The environmental effects of dam construction in tropical Africa: Impacts and planning procedures

Dam construction can have significant effects on downstream floodplain environments in tropical Africa. The impacts of river control on floodplain forests in the Tana River Valley in Kenya, and on floodplain agriculture in the Sokoto River Valley in Nigeria are described. The extent to which downstream impacts were understood or predicted in these case studies are described, and the implications of this for environmental appraisal in project planning are assessed.     

Noritic dykes of southern West Greenland: early Proterozoic boninitic magmatism

Two major swarms of early Proterozoic (ca. 2.1 Ga) basic dykes occur within the Archaean craton of southern West Greenland. One swarm comprises ophitic and sub-ophitic tholeiitic dolerites, while the other (the BN dyke swarm) constitutes mainly norites in which pyroxenes and olivine are enclosed by plagioclase oikocrysts. The close geochemical similarity between a quenched norite and the coarser-grained varieties indicates that the composition of the latter type has not been significantly modified by crystal accumulation. The BN dykes are geochemically distinctive, most having high MgO (ca. 16%), Cr and Ni contents in conjunction with relatively high SiO₂, light rare-earth (REE) and large ion lithophile (LIL) element concentrations. The texture, mineral chemistry and petrochemistry of the quenched noritic dyke all bear strong resemblances to those features in modern boninitic lavas. The BN dykes also correspond to proposed parental liquids of the Bushveld Complex and other major layered basic igneous intrusions. The two dyke swarms are petrogenetically distinct. The tholeiitic dolerites were derived from a relatively undepleted, primordial mantle while the noritic dykes originated from a metasomatized harzburgitic source. The wide-spread distribution of similar Proterozoic intrusions suggests crustal underplating by harzburgitic mantle on a world-wide scale at this time.     

Planetary rotation and invertebrate skeletal patterns: Prospects for extant taxa

It has been two decades since Wells proposed that the duration of absolute geologic time could be estimated using growth patterns found in fossil corals. Since then, the temporal and environmental records encoded in the accretionary skeletons of other invertebrates also have been studied. Although extensive research on the significance of skeletal patterns has been done on bivalved molluscs, other taxa such as the brachiopods, bryozoans, cephalopods and echinoderms are in need of further study. For two taxa, the nautiloids and brachiopods, additional growth pattern data are presented here. These data indicate that erroneous geophysical conclusions about the length of the synodic lunar month were previously reached using what now appear to be unfounded assumptions about the temporal significance of their growth patterns. Assumptions regarding the temporal and environmental information contained in the skeletons of these poorly studied taxa need to be replaced by more extensive analyses using standardized techniques. Only then will we arrive at correct conclusions about the dynamical history of the Earth-Moon system.     

Burying response of an intertidal gastropod to freshwater and copper contamination

The effects of sublethal concentrations of freshwater and copper on the burying responses of the intertidal marine gastropod, Polinices incei, are presented. Such responses are inhibited by both pollutants and the two also act additively. Behavioural responses obtained in a 30 min assay were found to be good predictors of the results of 96 h lethal assays. The results are discussed in light of previous work.     

On inertial currents over a sloping continental shelf

Using simple mathematical models, it is shown that an equatorward flowing coastally confined eastern boundary current (or poleward flowing western boundary current) may have two conjugate forms which transport the same flux of each water type. In a slowly varying environment, these two conjugate forms coalesce at some critical latitude which depends on the flow. For lower latitudes there is no defined form. As the coalescence latitude is approached from higher latitudes, one of the two conjugate forms narrows, while the other widens. Furthermore, in the neighborhood of the critical latitude the wider form is subcritical and the narrower form is supercritical to possible long small amplitude shelf waves. It is also shown that a poleward flowing coastally confined eastern boundary current (or an equatorward flowing western boundary current) may be traced poleward to some critical latitude beyond which the possibility of a current in juxtaposition with the coast terminates. For latitudes higher than this terminating latitude the current separates from the coast.     

The last interglacial ocean

The final effort of the CLIMAP project was a study of the last interglaciation, a time of minimum ice volume some 122,000 yr ago coincident with the Substage 5e oxygen isotopic minimum. Based on detailed oxygen isotope analyses and biotic census counts in 52 cores across the world ocean, last interglacial sea-surface temperatures (SST) were compared with those today. There are small SST departures in the mid-latitude North Atlantic (warmer) and the Gulf of Mexico (cooler). The eastern boundary currents of the South Atlantic and Pacific oceans are marked by large SST anomalies in individual cores, but their interpretations are precluded by no-analog problems and by discordancies among estimates from different biotic groups. In general, the last interglacial ocean was not significantly different from the modern ocean. The relative sequencing of ice decay versus oceanic warming on the Stage 6/5 oxygen isotopic transition and of ice growth versus oceanic cooling on the Stage 5e/5d transition was also studied. In most of the Southern Hemisphere, the oceanic response marked by the biotic census counts preceded (led) the global ice-volume response marked by the oxygen-isotope signal by several thousand years. The reverse pattern is evident in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, where the oceanic response lagged that of global ice volume by several thousand years. As a result, the very warm temperatures associated with the last interglaciation were regionally diachronous by several thousand years. These regional lead-lag relationships agree with those observed on other transitions and in long-term phase relationships; they cannot be explained simply as artifacts of bioturbational translations of the original signals.     

Source induced vertical components in geomagnetic pulsation signals

We show how large vertical components may be induced in geomagnetic pulsation signals because of the localised nature of the source. The effect is greatest when the signal varies on a horizontal scale length which is shorter than the skin depth of the signal in the Earth. However, the horizontal scale length is also constrained to be equal or larger than the height of the ionospheric E-region (～ 120 km) as signals varying on a shorter scale are severely attenuated. Such conditions are best met by high latitude pulsations and some recent high latitude observations are explained by our results. We find that the vertical component is best correlated with the horizontal component in the direction in which the signal varies most rapidly.     

Frequency-Dependent Climate Signal in Upper and Lower Forest Border Tree Rings in the Mountains of the Great Basin

We examine the relationships, over the past millennium, between tree-ring chronologies from long-lived pines at their upper and lower limits in four mountain ranges in and near to the semi-arid Great Basin. We confirm LaMarche's (1974a) finding, based on a single mountain range in this same region, and a much shorter period of comparison, that climate responses are frequency dependent. In particular, upper and lower forest border chronologies in each mountain range are strongly coherent at decadal periods and less, with particular strength in the 3–7 year band. Thisvariability is significantly correlated with precipitation. Conversely, we find no significant correlation between the low frequency fluctuations (60 years and longer) of upper and lower forest border chronologies. There are, however, significant correlations between the low-frequency components of the upper forest border chronologies in the different ranges, consistent with their containing a growing season temperature signal on decadal time scales. The four upper forest border chronologies all show an anomalous increase in growth since the late 19th century, and an apparent change in climate control of ring growth.