Weathering of sulfidic shale and copper mine waste: secondary minerals and metal cycling in Great Smoky Mountains National Park,Tennessee, and North Carolina,USA

Metal cycling via physical and chemical weathering of discrete sources (copper mines) and regional (non-point) sources (sulfide-rich shale) is evaluated by examining the mineralogy and chemistry of weathering products in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, and North Carolina, USA. The elements in copper mine waste, secondary minerals, stream sediments, and waters that are most likely to have negative impacts on aquatic ecosystems are aluminum, copper, zinc, and arsenic because these elements locally exceed toxicity guidelines for surface waters or for stream sediments. Acid-mine drainage has not developed in streams draining inactive copper mines. Acid-rock drainage and chemical weathering processes that accompany debris flows or human disturbances of sulfidic rocks are comparable to processes that develop acid-mine drainage elsewhere. Despite the high rainfall in the mountain range, sheltered areas and intermittent dry spells provide local venues for development of secondary weathering products that can impact aquatic ecosystems.Electronic Supplementary Material  Supplementary material is available for this article if you access the article at . A link in the frame on the left on that page takes you directly to the supplementary material.

Long-range precipitation forecasts using paleoclimate reconstructions in the western United States

Long-range precipitation forecasts are useful when managing water supplies.Oceanicatmospheric oscillations have been shown to influence precipitation.Due to a longer cycle of some of the oscillations,a short instrumental record is a limitation in using them for long-range precipitation forecasts.The influence of oscillations over precipitation is observable within paleoclimate reconstructions;however,there have been no attempts to utilize these reconstructions in precipitation forecasting.A data-driven model,KStar,is used for obtaining long-range precipitation forecasts by extending the period of record through the use of reconstructions of oscillations.KStar is a nearest neighbor algorithm with an entropy-based distance function.Oceanic-atmospheric oscillation reconstructions include the El Nino-Southern Oscillation(ENSO),the Pacific Decadal Oscillation(PDO),the North Atlantic Oscillation(NAO),and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation(AMO).Precipitation is forecasted for 20 climate divisions in the western United States.A 10-year moving average is applied to aid in the identification of oscillation phases.A lead time approach is used to simulate a one-year forecast,with a 10-fold cross-validation technique to test the models.Reconstructions are used from 1658-1899,while the observed record is used from 1900-2007.The model is evaluated using mean absolute error(MAE),root mean squared error(RMSE),RMSE-observations standard deviation ratio(RSR),Pearson’s correlation coefficient(R),NashSutcliffe coefficient of efficiency(NSE),and linear error in probability space(LEPS) skill score(SK).The role of individual and coupled oscillations is evaluated by dropping oscillations in the model.The results indicate ’good’ precipitation estimates using the KStar model.This modeling technique is expected to be useful for long-term water resources planning and management.     

Microwave observations of daily Antarctic sea-ice edge expansion and contraction rates

Algorithms for estimating sea-ice extent from remotely sensed microwave sensor data can benefit from knowledge of the "a priori" distribution of the daily expansion and contraction of the sea-ice pack. To estimate the probability distribution of daily Antarctic sea-ice extent change, two independent sea-ice datasets are analyzed: sea-ice extent derived from the QuikSCAT scatterometer and ice concentration estimates from the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager. The daily sea-ice advance and retreat is tracked over a four-year period. The distribution of the daily sea-ice advance/retreat from each sensor is similar and is approximately double-exponential. Daily ice-pack statistics are presented.     

The inception and early evolution of the North Alpine Foreland Basin, Switzerland

