Cobalt, manganese, and iron near the Hawaiian Islands: A potential concentrating mechanism for cobalt within a cyclonic eddy and implications for the hybrid-type trace metals

The vertical distributions of cobalt, iron, and manganese in the water column were studied during the E-Flux Program (E-Flux II and III), which focused on the biogeochemistry of cold-core cyclonic eddies that form in the lee of the Hawaiian Islands. During E-Flux II (January 2005) and E-Flux III (March 2005), 17 stations were sampled for cobalt (n=147), all of which demonstrated nutrient-like depletion in surface waters. During E-Flux III, two depth profiles collected from within a mesoscale cold-core eddy, Cyclone Opal, revealed small distinct maxima in cobalt at 100 m depth and a larger inventory of cobalt within the eddy. We hypothesize that this was due to a cobalt concentrating effect within the eddy, where upwelled cobalt was subsequently associated with sinking particulate organic carbon (POC) via biological activity and was released at a depth coincident with nearly complete POC remineralization [Benitez-Nelson, C., Bidigare, R.R., Dickey, T.D., Landry, M.R., Leonard, C.L., Brown, S.L., Nencioli, F., Rii, Y.M., Maiti, K., Becker, J.W., Bibby, T.S., Black, W., Cai, W.J., Carlson, C.A., Chen, F., Kuwahara, V.S., Mahaffey, C., McAndrew, P.M., Quay, P.D., Rappe, M.S., Selph, K.E., Simmons, M.P., Yang, E.J., 2007. Mesoscale eddies drive increased silica export in the subtropical Pacific Ocean. Science 316, 1017–1020]. There is also evidence for the formation of a correlation between cobalt and soluble reactive phosphorus during E-Flux III relative to the E-Flux II cruise that we suggest is due to increased productivity, implying a minimum threshold of primary production below which cobalt–phosphate coupling does not occur. Dissolved iron was measured in E-Flux II and found in somewhat elevated concentrations (0.5 nM) in surface waters relative to the iron depleted waters of the surrounding Pacific [Fitzwater, S.E., Coale, K.H., Gordon, M.R., Johnson, K.S., Ondrusek, M.E., 1996. Iron deficiency and phytoplankton growth in the equatorial Pacific. Deep-Sea Research II 43 (4–6), 995–1015], possibly due to island effects associated with the iron-rich volcanic soil from the Hawaiian Islands and/or anthropogenic inputs. Distinct depth maxima in total dissolved cobalt were observed at 400–600 m depth, suggestive of the release of metals from the shelf area of comparable depth that surrounds these islands.     

Magneto-viscous fluid cosmological models in presence of zero-mass scalar field

A viscous fluid cosmological model in presence of magnetic field and zero-mass scalar fields is developed. The non-negativity condition of viscous fluid pressure prescribes a certain minimum value oft vis-a-vis of the scale factorQ(t) and at this epoch the model is found to be singularity free.     

A unified earthquake catalogue for South Asia covering the period 1900–2014

Seismicity analysis is very much pertinent for Indian subcontinent and its adjoining region which is seismically active including many great earthquakes associated with collision and subduction tectonics in the northern, north-eastern part of the subcontinent and in the Andaman and Nicobar Island. An earthquake catalogue has been generated for South Asia covering the period 1900–2014 by compiling the records of earthquake occurrences from International Seismological Center, Global Centroid Moment Tensor (GCMT), US Geological Survey, India Meteorological Department and published literature. The uniform magnitude scaling in moment magnitude M _W,GCMT is achieved through connecting relationships between different magnitude types. These relationships are derived by orthogonal standard regression analysis on available data pairs. The derived relationships have been compared with the existing equations already reported by others. The catalogue is subsequently subjected to a seismicity declustering algorithm to identify the foreshocks, main-shocks and aftershocks. The catalogue thus compiled is envisaged to be a useful resource for seismotectonic and seismic hazard studies in the region.

