Reconstruction of fluvio-lacustrine landscapes and settlement history in the Texcoco region,Mexico, using a modern geomorphic analog

Located in the Basin of Mexico, the eastern shore of former Lake Texcoco sustained a variety of human occupations throughout the Holocene, including preceramic hunter-gatherers, incipient agriculturalists, and a variety of settlements in the ceramic periods. Nonetheless, the environmental dynamics of occupations on the lakeshore have not been fully addressed. The Archaic preagricultural Texcoco Man site (>5000 B.C.E.) and the Late Formative TX-LF-14 site (c. 550-200 B.C.E.), among others, occupy this fluvio-lacustrine transitional environment. Few stratigraphic works in and around the sites have been performed. Consequently, it is difficult to understand the dynamics of the sedimentary system in space and time. This work highlights and describes the fluvio-lacustrine sedimentary dynamics and the resulting landscape that past societies inhabited on the eastern shore of Texcoco Lake. Because the study area has been altered by historic and modern draining, our work employs Lake Santiaguillo and its main tributary, the Tejamen River in the Durango state, as a modern analog to study their sedimentary dynamics. The analyses of surface geomorphology in the Texcoco study area were employed to corroborate the modern analog interpretation. To achieve these goals, we conducted a GIS-based morphometric analysis and LANDSAT-8 imagery to study the variations in landforms through wet and dry events. The results indicate an increase in the lake volume, low bifurcation in the active fluvial channels, few inundated surfaces, and the presence of bird-foot deltaic channels during high precipitation events. In contrast, low precipitation events are characterized by reduced lake volume, increased fluvial channel bifurcation, and expanded floodplains. This heterogeneous landscape thus provided a rich source of diverse natural resources of saline and freshwater aquatic habitats. Simultaneously, constant or recurring flooding events generated a challenging landscape for prehistoric settlers who implemented diverse technologies, such as the construction of tlateles, on the levees of deltaic channels to reduce the risk and impact of flooding events.     

On Sinkholes and Galaxies: An Example of Fractal Universality

Mathematical Geosciences - The universality of fractals implies that very different physical processes can give rise to similar complex spatial patterns. Sinkholes (dolines) and galaxies provide a...     

Assessment of microscale economic flood losses in urban and agricultural areas: case study of the Santa Bárbara River,Ecuador

Natural Hazards - To reduce and prevent significant economic flood losses, reliable tools are required to estimate potential river inundation effects. This paper focuses on the estimation of direct...     

Optimal instrumentation of uncertain structural systems subject to earthquake ground motions

A criterion is proposed for making decisions regarding the optimal location of a given number of sensors to record the seismic response of a structure for identification purposes. The optimal location of the sensors is selected so that the expected value of a Bayesian loss function, expressed in terms of the Fisher information in the recordings, is minimized. The criterion is applied to the case of multi-degree-of-freedom systems with uncertain structural properties subjected to earthquake ground motions modelled as stationary stochastic processes. The use and capabilities of the criterion are thoroughly illustrated by means of an example. Results are used to assess the influence of record duration, recording noise, and ground motion frequency content and amplitude, on the optimal location of accelerometers as well as on the reduction of prior uncertainty about the structural parameters. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conspicuous sediment structures in fossil beach deposits (southern Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain): paleoliquefaction features versus biogenic origin

Tubular-shaped concretions and concretionary dykes occur in Holocene fossil beach deposits between the township of El Médano and Punta Roja in southern Tenerife, Canary Islands. These sediment structures have been interpreted either as the result of (a) the interaction between hot ignimbrites that overflowed wet beaches; (b) fast accumulation of beach sands on hot and degassing ignimbrites; (c) paleoliquefaction caused by an earthquake (seismites). Based on the interpretation as seismites, an intense paleoearthquake with a moment magnitude of M = 6.8 was proposed to be responsible for the generation of the paleoliquefaction structures. However, we here reinterpret the sedimentary structures in question using the general criteria diagnostic for rhizocretions and root tubules with respect to their orientation, size, branching system, and style of cementation and, thus, consider them, to be of biogenic origin.     

