Palaeontological and facial features of the Upper Jurassic Hochstegen Marble (Tauern Window, Eastern Alps)

Micropalaeontological, microscopic and mineralogical investigations of the ductily deformed and greenschist-facies metamorphic Hochstegen Marble in the Tauern Window shed new light on its stratigraphy and fades.
New radiolarian and sponge spicule discoveries have been made in cherty limestone marbles. They confirm previous age assignments and permit for the first time a more exact micropalaeontological age determination of early Tithonian for the upper parts of the marble. Forty morphotypes of radiolarians could be distinguished; in one sample a Fisher diversity index of 6 is reached indicating deeper marine conditions. The spicule fauna is also diverse and shows affinity to the S-German Malm. In respect to all the data it can be presumed that carbonate sedimentation of the Hochstegen Marble took place in a deeper marine environment at the southern margin of the European continent (Helvetic realm) during the whole Late Jurassic.     

Geophysiology and Parahistology of the Interactions of Organisms with the Environment*

Abstract. Ecology and Global Ecology (GE) are terms by which the relations between the organism (or living matter as a whole) and the environment (or Earth as a whole) have been treated for almost a century. Geophysiology and Parahistology (PH) are terms slowly replacing older scientific thoughts jointly with an increasing number of modifications and alterations of the Darwinian Evolution (DE) concept. Somehow Geophysiology and Parahistology seem to describe evolution in a non-Darwinian domain. According to V.I. Vernadsky (1929,1930,1988) - the great Russian naturalist and biogeochemist - the biogeochemical processes on Earth are controlled by the force of living matter rather than by species associations developing in and with individual ecosystems as expressed by darwinian evolutionary terms. He also claimed that Goethe was incorrectly regarded as a predecessor of DE by some authors (including Darwin) and that “Natur” (nature) and “Lebendige Natur” (the totality of creatures) are two very different things for Goethe. Detailed analyses of microbial mat systems in the German Wadden Sea and in artificial hypersaline WInogradsky columns have shown that the totality of creatures and matter around them i.e., the “lebendige Natur”sensu Goethe or “living matter”sensu Vernadsky of such environments control to a considerable extent the structure, stability. and (geo-)morphology of sediments and thereby the geological structure of the living Earth. These structures do not follow the rules of sedimentation formulated by the laws of Stokes They represent growth structures (Aufwuchs), whose physics and dynamics are controlled by complex fractal systems. The factors controlling the ultimate shape and stabilisation potential of the eventually resulting rocks and fossils are comparable to tissue development in macroorganisms. Also, certain microbial associations in the sub-recent and in the fossil record may be compared to metazoan tissues. Chemical gradients in the sedimentary column, regulated by the interplay of living matter and sluggish (slow-reactive to non-reactive) compounds, combine to create a pattern of porosity and structure of the resulting deposits that clearly indicates microbial influences and especially those of extracellular polymeric substances on the morphology and texture. The combined effects of microbiota or living matter on the sedimentary record are described as parahistology of sediments in analogy of the histology of tissue on a geological scale. This conceptual living tissue made up of microbially generated rocks and ore deposits cycled through metabolic processes and forced into tissue-like structures by microbial biofilms and mats may extend down to the upper mantle of Earth and far up into the stratosphere when Earth is regarded as a living entity over geological periods. We may have to conceive Earth as a living specimen, which is breathing at a frequency of thousands of years instead of the normal physiological breathing rate of man or an insect. Macroorganisms in all terrestrial systems represent the transport and logistic media, which, however, utterly depend on myriads of intra-, inter-, and extracellular microbial symbiotic partners.     

Bathymetry of Molloy Deep: Fram Strait between Svalbard and Greenland

The sea floor of Fram Strait, the over 2500 m deep passage between the Arctic Ocean and the Norwegian-Greenland Sea, is part of a complex transform zone between the Knipovich mid-oceanic ridge of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea and the Nansen-Gakkel Ridge of the Arctic Ocean. Because linear magnetic anomalies formed by sea-floor spreading have not been found, the precise location of the boundary between the Eurasian and the North American plate is unknown in this region. Systematic surveying of Fram Strait with SEABEAM and high resolution seismic profiling began in 1984 and continued in 1985 and 1987, providing detailed morphology of the Fram Strait sea floor and permitting better definition of its morphotectonics. The 1984 survey presented in this paper provided a complete set of bathymetric data from the southernmost section of the Svalbard Transform, including the Molloy Fracture Zone, connecting the Knipovich Ridge to the Molloy Ridge; and the Molloy Deep, a nodal basin formed at the intersection of the Molloy Transform Fault and the Molloy Ridge. This nodal basin has a revised maximum depth of 5607 m water depth at 79°8.5N and 2°47E.     

