Expected damage from displacement of slow-moving slides

Facilities such as buildings, highways, railways, bridges, dams and pipelines often are built on natural slopes where the risk of landslides is not low. The vulnerability of these facilities to slow-moving slides has sometimes been underestimated, although the velocity of some classes of slow slides is uncontrollable. More than 50 cases of slow slides were compiled from the literature for this study. Some statistics about the movement trigger(s), the methods used to measure displacement, the material forming the rupture surface and the type of the vulnerable facilities are presented. It is shown that the expected degree of damage to urban settlements, highways, bridges and dams can be related to the slide velocity or accumulating displacement. Buildings and residential houses may tolerate higher slide velocities and total displacements than other facilities before experiencing serious damage. Movements as low as 100 mm may severely damage bridges, but such low rates may cause only moderate damage to urban communities. The relationship between movement and the expected extent of damage should be useful to geotechnical engineers who deal with different classes of slow slides and will help in the choice of appropriate mitigation measures based on preliminary estimates of movement rates.     

Electrophonic Sound Generation by the Chelyabinsk Fireball

Simultaneous, also called electrophonic sounds were widely reported by eye-witnesses to the Chelyabinsk fireball. The available data indicate that such sounds were heard at ranges to at least ~100 km from the fireball’s atmospheric path. We estimate that the fireball may have generated of order 625 W of energy in the form of very low frequency radiation, and we find some tentative evidence to indicate that the acoustic conversion efficiency at a 100 km range was of order 0.1 %. Numerical simulations of the atmospheric flight path indicate that electrophonic sounds should have commenced some 5 s after the fireball first became luminous and would have lasted for some 7.5 s prior to the moment of catastrophic break-up.     

Short-axis-mode rotation of a free rigid body by perturbation series

A simple rearrangement of the torque free motion Hamiltonian shapes it as a perturbation problem for bodies rotating close to the principal axis of maximum inertia, independently of their triaxiality. The complete reduction of the main part of this Hamiltonian via the Hamilton–Jacobi equation provides the action-angle variables that ease the construction of a perturbation solution by Lie transforms. The lowest orders of the transformation equations of the perturbation solution are checked to agree with Kinoshita’s corresponding expansions for the exact solution of the free rigid body problem. For approximately axisymmetric bodies rotating close to the principal axis of maximum inertia, the common case of major solar system bodies, the new approach is advantageous over classical expansions based on a small triaxiality parameter.     

Impact history of the Apollo 17 landing site revealed by U‐Pb SIMS ages

Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) U‐Pb ages of Ca‐phosphates from four texturally distinct breccia samples (72255, 76055, 76015, 76215) collected at the Apollo 17 landing site were obtained in an attempt to identify whether they represent a single or several impact event(s). The determined ages, combined with inferences from petrologic relationships, may indicate two or possibly three different impact events at 3920 ± 3 Ma, 3922 ± 5 Ma, and 3930 ± 5 Ma (all errors 2σ). Searching for possible sources of the breccias by calculating the continuous ejecta radii of impact basins and large craters as well as their expected ejecta thicknesses, we conclude that Nectaris, Crisium, Serenitatis, and Imbrium are likely candidates. If the previous interpretation that the micropoikilitic breccias collected at the North Massif represent Serenitatis ejecta is correct, then the average ²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁶Pb age of 3930 ± 5 Ma (2σ) dates the formation of the Serenitatis basin. The occurrence of zircon in the breccias sampled at the South Massif, which contain Ca‐phosphates yielding an age of 3922 ± 5 Ma (2σ), may indicate that the breccia originated from within the Procellarum KREEP terrane (PKT) and the Imbrium basin appears to be the only basin that could have sourced them. However, this interpretation implies that all basins suggested to fall stratigraphically between Serenitatis and Imbrium formed within a short (<11 Ma) time interval, highlighting serious contradictions between global stratigraphic constraints, sample interpretation, and chronological data. Alternatively, the slightly older age of the two micropoikilitic breccias may be a result of incomplete resetting of the U‐Pb system preserved in some phosphate grains. Based on the currently available data set this possibility cannot be excluded.     

Largest dinosaur tracksite in China(Cretaceous,Zhaojue area,Sichuan Province): On the verge of destruction

The Zhaojue(ZJ) tracksites represent multiple steeply-inclined, track-bearing exposures in the clastic Feitianshan Formation of Sichuan Province that have been sequentially, excavated, mapped, expanded and destroyed, by quarrying,erosion or collapse, for almost three decades. The quarried area extends for more almost 1.0 km from north to south and ～0.5 km from east to west. Four important track-bearing surfaces have been identified and identified as ZJ-I, ZJ-II,ZJ-IIN and ZJ-III, some of which are newly exposed surfaces or expanded surfaces that were previously partially described. Others represent surfaces lost since they were first reported in papers published in 2014–2016. The ZJ-II site represents a hugely expanded continuation of a much smaller track-bearing surface described in 2014. It was mapped using drone technology, and now represents the largest tracksite in China, with a minimum count of 933 recognizable tracks, and the longest recorded sauropod and ornithopod trackways from China(～80 m and ～52 m respectively), which also reveal a pronounced change in the direction of trackmaker movement. The ZJ-II surface represents the best Zhaojue paleo-census sample giving a count of 68 individuals from 61 trackways(37 ornithopod, 10 theropod, 14 sauropod) and isolated tracks(representing 7 individuals). Thus, ornithopods(both large and small trackmakers) represent ～54% of the total number of trackways. The smaller ZJ-III surface was mapped using traditional methods, and reveals at least 6 ornithopod-and 4 theropod trackways. Both the ZJ-II and ZJ-III surfaces reveal parallel ornithopod trackways suggestive of social or gregarious behavior. The combined data from all four Zhaojue surfaces reveal a total of 1928 tracks, and include a few previously reported pterosaurs and theropod swim tracks. The Zhaojue quarry complex provide a good example of multiple track-bearing sites(surfaces) that require long term study and monitoring to extract as much trackway data as possible before in situ physical evidence is lost.     

Das Naukluftgebirge in Südwestafrika

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Calving retreat and proglacial lake growth at Hooker Glacier,Southern Alps,New Zealand

Hooker Glacier in the central Southern Alps of New Zealand has undergone significant downwasting and recession (～2.14 km) during the last two centuries. High retreat rates (51 m a^?1 1986–2001, 43 m a^?1 2001–2011) have produced a large (1.22 km²) proglacial lake. We present a retreat scenario for Hooker Glacier. A retreat scenario predicts that the glacier terminus will stabilise >3 km up‐valley of the current lake outlet after 2028 when ice velocity equals calving rate.     

Toward a Cartography of the Commons: Constituting the Political and Economic Possibilities of Place

Competing with the cartography of capitalism, undermining its power to fix resources as open to capitalist appropriation and space as enclosed, will require a cartography of the commons that makes visible community and commons processes; it will require a shift in strategy from explicating and defending existing commons to mapping spaces into which a commons future might be projected. The “Buffalo Commons” and a map-based project in New England fisheries link new spatial imaginaries with desires for and enactments of alternative economic initiatives. Each project rereads economic and environmental processes relative to the potential of the commons rather than the potential of capitalism.