differentiated BCC samples better than spatiotemporal categories, but not BMC. BCC was closely related to properties describing DOM composition, particularly those related to DOM source (i.e., cypress swamps vs. in situ phytoplankton production, indicated by chlorophyll a, colored DOM spectral slope, α355/dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and DOC concentration), and to associated physicochemical variables, such as temperature, pH, and salinity. BMC was more strongly related to abiotic factors, such as temperature and dissolved nutrients, as well as to chlorophyll a and percent bioavailable DOC. In contrast with previous studies, BCC and BMC were significantly correlated in this highly heterotrophic estuary, suggesting that DOM source variability may select for specialist phylotypes above a background of generalists. This study, therefore, supports a causative pathway from DOM to BMC to BCC while suggesting that BCC and BMC may be simultaneously influenced by different suites of DOM characteristics and physicochemical parameters.     

Detection of Extra-Solar Planets by GAIA Photometry

The transit of exoplanets across a stellar disk will often occur in GAIA observations. A safe detection of the slight dimming of the star can be made many hundred times, i.e. in cases where the star is sufficiently constant in intensity, and the photometry is very precise. When combined with the simultaneous GAIA astrometry or ground-based radial velocities the scientific harvest is orbit, mass and mass density for hundreds of exoplanets. We have typically considered Jupiter-size planets at Earth-like distances from the stars. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

6. Deformationen der Grundgebirgsoberfläche unter dem kaledonischen Gebirgsrand in Lappland

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

There's a ratfish in our cellar!

A crushed fossil fish-head, discovered on a Lower Carboniferous flagstone from the Isle of Man, proves to be the only known articulated specimen of the early ratfish Psammodus . This is a major discovery, which promises to cast light on a key episode in the evolution of shark-like fishes.     

Molecular Cloud Formation in Disk Galaxies: The Case of M33

We present results from the BIMA survey of ¹²CO(1→0)emission from M33. The survey resolves this emission into individualobjects making this study the first unbiased, complete census of giantmolecular clouds (GMCs) in a spiral galaxy. The GMCs are clearlyassociated with dense atomic gas, suggesting formation from the HI. Moreover, high resolution observations of these clouds show thatthey appear the same as Milky Way GMCs when viewed through the sameobservational filters. The GMCs show significantly less angularmomentum than predicted by simple formation theories, suggesting theimportance of magnetohydrodynamic effects in their formation.