Stable isotope paleohydrology and chemostratigraphy of the Albian Wayan Formation from the wedge-top depozone,North American Western Interior Basin

Understanding of the role of atmospheric moisture and heat transport in the climate system of the Cretaceous greenhouse world represents a major challenge in Earth system science.Stable isotopic paleohydrologic data from mid-Cretaceous paleosols in North America,from paleoequatorial to paleoArctic latitudes,have been used to constrain the oxygen isotope mass balance of the Albian hydrologic cycle.Over the range from 40°-50°N paleolatitude,sideritic paleosols predominate,indicating paleoenvironments with positive precipitation-evaporation(P-E)balances.Local exceptions occur on leeward side of the Sevier Orogen,where calcic paleosols in the wedge-top depozone record paleoenvironments with negative P-E balances in the orographic rain shadow.Stratigraphic sections in the Wayan Formation of Idaho(WF)were sampled from the wedge-top depozone.The units consist of stacked m-scale mudstone paleosols separated by m-scale sandstone-siltstone beds.Sections were sampled for organic carbon isotope profiles,and B-horizons from 6 well-developed paleosols were sampled for detrital zircons to determine maximum depositional ages.The first of these from the WF has produced a U-Pb concordia age of 101.0±1.1 Ma.This same WF section has produced a stratigraphic trend of upwardly decreasingδ~(13)C values ranging from-24‰upwards to-27‰VPDB,suggesting correlation to the late Albian C15 C-isotope segment.Pedogenic carbonates from the WF principally consist of micritic calcite,with carbon-oxygen isotope values that array along meteoric calcite lines(MCLs)withδ~(18)O values that range from-9.47‰up to-8.39‰VPDB.At approximately 42°N paleolatitude,these MCL values produce calculated paleoprecipitation values of-8.12‰to-7.04‰VSMOW,a range that is consistent with the estimates produced from other proxies at the same paleolatitudes across North America.These results indicate that despite the orographic rain shadow effect,the processes of meridional atmospheric moisture transport in this locale were similar to those in more humid mid-latitude paleoenvironments elsewhere in the continent.     

Dynamics of lava flow fronts, Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica

Arenal Volcano has effused basaltic andesite lava flows nearly continuously since September, 1968. The two different kinds of material in flows, lava and lava debris, have different rheologic properties and dynamic behavior. Flow morphology depends on the relationship between the amount and distribution of the lava and the debris, and to a lesser extent the ground morphology.Two main units characterize the flows: the channel zone and the frontal zone. The channel zone consists of two different units, the levées and the channel proper. A velocity profile in the channel shows a maximum value at the plug where the rate of shear is zero, and a velocity gradient increasing outward until, at the levées, the velocity becomes zero. Cooling produces a marked temperature gradient in the flow, leading to the formation of debris by brittle fracture when a critical value of shear rate to viscosity is reached. When the lava supply ceases, much of this debris and part of the lava is left behind after the flow nucleus drains out, forming a collapsed channel.Processes at the frontal zone include levée formation, debris formation, the change in shape of the front, and the choice of the flow path. These processes are controlled primarily by the rheological properties of the lava.Frontal zone dynamics can be understood by fixing the flow front as the point of reference. The lava flows through the channel into the front where it flows out into the levées, thereby increasing the length of the channel and permitting the front to advance. The front shows a relationship of critical height to the yield strength (τ₀) surface tension, and slope; its continued movement is activated by the pressure of the advancing lava in the channel behind. For an ideal flow (isothermal, homogeneous, and isotropic) the ratio of the section of channel proper to the section of levées is calculated and the distance the front will have moved at any time t_x can be determined once the amount of lava available to the front is known. Assuming that the velocity function of the front {G(t)} during the collapsing stage is proportional to the entrance pressure of the lava at the channel-front boundary, an exponential decrease of velocity through time is predicted, which shows good agreement with actual frontal velocity measurements taken on two flows. Local variations in slope have a secondary effect on frontal velocities.Under conditions of constant volume the frontal zone can be considered as a machine that consumes energy brought in by the lava to perform work (front advancement). While the front will use its potential energy to run the process, the velocity at which it occurs is controlled by the activation energy that enters the system as the kinetic energy of the lava flowing into the front. A relation for the energy contribution due to frontal acceleration is also derived. Finally the entrance pressure, that permits the front to deform, is calculated. Its small value confirms that the lava behaves very much like a Bingham plastic.     

The First Mesozoic Heterodactyl Bird from China

1 Introduction Enantiornithines were the dominant birds nearly worldwide throughout the entire span of the Cretaceous (Chiappe, 1995; Feduccia, 1996). The adaptive radiation of opposite birds is little known besides the disparity of rostral morphology in Boluochia (Zhou, 1995), Longipteryx (Zhang et al., 2001), Longirostravis ( Hou et al., 2004), and the presence of stomach contents that reflect a diversity of diets. Like the structure of rostrum, differentiation of the locomotor apparatu…     

The European vision for oceans and seas—Social and political dimensions of the Green Paper on Maritime Policy for the EU

The EU Green Paper on Maritime Policy is the European response to the new generation of ocean strategies based on science, technology and innovation aimed at new objectives, such as the strengthening of security and access to new resources. The European character of the proposal is found in the presence of social, cultural and historical elements, what is called the “European vision”. The viability of a European vision of the oceans and the idea of maritime empire as an extension of the current concept of empire within the general context of emerging ocean strategies are the elements offered up for debate on this European Union initiative.