Contributing Areas to Domestic Wells in Dipping Sedimentary Rocks under Extreme Recharge Events

We use particle tracking to determine contributing areas (CAs) to wells for transient flow models that simulate cyclic domestic pumping and extreme recharge events in a small synthetic watershed underlain by dipping sedimentary rocks. The CAs consist of strike-oriented bands at locations where the water table intersects high-hydraulic conductivity beds, and from which groundwater flows to the pumping well. Factors that affect the size and location of the CAs include topographic flow directions, rock dip direction, cross-bed fracture density, and position of the well relative to streams. For an effective fracture porosity (n_e) of 10⁻⁴, the fastest advective travel times from CAs to wells are only a few hours. These results indicate that wells in this type of geologic setting can be highly vulnerable to contaminants or pathogens flushed into the subsurface during extreme recharge events. Increasing n_e to 10⁻³ results in modestly smaller CAs and delayed well vulnerability due to slower travel times. CAs determined for steady-state models of the same setting, but with long-term average recharge and pumping rates, are smaller than CAs in the models with extreme recharge. Also, the earliest-arriving particles arrive at the wells later in the steady-state models than in the extreme-recharge models. The results highlight the importance of characterizing geologic structure, simulating plausible effective porosities, and simulating pumping and recharge transience when determining CAs in fractured rock aquifers to assess well vulnerability under extreme precipitation events.     

Recent Rapid Regional Climate Warming on the Antarctic Peninsula

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that mean global warming was 0.6 ± 0.2 °C during the 20th century and cited anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases as the likely cause of temperature rise in the last 50 years. But this mean value conceals the substantial complexity of observed climate change, which is seasonally- and diurnally-biased, decadally-variable and geographically patchy. In particular, over the last 50 years three high-latitude areas have undergone recent rapid regional (RRR) warming, which was substantially more rapid than the global mean. However, each RRR warming occupies a different climatic regime and may have an entirely different underlying cause. We discuss the significance of RRR warming in one area, the Antarctic Peninsula. Here warming was much more rapid than in the rest of Antarctica where it was not significantly different to the global mean. We highlight climate proxies that appear to show that RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula is unprecedented over the last two millennia, and so unlikely to be a natural mode of variability. So while the station records do not indicate a ubiquitous polar amplification of global warming, the RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula might be a regional amplification of such warming. This, however, remains unproven since we cannot yet be sure what mechanism leads to such an amplification. We discuss several possible candidate mechanisms: changing oceanographic or changing atmospheric circulation, or a regional air-sea-ice feedback amplifying greenhouse warming. We can show that atmospheric warming and reduction in sea-ice duration coincide in a small area on the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, but here we cannot yet distinguish cause and effect. Thus for the present we cannot determine which process is the probable cause of RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula and until the mechanism initiating and sustaining the RRR warming is understood, and is convincingly reproduced in climate models, we lack a sound basis for predicting climate change in this region over the coming century.     

Freshwater geographies: Experimenting with knowing and doing geography differently

The fair and effective governance of freshwater is an increasingly prominent issue in New Zealand. Emerging from a complex of cultural, economic and biophysical narratives, freshwater geographies are multiple, varied and increasingly acknowledged as worthy of interdisciplinary scrutiny. In this commentary, we reflect on a series of generative spaces that we – as group of postgraduate geographers (plus supporting staff) – created to engage with the multiplicity of freshwater meanings both within and beyond the academy. Through this evolving epistemic‐political project, we significantly reframed our own understandings about what freshwater ‘is’ and how it ought to be governed. By pursuing a deeper understanding of how the world gets made, we expand our ability to know and make it differently.     

Meadow fragmentation and reproductive output of the SE Asian seagrass Enhalus acoroides

Flower and fruit production of the abundant, tall, long-lived, dioecious, surface-pollinating seagrass species Enhalus acoroides (L.) Royle were estimated at seven sites in the reef flats off Bolinao (NW Luzon, The Philippines) featuring different fragmentation of the seagrass meadows. Fragmentation of the seagrass meadow was quantified as cover of E. acoroides and all seagrass species present in 20×20 m plots. E. acoroides and overall seagrass cover were correlated positively. The proportion of female flowers of E. acoroides that developed a fruit increased sharply as overall seagrass cover was around 50%. Apparent sex ratio bore no relationship with overall seagrass cover. This threshold-type of relationship suggests that fragmentation of seagrass meadows can have a major effect on the reproductive output of this species. A possible mechanism underlying these results would be a non-linear increase of the efficiency of trapping the surface-dispersed pollen with increasing seagrass canopy density. This provides the first evidence based on real data that fragmentation can affect the population dynamics of seagrass species.     

