Stemflow and throughfall in a tropical dry forest

The rainfall received by a small plot of tropical deciduous forest on sand dunes in Veracruz, Mexico, was partitioned into stemflow and throughfall components to determine whether funnelling by stemflow could reduce soil leaching by transmitting large volumes of water through vertical soil pathways beneath each stem. Although soil infiltration capacities were high, only a very small proportion of incoming rainfall was funnelled by canopy stems. This is attributed to the widely-branched morphology of mature trees. Smaller trees and shrubs were more effective funnellers of rainfall, and a crude estimate of the magnitude of stemflow in the understorey stratum in one rain event suggested a contribution approximately ten times that of canopy stemflow. However, even if augmented by the understorey stratum in this way, total stemflow is unlikely to have exceeded 10 per cent of gross precipitation, implying that it does not represent an important leaching-avoidance mechanism in this forest.     

Early Ipswichian (last interglacial) sea level rise in the channel region: Stone Point Site of Special Scientific Interest,Hampshire, England

Constraining the speed of sea level rise at the start of an interglacial is important to understanding the size of the ‘window of opportunity’ available for hominin migration. This is particularly important during the last interglacial when there is no evidence for significant hominin occupation anywhere in Britain. There are very few finer grained fossiliferous sequences in the Channel region that can be used to constrain sea level rise and they are preserved only to the north of the Channel, in England. Of these, the sequence at Stone Point SSSI is by far the most complete. Data from this sequence has been previously reported, and discussed at a Quaternary Research Association Field Meeting, where a number of further questions were raised that necessitated further data generation. In this paper, we report new data from this sequence – thin section analysis, isotopic determinations on ostracod shells, new Optical Stimulated Luminescence ages and Amino Acid Recem analyses. These show early sea level rise in this sequence, starting during the pre-temperate vegetation zone IpI, but no early warming. The implications of this almost certainly last interglacial sequence for the human colonisation of Britain and our understanding of the stratigraphic relationship of interglacial estuarine deposits with their related fluvial terrace sequences is explored.     

Assessment of Nigeriasat-1 satellite data for urban land use/land cover analysis using object-based image analysis in Abuja,Nigeria

This study assesses the usefulness of Nigeriasat-1 satellite data for urban land cover analysis by comparing it with Landsat and SPOT data. The data-sets for Abuja were classified with pixel- and object-based methods. While the pixel-based method was classified with the spectral properties of the images, the object-based approach included an extra layer of land use cadastre data. The classification accuracy results for OBIA show that Landsat 7 ETM, Nigeriasat-1 SLIM and SPOT 5 HRG had overall accuracies of 92, 89 and 96%, respectively, while the classification accuracy for pixel-based classification were 88% for Landsat 7 ETM, 63% for Nigeriasat-1 SLIM and 89% for SPOT 5 HRG. The results indicate that given the right classification tools, the analysis of Nigeriasat-1 data can be compared with Landsat and SPOT data which are widely used for urban land use and land cover analysis.     

Bentonites in the Chalk of central eastern England and their relation to the opening of the Northeast Atlantic

Within the post-Cenomanian Chalk sequence of central eastern England about 20 thin persistent marl horizons occur. These marls contain from 30 to 65% non-carbonate material the bulk of which is composed of a well crystallised Mg-rich smectite with a notable paucity of illite and quartz. The Chalk matrix above and below the marls contains up to 2.0% of non-carbonate matter which again is dominated by the presence of an Mg-rich smectite but which contains a larger proportion of illite and quartz than occurs in the marls. For both sets of non-carbonate materials the excellent crystallinity and Mg-rich nature of the smectite strongly suggest that it was formed by the in situ alteration of an aeolian transported volcanic ash, i.e. it is a true bentonite. Quartz and illite in the Chalk matrix are probably detrital components.Relative to a standard shale, non-carbonate materials from the Chalk marl horizons exhibit a highly anomalous trace element pattern with accentuated levels of Zr, Nb and Th but depleted levels of Ba, Rb and K. This trace element chemistry corroborates a volcanogenic origin for the smectite insofar as it is not explicable in terms of any realistic sedimentary process. The chemistry is best interpreted in terms of the magnetic processes responsible for the formation of the original ash precursor of the marls. It appears that this precursor had a pantelleritic composition and therefore originated from a source overlying an area where incipient continental rifting was taking place.Micromorphological examinations prove that residues from the Chalk marls contain small amounts of pyroclastic debris, including pumice and fragments of sideromelane glass. The morphology of the fragments suggests that the volcanic eruptions responsible for the ejection of the original ash into the air were of the shallow-water phreatomagmatic (Surtseyan) type.The distribution of marls in the Chalk of eastern England suggests that the ashfalls responsible for their origin were of the tropospheric type and were drawn by westerly winds from a centre to the west or northwest of mainland Britain. Of the numerous volcanic centres that lie in offshore areas to the west, the Anton Dohrn Seamount in the Rockall Trough appears to a likely centre of origin for the ashfalls. However, ashfalls responsible for the formation of the traces of smectite in the Chalk matrix were probably of the general background (stratospheric) type and may have been drawn from more distant centres.Volcanism at the Anton Dohrn Seamount was related to tensional effects in the continental crust that immediately preceded the formation of the Rockall Trough and the separation of Greenland from northwestern Europe during Tertiary times. Activity at the centre, and Cretaceous bentonites derived therefrom, therefore represent the earliest stages in the development of the Thulean igneous province.     

