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.     

The stability of inner cometo-sheath with large Larmor radius effects

An investigation of the linear stability of the cometary inner sheath, the boundary layer surrounding the ionopause which separates the outflowing unmagnetized plasma from an inflowing magnetized plasma, has been carried out by taking into account the large Larmor radius effects. The structure of the boundary layer is determined by the balance between an outward ion-neutral collisional drag force and an inward magnetic stress. The eigenvalues and the eigenfunctions are obtained numerically by treating the cometary ionosphere as a layer of finite thickness, bounded by the contact surface, i.e., the diamagnetic cavity boundary. Certain limiting cases of the wave equations are also discussed. In general, the cometary ionosphere is structurally linearly unstable and the effects of recombination, photoionization, plasma pressure, though stabilizing are unable to quench the instability completely. The large Larmor radius also has a destabilizing effect on the system. The instability of the cometosheath is further proved by the _c/_i assuming a value greater than 30 that is sufficient for the convection of perturbations down into the cavity surface and this is in agreement with the observations of ripples in the ionopause.     

Book reviews

VANCOUVER'S CHINATOWN: racial discourse in Canada 1875–1980 by K. J. Anderson. 16 × 24 cm, 323 pages. McGill‐Queen's University Press, Montreal, 1991. (ISBN 07735 0844 9) $C34.95 (hard).

GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS: developments and applications edited by L. Worrall. 15 × 23 cm, 251 pages. Belhaven, London, 1990. (ISBN 1 85293 140 X) £45.00 (hard).

SAVANNA ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT: Australian perspectives and intercontinental comparisons edited by P. A. Werner. 22 × 27 cm, xii and 221 pages. Blackwell Scientific, Oxford, 1991. (ISBN 0 632 03199 9) $A89.00 (soft).

GLOBAL CHANGE AND CHALLENGE: geography for the 1990s edited by R. J. Bennett and R. Estall. 14 × 22 cm, xii and 264 pages. Routledge, London, 1991. (ISBN 0 415 00143 9) $A29.95 (soft).

PLAINS OF PROMISE RIVERS OF DESTINY: water management and the development of Queensland 1824–1990 by J. M. Powell. 17 × 24 cm, xvii and 395 pages. Boolarong Publications, Brisbane, 1991. (ISBN 0 7242 4470 0) $A40.00 (hard).

A SHARED HARVEST: The Australian Wheat Industry, 1939–1989 by G. Whitwell and D. Sydenham. 17 × 25 cm, xi and 324 pages. Macmillan, Melbourne, 1991. (ISBN 0 7329 0584 2) $A29.95 (hard).

TAMING THE GREAT SOUTH LAND: a history of the conquest of nature in Australia by W. J. Lines. 16 × 23cm, xx and 337 pages. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991. (ISBN 1 86373 017 6) $A34.95 (hard).

PLAINS OF PROMISE RIVERS OF DESTINY: water management and the development of Queensland 1824–1990 by J. M. Powell. 17 × 24 cm, xvii and 395 pages. Boolarong Publications, Brisbane, 1991. (ISBN 0 7242 4470 0) $A40.00 (hard).

THE HUMANITIES AND THE AUSTRALIAN ENVIRONMENT: Papers from the Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium edited by D. J. Mulvaney. 24 × 17 cm, xiii and 123 pages. Australian Academy of the Humanities, Canberra, 1991. (ISBN 0 909897 22 0) $A18.50 posted (soft).

GROWTH (Vol. 167, Sage Library of Social Research) by H. Teune. 141 pages. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 1988. (ISBN 0 8039 3183 2) US$46.00 (hard); (ISBN 0 8039 3190 5) US$22.95 (soft).

BEYOND GROWTH: elements of sustainable development by U.E. Simonis. 151 pages. Edition Sigma Bohn, Berlin, 1990. (ISBN 3 924859 56 6) DM24.80 (soft).

BEYOND BEEF: the rise and fall of the cattle culture by J. Rifkin. 16 × 24 cm, xi and 353 pages. Viking O'Neil, Melbourne, 1992. (ISBN 0 670 84844 1) $35.00 (hard).

A QUESTION OF PLACE: exploring the practice of human geography by R.J. Johnston. 15 × 23 cm, ix and 280 pages. Blackwell, Oxford, 1991. (ISBN 0 631 18207 1) $39.95 (soft).

GEOGRAPHY IN SOCIETY edited by R. Gerber. 21 × 29 cm, 92 pages. Royal Geographical Society of Queensland, Brisbane, [1992]. (ISBN 0 949286 02 8) $8.00 (soft).     

Finite Larmor radius and Hall effects on thermosolutal instability of a plasma

The thermosolutal instability of a plasma with finite Larmor radius and Hall effects is studied. When the instability sets in as stationary convection, finite Larmor radius effects are always stabilizing forx(=k ² d ²/² greater than two and forx less than two, they have a stabilizing or destabilizing influence depending on the Larmor radius parameterN in the presence of Hall currents. On the other hand the Hall currents have both stabilizing and destabilizing effects on the thermosolutal instability forx less than two and forx greater than two depending on the Hall parameterM. The stable solute gradient is found to have a stabilizing effect on stationary convection. The case of overstability is also considered wherein the sufficient conditions for the non-existence of overstability are derived.