     

Some observations from radiometric ‘8 bit’ data of sediment thin sections based on alternative petrographic image analysis method

This paper deals with the experiment of sediment microstructure analysis especially microfabric mapping by digital imaging. For that purpose the greyscale images (Red band from RGB combination) of the thin sections have been prepared from the selected 12 samples. The basis of this mapping is the reflectance capacity of different sediments which is influenced by the physical parameters like grain size and colour. The reflectances of different sediments are represented in digital format by different DN values from 0–255 within the radiometric ranges of ‘8 bit’ data. Density slicing has been chosen as the method of microstructure mapping in this research. This study shows that lower DN values normally present dark coloured coarser sand and clay while higher DN values present light coloured finer sediment samples. In the selected samples for this study the maximum DN value has been found from micaceous materials. Another remarkable thing observed from the microfabric mapping is that the presence of coarser sediments forms complex microfabric pattern than the finer sediments in the study area. Though this method have some demerits, still its simple technique can be very useful for accurate microstructure analysis.     

Estimation of structural vulnerability for flooding using geospatial tools in the rural area of Orissa,India

Vulnerability assessment of natural disasters is a crucial input for risk assessment and management. In the light of increasing frequency of disasters, societies must become more disaster resilient. This research tries to contribute to this aim. For risk assessment, insight is needed into the hazard, the elements at risk and their vulnerabilities. This study focused on the estimation of structural vulnerability due to flood for a number of structural elements at risk in the rural area of Orissa, India (Kendrapara), using a community-based approach together with geospatial analysis tools. Sixty-three households were interviewed about the 2003 floods in 11 villages and 166 elements at risk (buildings) were identified. Two main structural types were identified in the study area, and their vulnerability curves were made by plotting the relationships between flood depth and vulnerability for each structural type. The vulnerability ranges from 0 (no damage) to 1 (collapse/total damage). Structural type-1 is characterized by mud wall/floor material and a roof of paddy straw, and structural type-2 is characterized by reinforced cement concrete (RCC) walls/floor and a RCC roof. The results indicate that structural type-1 is most vulnerable for flooding. Besides flood depth, flood duration is also of major importance. Houses from structural type-1 were totally collapsed after 3 days of inundation. Damage of the houses of structural type-2 began after 10 days of inundation.     

Chemical weathering and gully erosion causing land degradation in a complex river basin of Eastern India: an integrated field,analytical and artificial intelligence approach

Hot and humid subtropical plateau regions are susceptible to land degradation in the form of weathering and gully erosion. Here, we investigate chemical weathering, gully erosion and cohesiveness through field-based measurements with a view to understand the controlling factors of potential land degradation, in complex river basin of the Chotanagpur plateau region in Eastern India. The layers of controlling factors of gully erosion were developed and prioritized considering boosted regression tree (BRT), alternative decision tree (ADT), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and random forest (RF) algorithms in the R software, and the results of these methods were also validated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The spectroscopic analysis was carried out of collected soil samples to measure the degree of chemical weathering and cohesiveness. Furthermore, the climatic elements like temperature and rainfall were also considered for estimating the chemical weathering. The results of the gully erosion models (i.e., BRT, ADT, PSO and RF) show remarkable accuracy with ROC values of 0.93, 0.89, 0.91 and 0.84, respectively. An advanced decision tree model was integrated with the results of degree of chemical weathering and cohesiveness in geographical information system platform. The land degradation map developed from this approach shows that 10.53% of the study area is highly affected, whereas 17.36% area is moderately affected and the rest of the 73.85% area is less affected by land degradation. Our results provide essential information for policy makers in adopting measures for minimizing and controlling the land degradation. Our novel approach is significant to assess land degradation to a large scale.

     

Opencast Coal Mining Induced Defaced Topography of Raniganj Coalfield in India - Remote Sensing and GIS Based Analysis

With the advent of mining activities at Raniganj coalfield in India, the natural topography has been defaced in some elongated tracts by either excavation or dumping. This paper deals with opencast mining induced defaced topography of Raniganj coalfield, which needs to be reclaimed properly right after mining. This paper investigated intensity of defacing topography, magnitude of topographic deformations through a number of ex-situ measurement. Consequences of these topographic deformations are also investigated in this study. Through a number of ex-situ measurement based on Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques, generating contour and profiling them over the spoil dumps and excavated lows using fine resolution digital elevation data (Remote Sensing image), a total 132 (85 are abandoned and 47 are working) patches of defaced topography have been identified, which covers 43.26 sq km. surface area. Some working opencast quarries are more than 95 m deep, with an area of more than 2.4 sq km and dumped ridges are more than 60 m high (peak), with area more than 1.5 sq km. In case of abandoned mine (more than 20 years) some quarries are more than 28 m deep with area 0.99 sq km. and some of dumped ridges are more than 28 m high (peak), with area 0.29 sq km. These kinds of defaced surface remain for a long time, such quarries contain acidic logged water and spoil dump leads to acid mine drainage and erosion of loose soil particle. It deteriorates the entire land, water system of the region. The study suggests restoring land right after mining and the area made to be ecologically conformable.     