The Carboniferous Southern Pennine Basin,UK

Many of the Carboniferous outcrops located in the Derbyshire region of the Peak District National Park, UK, have provided sites for both significant and pioneering research relating to the clastic sedimentology of marine palaeoenvironments, particularly so during the 1960s and 1970s when early models describing the sedimentary architecture of fluvio‐deltaic, submarine‐slope and deep‐marine submarine‐fan sedimentation were first developed. The area was subject to hydrocarbon exploration from the 1920s to 1950s, which although unsuccessful in economic terms left a legacy of sub‐surface data. Despite a long‐history of sedimentological research, the deposits exposed at several classic localities in the Pennine Basin continue to broaden and challenge our current understanding of sedimentary processes to this day.     

Global hydrogen reservoirs in basement and basins

Background

Hydrogen is known to occur in the groundwaters of some ancient cratons. Where associated gases have been dated, their age extends up to a billion years, and the hydrogen is assumed also to be very old. These observations are interpreted to represent the radiolysis of water and hydration reactions and migration of hydrogen into fracture systems. A hitherto untested implication is that the overwhelming bulk of the ancient low-permeability basement, which is not adjacent to cross-cutting fractures, constitutes a reservoir for hydrogen.

Results

New data obtained from cold crushing to liberate volatiles from fluid inclusions confirm that granites and gneiss of Archean and Palaeoproterozoic (>1600 Ma) age typically contain an order of magnitude greater hydrogen in their entrained fluid than very young (<200 Ma) granites. Sedimentary rocks containing clasts of old basement also include a greater proportion of hydrogen than the young granites.

Conclusions

The data support the case for a global reservoir of hydrogen in both the ancient basement and in the extensive derived sediments. These reservoirs are susceptible to the release of hydrogen through a variety of mechanisms, including deformation, attrition to reduce grain size and diagenetic alteration, thereby contributing to the hydrogen required by chemolithoautotrophs in the deep biosphere.

     

The effect of environmental change on human migration

The influence of the environment and environmental change is largely unrepresented in standard theories of migration, whilst recent debates on climate change and migration focus almost entirely on displacement and perceive migration to be a problem. Drawing on an increasing evidence base that has assessed elements of the influence of the environment on migration, this paper presents a new framework for understanding the effect of environmental change on migration. The framework identifies five families of drivers which affect migration decisions: economic, political, social, demographic and environmental drivers. The environment drives migration through mechanisms characterised as the availability and reliability of ecosystem services and exposure to hazard. Individual migration decisions and flows are affected by these drivers operating in combination, and the effect of the environment is therefore highly dependent on economic, political, social and demographic context. Environmental change has the potential to affect directly the hazardousness of place. Environmental change also affects migration indirectly, in particular through economic drivers, by changing livelihoods for example, and political drivers, through affecting conflicts over resources, for example. The proposed framework, applicable to both international and internal migration, emphasises the role of human agency in migration decisions, in particular the linked role of family and household characteristics on the one hand, and barriers and facilitators to movement on the other in translating drivers into actions. The framework can be used to guide new research, assist with the evaluation of policy options, and provide a context for the development of scenarios representing a range of plausible migration futures.