Little Ice Age glaciers in the Balkans: low altitude glaciation enabled by cooler temperatures and local topoclimatic controls

Moraine ridges are present in the highest cirques of the Durmitor massif in Montenegro and post‐date the widespread Pleistocene moraines of this area. Lichenometry suggests that at least eight glaciers were present in the 19th century and correlate with the culmination of the Little Ice Age in the European Alps. Cooler temperatures combined with local topoclimatic controls, including windblown and avalanching snow as well as shading, were crucial for the formation and survival of these glaciers below the regional equilibrium–line altitude. The resultant regional equilibrium line altitude (ELA) was positioned close to the highest peaks between 2400 and 2500 m, with local controls such as avalanche, windblown snow and shading depressing the ELA in the northern cirques to 2130–2210 m. This ELA position was very low for this latitude and lower than for most glaciers in the European Alps at any time during the Holocene, and even equivalent to many Alpine glaciers during the Younger Dryas. Today, one glacier still survives in Montenegro, in a deep northeast‐facing cirque characterized by the largest combined areas of potential avalanche and windblown snow. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving the Coastal Mean Dynamic Topography by Geodetic Combination of Tide Gauge and Satellite Altimetry

Abstract

The ocean mean dynamic topography (MDT) is the surface representation of the ocean circulation. The MDT may be determined by the ocean approach, which involves temporal averaging of numerical ocean circulation model information, or by the geodetic approach, wherein the MDT is derived using the ellipsoidal height of the mean sea surface (MSS), or mean sea level (MSL) minus the geoid as the geoid. The ellipsoidal height of the MSS might be estimated either by satellite or coastal tide gauges by connecting the tide gauge datum to the Earth-centred reference frame. In this article we present a novel approach to improve the coastal MDT, where the solution is based on both satellite altimetry and tide gauge data using new set of 302 tide gauges with ellipsoidal heights through the SONEL network. The approach was evaluated for the Northeast Atlantic coast where a dense network of GNSS-surveyed tide gauges is available. The typical misfit between tide gauge and satellite or oceanographic MDT was found to be around 9?cm. This misfit was found to be mainly due to small scale geoid errors. Similarly, we found, that a single tide gauge places only weak constraints on the coastal dynamic topography.     

Enrichment of Rare Earth Elements during magmatic and post-magmatic processes: a case study from the Loch Loyal Syenite Complex, northern Scotland

Concern about security of supply of critical elements used in new technologies, such as the Rare Earth Elements (REE), means that it is increasingly important to understand the processes by which they are enriched in crustal settings. High REE contents are found in syenite-dominated alkaline complexes intruded along the Moine Thrust Zone, a major collisional zone in north-west Scotland. The most northerly of these is the Loch Loyal Syenite Complex, which comprises three separate intrusions. One of these, the Cnoc nan Cuilean intrusion, contains two mappable zones: a Mixed Syenite Zone in which mafic melasyenite is mixed and mingled with leucosyenite and a Massive Leucosyenite Zone. Within the Mixed Syenite Zone, hydrothermal activity is evident in the form of narrow altered veins dominated by biotite and magnetite; these are poorly exposed and their lateral extent is uncertain. The REE mineral allanite is relatively abundant in the melasyenite and is extremely enriched in the biotite–magnetite veins, which have up to 2 % total rare earth oxides in bulk rock analyses. An overall model for development of this intrusion can be divided into three episodes: (1) generation of a Light Rare Earth Element (LREE)-enriched parental magma due to enrichment of the mantle source by subduction of pelagic carbonates; (2) early crystallisation of allanite in melasyenite, due to the saturation of the magma in the LREE; and (3) hydrothermal alteration, in three different episodes identified by petrography and mineral chemistry, generating the intense enrichment of REE in the biotite–magnetite veins. Dating of allanite and titanite in the biotite–magnetite veins gives ages of c. 426 Ma, overlapping with previously published crystallisation ages for zircon in the syenite.