Changing Land Use a Threat to Surface Water Quality: a Vulnerability Assessment Approach in Zanjanroud Watershed,Central Iran

Maintaining the quality of surface water resources as one of the most vital water supplies has always been at the center of global concerns. A set of manifest and latent factors have yet been identified by researchers worldwide that are subject to affect the quality of surface water. Among which, the effect of land use change, due to a spatial and temporal complexity, is often not easily verifiable. The present study attempts to offer an index-based model to quantify vulnerability of surface water resources in a semi arid basin in central Iran against land use changes. For this, water quality data including Na, K, Mg, Ca, Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR), total anions (Sum. A), SO₄, Cl, HCO₃, EC, TDS, and pH were collected from hydrometric stations over a period of 26 years (1987?2013). In order to detect land use changes, the land use maps of the years 1987, 1998, 2002, 2009, and 2013 were prepared from TM satellite images using supervised classification method. At next step, changing patterns of different land uses were traced by Shanon’s Diversity Index (SHDI) as a metric of patch diversity indicating diversity and heterogeneity of a landscape over time. Relationship between the SHDI values and water quality indicators revealed the impact of land use changes on quality of surface water resources. Statistical analysis confirmed a significant relationship between nine water quality factors and water discharge in the basin during the study period. From 1998 to 2009, the greatest changes were visible in the total anions, Ca, SO₄, and HCO₃. These parameters along with salinity were increasing in almost all sub-basins. According to the results, conversion of poor rangelands to rain fed agriculture fields is the most apparent land use change occurred in the study area over the study period. In 1987, SHDI as an indicator of the diversity and changes in the basin, showed a significant relationship with good rangelands (R² =–0.835). This indicates that fragmentation of the entire watershed area was initiated in 1987, which reached its peak in 2013. Generally speaking, urbanization, poor rangeland, and irrigated agriculture were recognized as three influential land uses adversely affect the water quality in the study area.     

Seismic activity prediction using computational intelligence techniques in northern Pakistan

Earthquake prediction study is carried out for the region of northern Pakistan. The prediction methodology includes interdisciplinary interaction of seismology and computational intelligence. Eight seismic parameters are computed based upon the past earthquakes. Predictive ability of these eight seismic parameters is evaluated in terms of information gain, which leads to the selection of six parameters to be used in prediction. Multiple computationally intelligent models have been developed for earthquake prediction using selected seismic parameters. These models include feed-forward neural network, recurrent neural network, random forest, multi layer perceptron, radial basis neural network, and support vector machine. The performance of every prediction model is evaluated and McNemar’s statistical test is applied to observe the statistical significance of computational methodologies. Feed-forward neural network shows statistically significant predictions along with accuracy of 75% and positive predictive value of 78% in context of northern Pakistan.     

柴达木盆地昆特依盐湖沉积特征及其盐类资源评价

昆特依盐湖位于柴达木盆地西北部,是一个相对独立的沉积盆地,可反映盆地西北部的演化历史,对研究盆地内盐湖演化有重要意义。基于研究区已有的研究成果,总结和评价了昆特依盐湖沉积与盐类矿产资源,并得到以下结论:1)昆特依湖自1 925～774 ka期间以暖湿型气候为主,其后呈干冷与暖湿气候交替出现,最早成盐期为1150 ka,最终于30.6 ka成为干盐湖。昆特依盆地早期沉积的细碎屑沉积物沉积速率(0.22 mm/a)慢于晚期沉积的石盐层(0.33 mm/a);2)昆特依盐湖液体KCl储量为1.32×10~8 t,MgCl储量为2.79×10~8 t,NaCl储量为24.15×10~8 t;3)估算出赋存于昆特依盐湖石盐矿中的锂资源量达39×10~4 t,同时估算出液体中的锂资源量约有74×10~4 t,二者总量达百万吨;4)昆特依矿田的成因属典型的内陆湖相沉积,成矿控制因素以构造作用为主,其次为气候及物质来源。关于昆特依盐湖沉积特征与盐类矿产资源特征的研究,有利于对本地区地质演化更全面的认识,对合理开发利用盐类资源有重要意义。     

Lower bound limit loads of ship structure components using the mα-tangent method based on single linear elastic analysis

Limit loads for ship structure components are determined in this paper based on a single linear elastic finite element analysis by invoking the concept of kinematically active reference volume in conjunction with the m_α-tangent method. The method enables rapid determination of lower bound limit loads for ship structure components by taking their kinematically inactive volume into consideration. This method is applied to a number of ship structure components possessing different percentages of inactive volume. Results are compared with the corresponding inelastic finite element results, and available analytical solutions.     

Origin of Boron in the Gas Hure Salt Lake of NorthwesternQaidam Basin,China: Evidence from Hydrochemistry andBoron Isotopes

The Gas Hure Salt Lake(GHSL) in the northwestern Qaidam Basin, western China, is rich in boron(B)resources, but its B-resource origin is hardly known. Hydrochemical compositions and B isotope characteristics of different waters were collected around the GHSL, including the river water, stream water, spring water, salt-lake brine,intercrystalline brine, well water, drilling brine, and solar pond brine. The hydrochemical signatures suggest that silicates,carbonates and evaporates are the main B-bearing rocks during the water dynamic. The reservoir estimation of B resources shows that the Kulamulekesay River(KLMR) and the Atekan River(ATKR) contribute annually 18.3 tons and 22.84 tons of B, respectively, with a total amount of 11.72 × 10~4 tons of B during the past 5.7 ka. In comparison with the known B reservoir(32.96 × 10~4 tons) in the GHSL, a significant amount of B in the GHSL was probably recharged from deep fluids and sediments around the GHSL. The B concentration and B-enrichment degree are shaped by the evaporation process,which are highly elevated at the carnallite and bischofite stages.     

Precise Seismic Substructural Model of the Eocene Chorgali Limestone in the Turkwal Oil Field,Central Potwar,Pakistan

The precise seismic substructural interpretation of the Turkwal oil field in the Central Potwar region of district Chakwal of Pakistan has been carried out. The research work was confined to the large fore-thrust that serves as an anticlinal structural trap through ten 2D seismic lines. A precise seismic substructural model of the Eocene Chorgali Limestone with precise orientation of thrust and oblique slip faults shows the presence of a huge fracture, which made this deposit a good reservoir. The abrupt surface changes in dip azimuth for the Eocene Chorgali Limestone verifies the structural trends and also the presence of structural traps in the Turkwal field. The logs of three wells (Turkwal deep X-2, Turkwal-01 and Fimkassar-01) were analyzed for petrophysical studies, well synthetic results and generation of an Amplitude Versus Offset (AVO) model for the area. The AVO model of Turkwal deep X-2 shows abrupt changes in amplitude, which depicts the presence of hydrocarbon content. Well correlation technique was used to define the overall stratigraphic setting and the thickness of the reservoir formation in two wells, Turkwal-01 and Turkwal deep X-2. The Eocene Chorgali Limestone in Turkwal-01 is an upward thrusted anticlinal structure and because of the close position of both wells to the faulted anticlinal structure, its lesser thickness differs compared to Turkwal deep X-2. The overall results confirm that the Turkwal field is comparable to several similar thrust-bound oil-bearing structures in the Potwar basin.     

Projecting South Asian summer precipitation in CMIP3 models: A comparison of the simulations with and without black carbon

Considering the importance of black carbon (BC), this study began by comparing the 20th century simulation of South Asian summer climate in IPCC CMIP3, based on the scenario of models with and without BC. Generally, the multi-model mean of the models that include BC reproduced the observed climate relatively better than those that did not. Then, the 21st century South Asian summer precipitation was projected based on the IPCC CMIP3 projection simulations. The projected precipitation in the present approach exhibited a considerable difference from the multimodel ensemble mean (MME) of IPCC AR4 projection simulations, and also from the MME of the models that ignore the effect of BC. In particular, the present projection exhibited a dry anomaly over the central Indian Peninsula, sandwiched between wet conditions on the southern and northern sides of Pakistan and India, rather than homogeneous wet conditions as seen in the MME of IPCC AR4. Thus, the spatial pattern of South Asian summer rainfall in the future may be more complicated than previously thought.     

Numerical modeling of rock failure under dynamic loading with polygonal elements

Polygonal finite elements are gaining an increasing attention in the computational mechanics literature, but their application in rock mechanics is very rare. This paper deals with numerical modeling of rock failure under dynamic loading based on polygonal finite elements. For this end, a damage-viscoplastic constitutive model for rock based on the Mohr-Coulomb criterion with the Rankine criterion as a tensile cutoff is employed and implemented with the polygonal finite element method. Moreover, the mineral mesostructure or rock is described by randomly mapping groups of polygonal elements representing the constituent minerals into a global mesh and assigning these groups with the corresponding mineral material properties. The performance of the polygonal elements is compared with that of the linear and quadratic triangular and bilinear quadrilateral elements in numerical simulations of controlled shear band formation under uniaxial compression and lateral splitting failure in the dogbone tension test. Numerical simulations of uniaxial tension and compression tests as well as dynamic Brazilian disc test under increasing loading rates demonstrate that the present approach predicts the correct failure modes as well as the dynamic increase in strength of rock.     

Comparison of Monsoonal change of water quality parameters between 1983 and 2008 in a tropical estuary in Northeastern India: role of phytoplankton and community metabolism

Ongoing climate change and anthropogenic activities are introducing stressors that affect the structure and function of coastal ecosystems. This paper focuses on the fluvial fluxes and estuarine transport of nutrients from a tropical river (Mahanadi River) in Northeastern India and compares select nutrient and water quality parameters between 1983 and 2008. This estuary acts as a perennial source of CO₂ with a net annual flux to the atmosphere of about 135 tons. The non‐conservative fluxes showed a net annual removal of 650 and 140 tons of phosphorus and nitrogen from the water column, respectively. Negative biogeochemical feedbacks that decreased the availability of N and P in 2008 relative to 1983 levels indicate major changes in biogeochemical responses towards fluvial fluxes of nutrient.     

Magnetoacoustic solitons in dense astrophysical electron-positron-ion plasmas

Nonlinear magnetoacoustic waves in dense electron-positron-ion plasmas are investigated by using three fluid quantum magnetohydrodynamic model. The quantum mechanical effects of electrons and positrons are taken into account due to their Fermionic nature (to obey Fermi statistics) and quantum diffraction effects (Bohm diffusion term) in the model. The reductive perturbation method is employed to derive the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation for low amplitude magnetoacoustic soliton in dense electron-positron-ion plasmas. It is found that positron concentration has significant impact on the phase velocity of magnetoacoustic wave and on the formation of single pulse nonlinear structure. The numerical results are also illustrated by taking into account the plasma parameters of the outside layers of white dwarfs and neutron stars/pulsars.