Research, Extension and Industry – Working Together Can Achieve Results

Over recent decades, research has been directed to assessing the impacts of land uses on valuable natural assets, such as the Great Barrier Reef. Land managers in adjacent areas are expected to adopt practices to minimize any adverse affects on downstream environments. Conversely, researchers are being pressed to provide answers to the problems. In response, researchers and environmental managers are bombarding land managers with information regarding the potential environmental implications of their practices. Is this an effective mode to achieve on-ground change?

Collaboration between all groups – research, industry and extension – may be more effective in developing and implementing practical solutions to these more complex issues. A change from the research and extension models currently used may be needed to achieve positive resource management outcomes.

Research, development and extension initiatives underway in the Australian sugar industry to improve farm practice and reduce the potential for adverse impacts on downstream environments are discussed. Case studies provide some insights into how science and extension skills work best together and how an industry group can respond to a community concern.     

The competing impacts of geology and groundwater on electrical resistivity around Wrightsville Beach,NC

Measurements of electrical resistivity have long been used to find freshwater resources below the earth's surface. Recently, offshore resistivity and electromagnetic techniques have been used to map occurrences of submarine groundwater originating from the offshore extension of terrestrial aquifers. In many cases, observations of a high resistivity (low conductivity) anomaly in the seafloor are sufficient to suggest the presence of fresh (and less conductive) pore waters. Data from offshore Wrightsville Beach, NC show highly variable resistivity structure, with moderately high resistivity at depths of ～20 m subsurface that is at least in part caused by lithologic complexity in an underlying limestone unit, the Castle Hayne. These offshore results suggest caution in the interpretation of resistivity anomalies simply in terms of groundwater volumes. In contrast, low onshore resistivities show evidence for intrusion of saltwater into the subsurface beneath the beach, adjacent to areas of pumping for water supply.     

Removal of river-stage fluctuations from well response using multiple regression

Many contaminated unconfined aquifers are located in proximity to river systems. In groundwater studies, the physical presence of a river is commonly represented as a transient-head boundary that imposes hydrologic responses within the intersected unconfined aquifer. The periodic fluctuation of river-stage height at the boundary produces associated responses within the adjacent aquifer system, the magnitude of which is a function of the existing well, aquifer, boundary conditions, and characteristics of river-stage fluctuations. The presence of well responses induced by the river stage can significantly limit characterization and monitoring of remedial activities within the stress-impacted area. This article demonstrates the use of a time-domain, multiple-regression, convolution (superposition) method to develop well/aquifer river response function (RRF) relationships. Following RRF development, a multiple-regression deconvolution correction approach can be applied to remove river-stage effects from well water-level responses. Corrected well responses can then be analyzed to improve local aquifer characterization activities in support of optimizing remedial actions, assessing the area-of-influence of remediation activities, and determining mean groundwater flow and contaminant flux to the river system.     

SCUBA observations of the sources detected in the MAMBO 1200-μm survey

We have observed 23 sources from the Max-Planck Millimetre Bolometer (MAMBO) array 1200-μm survey with SCUBA at 850 μm, detecting 19 of the sources. The sources generally have low values for the ratio of 850- to 1200-μm flux. Two possible explanations for the low values are either that the sources are at very high redshifts or that the global properties of the dust in the MAMBO sources are different from the global properties of dust in low-redshift galaxies. If the former explanation is correct, we estimate that 15 of the MAMBO sources lie at   z > 3  .     

Analysis and catalogue of sneaker waves in the US Pacific Northwest between 2005 and 2017

Sneaker waves are responsible for many casualties and beach rescues in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region of the USA. In this paper, a catalogue of these events from 2005 to mid-2017 in Oregon and Northern California is presented. The events are grouped depending on the local characteristics into those involving structures, semi-enclosed beaches, and open-coast beaches. It was found that sneaker waves occurred between the months of October and April, which is also the time of the year of most storm activity in the PNW. The majority of the events are associated with long-period swell approaching the coast. Beach slope and significant wave height were not found to correlate with sneaker wave incidents. However, total water level analysis reveals that the run-up level was expected to reach the beachgoers for the majority of the investigated cases indicating that a forecasting system to warn beachgoers is possible.     

Modeling aggregated expertise of user contributions to assess the credibility of OpenStreetMap features

The emergence of volunteered geographic information (VGI) during the past decade has fueled a wide range of research and applications. The assessment of VGI quality and fitness‐of‐use is still a challenge because of the non‐standardized and crowdsourced data collection process, as well as the unknown skill and motivation of the contributors. However, the frequent approach of assessing VGI quality against external data sources using ISO quality standard measures is problematic because of a frequent lack of available external (reference) data, and because for certain types of features, VGI might be more up‐to‐date than the reference data. Therefore, a VGI‐intrinsic measure of quality is highly desirable. This study proposes such an intrinsic measure of quality by developing the concept of aggregated expertise based on the characteristics of a feature's contributors. The article further operationalizes this concept and examines its feasibility through a case study using OpenStreetMap (OSM). The comparison of model OSM feature quality with information from a field survey demonstrates the successful implementation of this novel approach.     

Kinematics of the Malatya–Ovacik Fault Zone

Abstract

We investigate the left-lateral slip on the 240-km- long, NE-SW-trending, Malatya-Ovacik fault zone in eastern Turkey. This fault zone splays southwestward from the North Anatolian fault zone near Erzincan, then follows the WSW-trending Ovacik valley between the Munzur and Yilan mountain ranges. It bends back to a SW orientation near Arapkir, from where we trace its main strand SSW beneath the Plio-Quaternary sediment of the Malatya basin. We propose that this fault zone was active during ~5–3 Ma, when it took up 29 km of relative motion between the Turkish and Arabian plates; it ceased to be active when the East Anatolian fault zone formed at ~3 Ma. The geometry of the former Erzincan triple junction, which differs from the modem Karliova triple junction, where the North and East Anatolian fault zones intersect, suggests a possible explanation for why slip on the Malatya- Ovacik fault zone was unable to continue. We interpret the SW- and SSW-trending segments of the Malatya-Ovacik fault zone as transform faults, which define an Euler pole ~1 400 km to the southeast. Its central part along the Ovacik valley, which is ~30° oblique to the adjoining transform faults, is interpreted as the internal fault of a stepover. The adjoining mountain ranges, which now rise up to ~3 300 m, ~2 000 m above the surrounding land surface, are largely the result of the surface uplift which accompanied the components of shortening and thickening of the upper crustal brittle layer that occurred around this stepover while the left-lateral faulting was active. © 2001 Éditions scientifiques et médicales Elsevier SAS