Benthic fluxes in a tropical Estuary and their role in the ecosystem

In-situ measurements of benthic fluxes of oxygen and nutrients were made in the subtidal region of the Mandovi estuary during premonsoon and monsoon seasons to understand the role of sediment–water exchange processes in the estuarine ecosystem. The Mandovi estuary is a shallow, highly dynamic, macrotidal estuary which experiences marine condition in the premonsoon season and nearly fresh water condition in the monsoon season. The benthic flux of nutrients exhibited strong seasonality, being higher in the premonsoon compared to the monsoon season which explains the higher ecosystem productivity in the dry season in spite of negligible riverine nutrient input. NH₄⁺ was the major form of released N comprising 70–100% of DIN flux. The benthic respiration rate varied from −98.91 to −35.13 mmol m⁻² d⁻¹, NH₄⁺ flux from 5.15 to 0.836 mmol m⁻² d⁻¹, NO₃⁻ + NO₂⁻ from 0.06 to −1.06 mmol m⁻² d⁻¹, DIP from 0.12 to 0.23 mmol m⁻² d⁻¹ and SiO₄⁴⁻ from 5.78 to 0.41 mmol m⁻² d⁻¹ between premonsoon to monsoon period. The estuarine sediment acted as a net source of DIN in the premonsoon season, but changed to a net sink in the monsoon season. Variation in salinity seemed to control NH₄⁺ flux considerably. Macrofaunal activities, especially bioturbation, enhanced the fluxes 2–25 times. The estuarine sediment was observed to be a huge reservoir of NH₄⁺, PO₄³⁻ and SiO₄⁴⁻ and acted as a net sink of combined N because of the high rate of benthic denitrification as it could remove 22% of riverine DIN influx thereby protecting the eco system from eutrophication and consequent degradation. The estuarine sediment was responsible for ∼30–50% of the total community respiration in the estuary. The benthic supply of DIN, PO₄³⁻ and SiO₄⁴⁻ can potentially meet 49%, 25% and 55% of algal N, P and Si demand, respectively, in the estuary. Based on these observations we hypothesize that it is mainly benthic NH₄⁺ efflux that sustains high estuarine productivity in the NO₃⁻ depleted dry season.     

Scientific inference and experiment in Ecosystem Based Fishery Management,with application to Steller sea lions in the Bering Sea and Western Gulf of Alaska

Learning about ecosystem processes and patterns is an essential component of Ecosystem Based Fishery Management and the sustainable use of natural resources.     

Assessment of reproductive potential of different populations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Angelica glauca</Emphasis> Edgew., a critically endangered Himalayan Medicinal Herb

Angelica glauca is one of the important medicinal plants and it is widely used by indigenous communities for different purposes. The present study analyzes variability in reproductive characters of A. glauca. The reproductive parts were found having significant positive correlation with altitude （e.g.,number of umbellets /umber r= 0.857,p〈0.05; umbel diameter r=0.735,p〈0.05）.     

Remote sensing-based estimation of rice yields using various models:A critical review

Reliable estimation of region-wide rice yield is vital for food security and agricultural management. Field-scale models have increased our understanding of ric...     

Star-like activity from a very young 'isolated planet'

The discovery of isolated bodies of planetary mass has challenged the paradigm that planets form only as companions to stars. To determine whether 'isolated planets', brown dwarfs and stars can have a common origin, we have made deep submillimetre observations of part of the ρ Oph B star formation region. Spectroscopy of the 9-Jupiter-mass core Oph B-11 has revealed carbon monoxide line wings such as those of a protostar. Moreover, the estimated mass of outflowing gas lies on the force versus core-mass relation for protostars and protobrown dwarfs. This is evidence for a common process that can form any object between planetary and stellar masses in a molecular cloud. In a submillimetre continuum map, six compact cores in ρ Oph B were found to have masses presently below the deuterium-burning limit, extending the core mass function down to  0.01 M_⊙  with the approximate form  d N /d M ∝ M ^−3/2  . If these lowest-mass cores are not transient and can collapse under gravity, then isolated planets should be very common in ρ Oph in the future, as is the case in the Orion star formation region. In fact, the isolated planetary objects that may form from these cores would outnumber the massive planets that have been found as companions to stars.     

An Experimental Comparison of Ordinary and Universal Kriging and Inverse Distance Weighting

A factorial, computational experiment was conducted to compare the spatial interpolation accuracy of ordinary and universal kriging and two types of inverse squared-distance weighting. The experiment considered, in addition to these four interpolation methods, the effects of four data and sampling characteristics: surface type, sampling pattern, noise level, and strength of small-scale spatial correlation. Interpolation accuracy was measured by the natural logarithm of the mean squared interpolation error. Main effects of all five factors, all two-factor interactions, and several three-factor interactions were highly statistically significant. Among numerous findings, the most striking was that the two kriging methods were substantially superior to the inverse distance weighting methods over all levels of surface type, sampling pattern, noise, and correlation.     

Precipitation and temperature space–time variability and extremes in the Mediterranean region: evaluation of dynamical and statistical downscaling methods

This study evaluates how statistical and dynamical downscaling models as well as combined approach perform in retrieving the space–time variability of near-surface temperature and rainfall, as well as their extremes, over the whole Mediterranean region. The dynamical downscaling model used in this study is the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with varying land-surface models and resolutions (20 and 50 km) and the statistical tool is the Cumulative Distribution Function-transform (CDF-t). To achieve a spatially resolved downscaling over the Mediterranean basin, the European Climate Assessment and Dataset (ECA&D) gridded dataset is used for calibration and evaluation of the downscaling models. In the frame of HyMeX and MED-CORDEX international programs, the downscaling is performed on ERA-I reanalysis over the 1989–2008 period. The results show that despite local calibration, CDF-t produces more accurate spatial variability of near-surface temperature and rainfall with respect to ECA&D than WRF which solves the three-dimensional equation of conservation. This first suggests that at 20–50 km resolutions, these three-dimensional processes only weakly contribute to the local value of temperature and precipitation with respect to local one-dimensional processes. Calibration of CDF-t at each individual grid point is thus sufficient to reproduce accurately the spatial pattern. A second explanation is the use of gridded data such as ECA&D which smoothes in part the horizontal variability after data interpolation and damps the added value of dynamical downscaling. This explains partly the absence of added-value of the 2-stage downscaling approach which combines statistical and dynamical downscaling models. The temporal variability of statistically downscaled temperature and rainfall is finally strongly driven by the temporal variability of its forcing (here ERA-Interim or WRF simulations). CDF-t is thus efficient as a bias correction tool but does not show any added-value regarding the time variability of the downscaled field. Finally, the quality of the reference observation dataset is a key issue. Comparison of CDF-t calibrated with ECA&D dataset and WRF simulations to local measurements from weather stations not assimilated in ECA&D, shows that the temporal variability of the downscaled data with respect to the local observations is closer to the local measurements than to ECA&D data. This highlights the strong added-value of dynamical downscaling which improves the temporal variability of the atmospheric dynamics with regard to the driving model. This article highlights the benefits and inconveniences emerging from the use of both downscaling techniques for climate research. Our goal is to contribute to the discussion on the use of downscaling tools to assess the impact of climate change on regional scales.     

Apposite of atmospheric electric parameters with the energy coupling function (ε) during geomagnetic storms at high latitude

In this paper we are concerned with the variation of the atmospheric electric field and the air–earth current due to the excessive power generated by the solar wind-magnetosphere dynamo during geomagnetic storms, recorded at Maitri in Antarctica during 2004. A major part of the power generated by the solar wind-magnetosphere dynamo is used in the formation of the ring current and the rest is utilized for Joule heating and auroral particle precipitation. The method adopted by Frank-Kamenetsky et al. [Frank-Kamenetsky A.V., Troshichev O.A., Burns G.B., Papitashvili V.O., 2001. Variations of atmospheric electric field in the near-pole region related to the interplanetary magnetic field. J. Geophys. Res. 106, A1, 179–190.] was utilized to delineate the variations due to the signatures of tropical thunderstorm activity from the geoelectric data; while statistical methods used in our earlier studies were used to delimit variation due to the constant buffeting of the solar wind. We find that the solar wind-magnetosphere energy coupling function (ε) to be well correlated with the atmospheric electric parameters during the onset of geomagnetic disturbances. However the correlation breaks down during minor storms and sub-storm events.     

Surface modes in the infrared spectrum of hydrous minerals: the OH stretching modes of bayerite

The theoretical infrared (IR) and Raman spectra of bayerite (β-Al(OH)₃) are computed in the density functional theory framework, using the linear response theory. The results are consistent with the occurrence of six non-equivalent OH groups in a bayerite structure with space group P2₁/n. Similar to gibbsite, the transmission powder IR spectrum of bayerite in the region of the OH stretching bands is found to depend on the shape of particles. In particular, the broadening of the strong band observed at about 3,460 cm⁻¹ in the spectrum of Al hydroxides is related to the electrostatic charges occurring at the surface of the polarized dielectric particles. The experimental correlation observed between the shape of this band and morphological parameters has therefore a physical, instead of chemical, origin.