Assessment of soil carbon pool,carbon sequestration and soil CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> flux in unreclaimed and reclaimed coal mine spoils

Surface coal mining inevitably deforests the land, reduces carbon (C) pool and generates different land covers. To re-establish the ecosystem C pool, post-mining lands are often afforested with fast-growing trees. A field study was conducted in the 5-year-old unreclaimed dump and reclaimed coal mine dump to assess the changes in soil CO₂ flux and compared with the reference forest site. Changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen stocks were estimated in post-mining land. Soil CO₂ flux was measured using close dynamic chamber method, and the influence of environmental variables on soil CO₂ flux was determined. Woody biomass C and SOC stocks of the reference forest site were threefold higher than that of 5-year-old reclaimed site. The mean soil CO₂ flux was highest in 5-year-old reclaimed dump (2.37 μmol CO₂ m^?2 s^?1) and lowest in unreclaimed dump (0.21 μmol CO₂ m^?2 s^?1). Soil CO₂ flux was highly influenced by environmental variables, where soil temperature positively influenced the soil CO₂ flux, while soil moisture, relative humidity and surface CO₂ concentration negatively influenced the soil CO₂ flux. Change in soil CO₂ flux under different land cover depends on plant and soil characteristics and environmental variables. The study concluded that assessment of soil CO₂ flux in post-mining land is important to estimate the potential of afforestation to combat increased emission of soil CO₂ at regional and global scale.     

A comparative study of artificial neural networks,Bayesian neural networks and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system in groundwater level prediction

Predictive modeling of hydrological time series is essential for groundwater resource development and management. Here, we examined the comparative merits and demerits of three modern soft computing techniques, namely, artificial neural networks (ANN) optimized by scaled conjugate gradient (SCG) (ANN.SCG), Bayesian neural networks (BNN) optimized by SCG (BNN.SCG) with evidence approximation and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) in the predictive modeling of groundwater level fluctuations. As a first step of our analysis, a sensitivity analysis was carried out using automatic relevance determination scheme to examine the relative influence of each of the hydro-meteorological attributes on groundwater level fluctuations. Secondly, the result of stability analysis was studied by perturbing the underlying data sets with different levels of correlated red noise. Finally, guided by the ensuing theoretical experiments, the above techniques were applied to model the groundwater level fluctuation time series of six wells from a hard rock area of Dindigul in Southern India. We used four standard quantitative statistical measures to compare the robustness of the different models. These measures are (1) root mean square error, (2) reduction of error, (3) index of agreement (IA), and (4) Pearson’s correlation coefficient (R). Based on the above analyses, it is found that the ANFIS model performed better in modeling noise-free data than the BNN.SCG and ANN.SCG models. However, modeling of hydrological time series correlated with significant amount of red noise, the BNN.SCG models performed better than both the ANFIS and ANN.SCG models. Hence, appropriate care should be taken for selecting suitable methodology for modeling the complex and noisy hydrological time series. These results may be used to constrain the model of groundwater level fluctuations, which would in turn, facilitate the development and implementation of more effective sustainable groundwater management and planning strategies in semi-arid hard rock area of Dindigul, Southern India and alike.     

The fate of dwarf galaxies in clusters and the origin of intracluster stars

The main goal of this paper is to compare the relative importance of destruction by tides vs. destruction by mergers, in order to assess if tidal destruction of galaxies in clusters is a viable scenario for explaining the origin of intracluster stars. We have designed a simple algorithm for simulating the evolution of isolated clusters. The distribution of galaxies in the cluster is evolved using a direct gravitational N-body algorithm combined with a subgrid treatment of physical processes such as mergers, tidal disruption, and galaxy harassment. Using this algorithm, we have performed a total of 148 simulations. Our main results are: