Laboratory experiments of tsunami runup on a circular island

Laboratory experiments of a 7.2-m-diameter conical island were conducted to study three-dimensional tsunami runup. The 62.5-cm tall island had 1 on 4 side slopes and was positioned in the center of a 30-m-wide by 25-m-long flat-bottom basin. Solitary waves with height-to-depth ratios ranging from 0.05 to 0.20 and source lengths ranging from 0.30 to 7.14 island diameters were tested in water depths of 32 and 42 cm. Twenty-seven capacitance wave gages were used to measure surface wave elevations at incident and four radial transects on the island slope. Maximum vertical runup measurements were made at 20 locations around the perimeter of the island using rod and transit. A new runup gage was located on the back or lee side of the island to record runup time series.     

Constraints on the luminosities of gamma-ray bursts

Constraints are found on the gamma-ray burst luminosity function from an analysis of the combined BATSE/PVO intensity distribution. If bursts originate in an extended Galactic halo, then the intrinsic luminosity range is narrow, with bursts spanning only a factor of five or less in luminosity. If bursts originate in a simple Friedmann cosmology with = 1 and = 0, then very few luminosity constraints exist.National Research Council Fellow at NASA/MSFC     

Selection effects and tests of repetition (clustering) in the BATSE 1B catalog

A repeater statistic (derived from the two-point angular correlation function and accounting for location errors) is used to identify constraints on the rate of burst repetition from the BATSE 1B catalog. Because of the anisotropic sky exposure, repeating sources should create additional effects in the large-scale distribution of close burst pairs.National Research Council Fellow at NASA/MSFC     

Batse time-resolved observations of GRBs: the burst ‘topographic’ map

It is a well-known observation that many GRBs have spectra with curvature in the less than 1 MeV regime, but flatten out to approximately a -2 power law at higher energies. The large collecting area of BATSE allows spectral studies with unprecedented time resolution. We are conducting a systematic study of time-resolved spectroscopy of GRBs observed by BATSE. Several aspects of this survey are discussed: correlations among fit parameters and between fit parameters and intensity; screening for spectral features using-residual contour maps; and an introduction to the GRB topographic map and its possible qualitative diagnostic abilities.     

Toxicity of sediments from around a North Sea oil platform: are metals or hydrocarbons responsible for ecological impacts?

Discharges of contaminated drill cuttings have caused appreciable ecological change of the benthos adjacent to many oil and gas platforms in the North Sea. Many platforms have large piles of cuttings lying beneath them and these probably present the greatest potential hazard to the environment during platform decommissioning and removal. There is, however, a lack of consensus on which aspects of drill cuttings are responsible for the adverse ecological effects. This hinders risk assessment of management options. Here we report data on the toxicity of sediments from around the North West Hutton platform to the amphipod Corophium volutator, the polychaete Arenicola marina and the Microtox" acute test system. Sediment was acutely toxic to Corophium out as far as 600 m from the platform. Sediment from 100 m from the platform remained acutely toxic to Corophium when 3% contaminated sediment was mixed with clean sediment. A 10% dilution of this sediment also inhibited Arenicola feeding almost completely. Sediment elutriates did not inhibit Microtox light output, but organics extracted by dichloromethane were very toxic. Fifteen minute EC50 values were as low as 0.25 mg ml(-1) and were strongly correlated with hydrocarbon concentrations. Metal concentrations in whole sediments were correlated with their toxicity to Corophium but the relationship was much weaker when data on dilutions were included. Except at sites immediately adjacent to the platform, metal concentrations were well below ERL values from the literature, so were too low to explain sediment toxicity. Toxicity of sediments to Corophium was closely correlated with their hydrocarbon content, even when tests on dilutions were included in the analysis. We conclude that hydrocarbons are the most significant cause of toxicity in these sediments contaminated with oil based drill cuttings and that polar organics, sulphide. ammonia and other water soluble substances are of much lower significance. Applying OSPAR guidelines to our data on the toxicity of cuttings pile material to Corophium data would give a maximum allowable concentration of 0.03% in clean sediments. The Microtox data indicate that sediments from deeper in the pile would require an even greater dilution than this.     

Wetland-Scale Mapping of Preferential Fresh Groundwater Discharge to the Colorado River

Quantitative evaluation of groundwater/surface water exchange dynamics is universally challenging in large river systems, because existing methodology often does not yield spatially-distributed data and is difficult to apply in deeper water. Here we apply a combined near-surface geophysical and direct groundwater chemical toolkit to refine fresh groundwater discharge estimates to the Colorado River through a 4-km² wetland that borders the town of Moab, Utah, USA. Preliminary characterization of raw electromagnetic imaging (EMI) data, collected by kayak and by walking, was used to guide additional direct-contact electrical measurements and installation of new monitoring wells. Chemical data from the wells strongly supported the EMI spatial characterization of preferential fresh groundwater discharge embedded in natural brine groundwaters and weighted to the southern wetland section. Inversion of the EMI data revealed sub-meter scale detail regarding bulk electrical conductivity zonation across approximately 15.5 km of transects, collected in only 3 days. This electrical detail indicates processes such as salinization of the unsaturated zone and direct discharge through the Colorado River sediments and a tributary creek bed. Overall, the study contributed to a substantial reduction in fresh groundwater discharge estimates previously made using sparse existing well data and a simplified assumption of diffuse fresh groundwater discharge below the entire wetland. EMI will likely become a widely used tool in systems with natural electrical contrast as groundwater/surface water hydrogeologists continue to recognize the prevalence of preferential groundwater discharge processes.     

1DTempPro V2: New Features for Inferring Groundwater/Surface‐Water Exchange

A new version of the computer program 1DTempPro extends the original code to include new capabilities for (1) automated parameter estimation, (2) layer heterogeneity, and (3) time‐varying specific discharge. The code serves as an interface to the U.S. Geological Survey model VS2DH and supports analysis of vertical one‐dimensional temperature profiles under saturated flow conditions to assess groundwater/surface‐water exchange and estimate hydraulic conductivity for cases where hydraulic head is known.