Measures of Parameter Uncertainty in Geostatistical Estimation and Geostatistical Optimal Design

Studies of site exploration, data assimilation, or geostatistical inversion measure parameter uncertainty in order to assess the optimality of a suggested scheme. This study reviews and discusses measures for parameter uncertainty in spatial estimation. Most measures originate from alphabetic criteria in optimal design and were transferred to geostatistical estimation. Further rather intuitive measures can be found in the geostatistical literature, and some new measures will be suggested in this study. It is shown how these measures relate to the optimality alphabet and to relative entropy. Issues of physical and statistical significance are addressed whenever they arise. Computational feasibility and efficient ways to evaluate the above measures are discussed in this paper, and an illustrative synthetic case study is provided. A major conclusion is that the mean estimation variance and the averaged conditional integral scale are a powerful duo for characterizing conditional parameter uncertainty, with direct correspondence to the well-understood optimality alphabet. This study is based on cokriging generalized to uncertain mean and trends because it is the most general representative of linear spatial estimation within the Bayesian framework. Generalization to kriging and quasi-linear schemes is straightforward. Options for application to non-Gaussian and non-linear problems are discussed.     

Der Original-Beerbachit im Odenwald,ein Amphibolit-Hornfels in Pyroxen-Hornfelsfazies

With this petrographic re-investigation of the beerbachite (Chelius, 1892) from Odenwald/Germany geochemical and phase-petrological data are given for the first time.By petrofabric relics (Fig. 7) and geochemical characteristics (Figs. 8–11) is shown that the beerbachite-xenoliths are due to blocks broken down from the surrounding amphibolite series. They are present high grade hornfelses.Beerbachite, porphyroblastic by plagioclase (here porphyroblastic beerbachite, Bbp) (Chelius' Gabbroporphyrit) (Fig. 6) frequently forms marginal zones of beerbachite blocks and is explained as beerbachite-metablastite.Phase relation (Fig. 13) and mineral reactions with increasing metamorphic grade from amphibolite to amphibolite-hornfels (containing hornblende) finally to beerbachite are demonstrated and discussed.The first step may be the mineral reaction: plag_I(An 35–40)+hbl_I+sphene= plag_II(An 50–60)+hbl_II+cpx+opx+magnetite/ilmenite+H₂O. The pyroxene-hornfels facies respectively the orthopyroxene subfacies of the K-feldspar-cordierite-hornfels facies (Winkler, 1967) is only reached with the typical assemblage: plag(An 55–70)-cpx-opx-mt/ilm±(quartz) of beerbachite.On condition that the load correspondends to 3–4 km the maximum temperatures may not have exceeded 720–750° C. This valuation would result from experimental data of Choudhuri and Winkler (1967) of the model reaction: hbl=en+di+an+H₂O, if . The natural conditions will differ from this experimental model because of resp. P _load (p. 81)The very probably required temperature for the mineral assemblage of beerbachite would still be within sub-solidus temperatures of the corresponding model system, according to Fig. 13d. Therefore, the coarse grained plagioclases of Bbp (p. 69) could not be formed from cotectic pockets, too.Finally, convergences and divergences to the beerbachite concept are discussed out of the recent literature.

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Herrn Dr. E. Knauer vom hiesigen Institut danken wir sehr für die Bestimmung des Chemismus zweier Pyroxen-Paare aus Beerbachit bzw. Hornfels mit der Mikrosonde (CAMEGA MS 46), Leihgabe der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft. Den Herren Prof. E. Nickel und Dr. M. Maggetti vom Mineralogischen Institut der Universität Fribourg (Schweiz) und Dr. H. D. Trochim, Mineralogisches Institut der Universität Bochum, verdanken wir Vergleichsproben oder Einsichtnahme in vorhandene Dünnschliffe.     

Meteorological causes of Harmattan dust in West Africa

We investigated the temporal dynamics of dust entrainment in the Bodélé Depression, Central Sahara, to better understand the intra-annual variability of aerosol emission in the world's largest dust source. The linkages between dust entrainment and large-scale meteorological factors were examined by correlating several meteorological variables in the Mediterranean and Africa north of the equator with the aerosol concentrations in the Bodélé Depression separately for winter and summer. The methodological tools applied are NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data and the aerosol index of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS-AI), available for 15 years from 1978 to 1993. We found that dust mobilisation during the Harmattan season is highly dependent on air pressure variability in the Mediterranean area. High pressure to the north of the Bodélé intensifies the NE trade winds, leading to an increased entrainment of dust in the Bodélé Depression. In summer, dust mobilization cannot be explained by the large scale meteorological conditions. This highlights the importance of local to regional wind systems linked to the northernmost position of the intertropical convection zone (ITCZ) during this time.     

Electron acceleration in solar flares

For the period September 1978 to December 1982 we have identified 55 solar flare particle events for which our instruments on board the ISEE-3 (ICE) spacecraft detected electrons above 10 MeV. Combining our data with those from the ULEWAT spectrometer (MPI Garching and University of Maryland) electron spectra in the range from 0.1 to 100 MeV were obtained. The observed spectral shapes can be divided into two classes. The spectra of the one class can be fit by a single power law in rigidity over the entire observed range. The spectra of the other class deviate from a power law, instead exhibiting a steepening at low rigidities and a flattening at high rigidities. Events with power-law spectra are associated with impulsive (<1 hr duration) soft X-ray emission, whereas events with hardening spectra are associated with long-duration (<1 hr) soft X-ray emission. The characteristics of long-duration events are consistent with diffusive shock acceleration taking place high in the corona. Electron spectra of short-duration flares are well reproduced by the distribution functions derived from a model assuming simultaneous second-order Fermi acceleration and Coulomb losses operating in closed flare loops.