How long does oyster shell last on an oyster reef?

A reduction in population abundance, brought on by an unprecedented 6 years of low recruitment, has reduced shell input through natural mortality on Delaware Bay oyster beds. Quantitative stock surveys provide an estimate of surficial shell over the same time period, permitting the reconstruction of the time history of shell since 1998 and estimation of the rates of shell addition and loss. Shell loss rates were unexpectedly high. In most cases, half of the shell added to an oyster bed in Delaware Bay in a given year is lost over a subsequent period of 2–10 years. Unexpectedly, the shortest half-lives, typically two to three years, are at intermediate salinities. Half-lives increase upbay into lower salinity and downbay into higher salinity to about 10 years. Minimal shell doubling times were calculated under the assumption of no shell loss, a maximum accretion rate. Minimal doubling times vary from somewhat less than a decade to more than a score of years. Doubling times of decadal scale emphasize that shell has the potential to accumulate rapidly on human time scales. The rarity of definitive documentation of shell accumulation, in terms of reef vertical accretion or lateral expansion, can only be explained if most shell produced yearly does not long remain recognizably intact. Doubling times are not rapid on the scale of oyster generation time, however. Management of essential fish habitat in the estuarine realm must include management of the shell budget and management of commercial shell-producing species must include the provision of animals as carbonate producers for habitat maintenance. Shell, at least in estuarine habitats, may have low preservational potential, even in areas that, when preserved, will appear to be shellbeds. The biases in the fossil record may not be minimized in shell-rich environments of preservation because shelliness does not imply good preservability.     

Neutron powder diffraction study of the orientational order–disorder phase transition in calcite, CaCO3

Neutron powder diffraction studies of calcite on heating towards the orientational order–disorder phase transition show that the phase transition is not a simple analogue of an Ising-like transition, but more similar to a rotational analogue of Lindemann melting. The transition is precipitated by the librational amplitude of the carbonate molecular ions exceeding a critical value rather than a result of a statistical entropy of ‘wrong’ orientations. Using tested interatomic potentials the single-particle orientational potential and nearest-neighbour orientational interactions have been calculated.     

Onset of aridity in southern Western Australia—a preliminary palaeomagnetic appraisal

The timing of the onset of full arid conditions in southern Western Australia during the late Cenozoic remains uncertain. The playas and associated sedimentary sequences preserved as part of the Tertiary palaeodrainage networks, which are widely developed in Western Australia, provide the stratigraphic evidence necessary to resolve this issue. Lake Lefroy forms part of a chain of playas that occur in the eastern Yilgarn Craton. These lake chains are the remnants of a once external palaeodrainage system, developed in pre-Eocene times. Eocene non-marine to marginal marine sequences were deposited in the palaeodrainage as channel infills. The low relief area of the palaeodrainage featured a permanent to semi-permanent lacustrine environment during post-Eocene times, and fine-grained red–brown clastic clay up to 10 m in thickness was deposited over an extensive area. A significant hydrological transition, as inferred by the litho-sedimentary change from freshwater clay to evaporitic gypsum-dominated sedimentation, took place in the late Cenozoic. The extensive freshwater system changed to the saline/deflation playas that characterises this landscape today. A detailed palaeomagnetic study was carried out on the lacustrine clay unit and the overlying evaporitic gypsum unit in Lake Lefroy. Results from drill core and pit wall exposures have provided the first time constraints for these sequences. Age estimates, based on extrapolation from the Brunhes/Matuyama geomagnetic boundary, suggest that the gypsum-dominated sedimentation and by inference, full arid conditions in Lake Lefroy, commenced within the Brunhes Normal Polarity Chron, probably within the last 500 Ka. This age is considerably younger than previously thought, but appears to bear some correspondence to similar claims to the age of the onset of aridity in southeast and central Australia. Evidence emerging from the inland dune field to the surrounding oceans suggests a trend of increasing aridity during the Quaternary in Australia. The onset of full aridity may well indicate that the impact of global glacial–interglacial cycles on Australian climate, especially the large scale glacial ‘dryness' resulted from the 100 Ka astronomic variations reached beyond its threshold.     

The exchange coefficients for latent and sensible heat flux over lakes: Dependence upon atmospheric stability

Components of the energy budget of a small lake were estimated over the autumnal cooling period. Measured values of the stored thermal energy and radiative heating were used to evaluate several bulk formulae for sensible and latent heat transfer. Over 50–100 day intervals, bulk formulae for latent and sensible heat flux without stability corrections were as good as formulae that incorporated such corrections; both satisfactorily reproduced the measured heat storage data. Over shorter (daily to weekly) time-scales, predictions incorporating stability corrections were superior to those without stability corrections. Over daily periods when the atmosphere was nearly neutral or was unstable, a formulation for sensible and latent heat transfer designed for small-scale systems (cooling ponds and reservoirs) agreed closely with the usual large-scale (oceanic) bulk formulations. The corrections for stability in the small-scale formulation are based on laboratory and theoretical studies of free convection; the stability correction in the large-scale formulation uses a bulk Richardson number in a manner consistent with flux-profile theory. Both agreed with the measured data for the unstable and near-neutral cases. Under stable atmospheric conditions (in a daily average sense), both formulations underestimated the measured fluxes     

Silurian to mid-Devonian basin development of the Melbourne Zone, Lachlan Fold Belt, southeastern Australia

The Melbourne Zone comprises Early Ordovician to Early Devonian marine turbidites, which pass conformably upward into a mid-Devonian fluviatile succession. There are four pulses of Silurian to mid-Devonian deep-marine sandstone-dominated sedimentation: Early Silurian (late Llandovery), Late Silurian (Ludlow), earliest Devonian (Lochkovian) and late Early Devonian (Emsian). Two dispersal patterns have been defined using more than 1100 palaeocurrent measurements, mainly from sole marks and cross-laminations in graded beds, together with sandstone compositions. The older pattern, of Silurian to earliest Devonian age, contains the lowest three sandstone pulses. Palaeocurrents and provenance define a wedge of southwesterly derived sediment, of largely cratonic provenance, thinning eastward. This older dispersal pattern is part of an Early Ordovician to earliest Devonian east-facing passive continental margin succession. Palaeocurrents and provenance in the Emsian sandstone pulse comprise three patterns: (1) west- to southwesterly directed palaeocurrents associated with fine- to coarse-grained, locally conglomeratic, lithic sandstones containing a high proportion of volcanic detritus; (2) east- to northeasterly directed palaeocurrents associated with fine- to medium-grained quartz-lithic sandstones; (3) north- to northwesterly and south- to southeasterly directed palaeocurrents associated with fine- to medium-grained sandstones of variable lithic composition. The palaeocurrent and provenance pattern defines a NNW-elongate basin with a tectonically active eastern margin, and is similar to the coeval Mathinna basin of northeastern Tasmania. Both basins are part of the same system of wrench basins, which developed along the western side of the Wagga–Omeo Metamorphic Belt during the earliest Devonian to Middle Devonian. The change in tectonic setting in the earliest Devonian appears to have occurred during an interval of significant dextral translation of the eastern Lachlan Fold Belt towards the SSE along the Governor and associated fault zones.