The stratigraphy of the Eocene-Miocene peripheral foreland basin in Switzerland consists of basal deposits of Nummulitic Limestones and Globigerina Marls representing a phase of deepening, followed by two shallowing-up megacycles culminating in fully continental sedimentation. The onset of sedimentation was diachronous and took place on an unconformity surface with increasing stratigraphic gap to the north and west. In the Ultrahelvetic units, which were derived from the south and have a provenance between the Helvetic shelf and the Penninic ocean, the stratigraphic gap is minimal. This restricts the initiation of erosion of the southern European margin due to emersion to post-Maastrichtian and pre-late Palaeocene. This coincides with the final closing of the Valais trough and may therefore be interpreted as the point at which continental flexure s. s. started. In the autochthon, the subcrop map of the unconformity surface shows that the regional pattern of subcropping units is oblique to both neo-Alpine tectonic structures and Helvetic (Mesozoic) passive margin structures. There are local zones of disruption to the broad regional pattern suggesting that the basal unconformity was corrugated. Both the paliaspastic restoration of the autochthon relative to the thrust front during the Palaeocene, and the regional pattern of erosion indicate that the basal unconformity may be due to erosion of a flexural forebulge. Following deposition of the shallow water Nummulitic Limestones and the deeper water Globigerina Marls, clastic sediments were shed from the orogenic wedge in the south. These turbidites, the Taveyannaz Sandstones, filled both ponded basins at the contemporaneous thrust front and the frontal trench or foredeep. Evidently, early thrusts drove at a shallow level into the embryonic basin as ‘front-runners’, whereas most shortening and uplift continued to take place within the main part of the orogenic wedge further to the south. Eventually, the frontal palaeohighs, together with the turbidite basins, were buried by the northward emplacement of surface mud-slides, and sediment depocentres were translated northwards onto the foreland. The most likely cause of the underfilled ‘Flysch’ stage is the rapid advance of a submarine thrust wedge over the flexed European plate which resulted in (i) low sediment fluxes and (ii) high subsidence rates associated with the rapid migration of the load and depocentre. Later, as the rate of advance slowed and the wedge became subaerially exposed, the basin rapidly filled with coarse-grained detritus representing the ‘Molasse’ stage.     

Application of statistical approaches to analyze geological,geotechnical and hydrogeological data at a fractured-rock mine site in Northern Canada

Mine site characterization often results in the acquisition of geological, geotechnical and hydrogeological data sets that are used in the mine design process but are rarely co-evaluated. For a study site in northern Canada, bivariate and multivariate (hierarchical) statistical techniques are used to evaluate empirical hydraulic conductivity estimation methods based on traditional rock mass characterisation schemes, as well as to assess the regional hydrogeological conceptual model. Bivariate techniques demonstrate that standard geotechnical measures of fracturing are poor indicators of the hydraulic potential of a rock mass at the study site. Additionally, rock-mass-permeability schemes which rely on these measures are shown to be poor predictors of hydraulic conductivity in untested areas. Multivariate techniques employing hierarchical cluster analysis of both geotechnical and geological data sets are able to identify general trends in the data. Specifically, the geological cluster analysis demonstrated spatial relationship between intrusive contacts and increased hydraulic conductivity. This suggests promise in the use of clustering methods in identifying new trends during the early stages of hydrogeological characterization.     

The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: bulge–disc decomposition of 10 095 nearby galaxies

We present near-infrared (NIR) adaptive optics-assisted spectroscopic observations of the  CO (Δμ= 2)  absorption bands towards the centre of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1399. The observations were made with NAOS-CONICA (on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope) and have a full width at half-maximum resolution of 0.15 arcsec (14 pc). Kinematic analysis of the observations reveals a decoupled core and strongly non-Gaussian line-of-sight velocity profiles in the central 0.2 arcsec (19 pc). NIR imaging also indicates an asymmetric elongation of the central isophotes in the same region.
We use spherical orbit-superposition models to interpret the kinematics, using a set of orthogonal 'eigen-velocity profiles' that allow us to fit models directly to spectra. The models require a central black hole of mass  1.2^+0.5_−0.6× 10⁹ M_⊙  , with a strongly tangentially biased orbit distribution in the inner 40 pc.     

Infrared studies of the lunar terrain

Observations have been made of the unlit limb of the Moon at infrared wavelengths, and detailed apparent temperature charts for the entire limb are presented. A number of thermal anomalies lying close to the limb have been discovered. Evidence is presented that there are sufficient large boulders near the lunar limb to invalidate temperatures determined at a single infrared wavelength during the night or at eclipse. The possibility that thermal anomalies are produced by local variations in the area density of boulders is discussed.     

The relationship between cooling flows and metallicity measurements for X-ray-luminous clusters

We explore the relationship between the metallicity of the intracluster gas in clusters of galaxies, determined by X-ray spectroscopy, and the presence of cooling flows. Using ASCA spectra and ROSAT images, we demonstrate a clear segregation between the metallicities of clusters with and without cooling flows. On average, cooling-flow clusters have an emission-weighted metallicity a factor ∼ 1.8 times higher than that of non-cooling-flow systems. We suggest that this is caused by the presence of metallicity gradients in the cooling-flow clusters, coupled with the sharply peaked X-ray surface brightness profiles of these systems. Non-cooling-flow clusters have much flatter X-ray surface brightness distributions and are thought to have undergone recent merger events, which may have mixed the central high-metallicity gas with the surrounding less metal-rich material. We find no evidence for evolution in the emission-weighted metallicities of clusters within z  ∼ 0.3.