New findings on the course of river sarasvati

Numerous studies have been carried out during last 20-25 years by different agencies to trace the courses of palaeo river Sarasvati. Varying number of courses of river Sarasvati have been suggested by the different workers in the north-western region. Taking advantage of the developments in satellite/ sensor and digital image processing technologies an attempt has been made to rediscover the course of river Sarasvati and solve the controversy regarding its exact course, in the sand covered Thar desert region. Data available from a variety of ground investigations carried out by different agencies working in this area have been analyzed in support of confirmation of palaeo channels, along the courses mapped under the present study. The results indicate that the river Sarasvati had its course through river Ghaggar and did not drain along the Aravalli hills. Also it did not shift its course drastically and continuously from east to west, as suggested by earlier workers. The image anomalies indicate that river Sarasvati flowed parallel to the river Indus as an independent river system (closer to the north-western Indian border) and did not flow through present course of river Nara. The findings raise the doubt that ‘Rise along Delhi-Hardwar ridge’ as suggested by earlier workers was the main cause for west-ward shift of Sarasvati river and ultimate drainage desiccation in the northwestern region. The analysis indicates towards rise in Himalayas/ Siwaliks and consequent displacements in the Siwaliks and its foot hills region (in the form of Yamuna and Satlej tear faults) as the main cause for drainage desiccation and disappearance of river Sarasvati.     

The Neoproterozoic Malani magmatism of the northwestern Indian shield: implications for crust-building processes

Malani is the largest event of anorogenic felsic magmatism (covering ∼50, 000 km²) in India. This magmatic activity took place at ∼750 Ma post-dating the Erinpura granite (850 Ma) and ended prior to Marwar Supergroup (680 Ma) sedimentation. Malani eruptions occurred mostly on land, but locally sub-aqueous conditions are shown by the presence of conglomerate, grits and pillow lava. The Malani rocks do not show any type of regional deformation effects. The Malanis are characterised by bimodal volcanism with a dominant felsic component, followed by granitic plutonism and a terminal dyke phase. An angular unconformity between Malani lavas and basement is observed, with the presence of conglomerate at Sindreth, Diri, and Kankani. This indicates that the crust was quite stable and peneplained prior to the Malani activity. Similarly, the absence of any thrust zone, tectonic mélange and tectonised contact of the Malanis with the basement goes against a plate subduction setting for their genesis. After the closure of orogenic cycles in the Aravalli craton of the northwestern shield, this anorogenic intraplate magmatic activity took place in a cratonic rift setting under an extensional tectonic regime.     

Estimation of Seismic Hazard Parameters for the Himalayas and its Vicinity from Complete Data Files

—The maximum likelihood estimation of earthquake hazard parameters has been made in the Himalayas and its surrounding areas on the basis of a procedure which utilizes data containing complete files of the most recent earthquakes. The entire earthquake catalogue used covers the period from 1900–1990. The maximum regional magnitude M _max?, the activity rate of the seismic event λ, the mean return period R of earthquakes with a certain lower magnitude M _max≥ m along with their probability of occurrence, as well as the parameter b of of Gutenberg Richter magnitude-frequency relationship, have been determined for six different seismic zones of the Himalayas and its vicinity. It is shown that in general the hazard is higher in the zone NEI and BAN than the other four zones. The high difference of the b parameter and the hazard level from zone to zone reflect the high seismotectonic complexity and crustal heterogeneity.     

Tropical-middle latitude interactions viewed via wave energy flux in the frequency domain

Over the upper troposphere of the polar latitudes the zonal flows exhibit a large variance on the time scale of the Madden-Julian oscillation, i.e. roughly 30–50 days. The other prominent regions for these intraseasonal oscillations are the Asian and Australian monsoon belts. These two regions are separated by the so-called critical latitude, to the south of which easterlies generally prevail and westerlies are prevalent to the north. A perplexing issue is that of possible tropical-middle latitude interactions across the critical latitude. The notion of the critical latitude emerged from the linear theories for the wave energy flux which assume a constancy in time for the zonal flows. This same problem, viewed in its full non-linear context, can be cast in a frequency domain. Such a formulation does not assume a constancy of the zonal flows in time but does permit the intraseasonal variations of the zonal flows to be present. The computation of the wave energy flux, from the more complete non-linear system in the frequency domain, requires the handling of linear, quadratic and triple product terms via use of Hayashi's co-spectral method. These results of the present study, based on 6 years of daily global data sets, show that wave energy flux clearly passes from the latitudes of the monsoon to the polar latitudes. A strong convergence of wave energy flux in the polar latitudes suggests the tropical-middle latitude convergence interactions across the so-called critical latitude—when the problem is viewed in the frequency domain.     

Input-output model for runoff-sediment yield processes

Runoff (log-transformed) and sediment yield (log-transformed) sequences on a monthly or daily basis can be regarded as input and output for the watershed fluvial system. These sequences are nonstationary in general in different hydrological environments. Frequency and time domain analyses have shown that a parsimonious model can be built directly in terms of these nonstationary input-output sequences on a monthly and daily basis. A first-order dynamic model was found adequate to model the monthly runoff-sediment yield process; a second-order model adequately modeled the daily runoff-sediment yield process. The noise component in both cases possessed the characteristics of a white-noise sequence.     

Electrical conductivity of some Indian basalts under various temperature conditions

Electrical conductivity of nineteen samples of the Deccan Traps, collected from the Pawagarh area and two boreholes drilled at Koyna, has been measured in the temperature range from 475 K to about 1100 K. The results indicate the change of the conduction mechanism from impurity to electronic/ionic conduction as the temperature increases. Few samples show the normal behaviour, i.e. the increase of conductivity with temperature, while some samples show an anomalous behaviour between the temperatures 600 and 1000 K. This anomalous behavior may be due to either the dehydration of OH^? ions or/and the oxidation of Fe²⁺ to Fe³⁺.     

Closing temperatures of different fission track clocks

The fission track closing temperatures of the minerals which are found to be suitable for fission track geochronology have been calculated for various cooling rates using the stepwise cooling. Biotite is found to have the lowest closing temperature whereas the sphene is having the highest. The closing temperature falls with decrease in cooling rate.     

Plane failure analysis of rock slopes

Summary Hoek and Bray (1981) gave an analytical approach for plane failure analysis for rock slopes that is limited to those slopes in which the upper slope surface is horizontal and the tension crack is vertical. An analysis is presented here which can take these factors into account. It is found that varying the angle of the upper slope from 0° to 30° causes a significant reduction in the factor of safety. Varying the tension crack from vertical to 70° only has an effect when the upper slope angle is less than 20°.