Transports of Nordic Seas water masses and excess SF6 through Fram Strait to the Arctic Ocean

To determine the exchanges between the Nordic Seas and the Arctic Ocean through Fram Strait is one of the most important aspects, and one of the major challenges, in describing the circulation in the Arctic Mediterranean Sea. Especially the northward transport of Arctic Intermediate Water (AIW) from the Nordic Seas into the Arctic Ocean is little known. In the two-ship study of the circulation in the Nordic Seas, Arctic Ocean - 2002, the Swedish icebreaker Oden operated in the ice-covered areas in and north of Fram Strait and in the western margins of Greenland and Iceland seas, while RV Knorr of Woods Hole worked in the ice free part of the Nordic Seas. Here two hydrographic sections obtained by Oden, augmented by tracer and velocity measurements with Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (LADCP), are examined. The first section, reaching from the Svalbard shelf across the Yermak Plateau, covers the region north of Svalbard where inflow to the Arctic Ocean takes place. The second, western, section spans the outflow area extending from west of the Yermak Plateau onto the Greenland shelf. Geostrophic and LADCP derived velocities are both used to estimate the exchanges of water masses between the Nordic Seas and the Arctic Ocean. The geostrophic computations indicate a total flow of 3.6 Sv entering the Arctic on the eastern section. The southward flow on the western section is found to be 5.1 Sv. The total inflow to the Arctic Ocean obtained using the LADCP derived velocities is much larger, 13.6 Sv, and the southward transport on the western section is 13.7 Sv, equal to the northward transport north of Svalbard. Sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆) originating from a tracer release experiment in the Greenland Sea in 1996 has become a marker for the circulation of AIW. From the geostrophic velocities we obtain 0.5 Sv and from the LADCP derived velocities 2.8 Sv of AIW flowing into the Arctic. The annual transport of SF₆ into the Arctic Ocean derived from geostrophy is 5 kg/year, which is of the same magnitude as the observed total annual transport into the North Atlantic, while the LADCP measurements (19 kg/year) imply that it is substantially larger. Little SF₆ was found on the western section, confirming the dominance of the Arctic Ocean water masses and indicating that the major recirculation in Fram Strait takes place farther to the south.     

Clinoform architecture and along‐strike facies variability through an exhumed erosional to accretionary basin margin transition

Exhumed basin margin‐scale clinothems provide important archives for understanding process interactions and reconstructing the physiography of sedimentary basins. However, studies of coeval shelf through slope to basin‐floor deposits are rarely documented, mainly due to outcrop or subsurface dataset limitations. Unit G from the Laingsburg depocentre (Karoo Basin, South Africa) is a rare example of a complete basin margin scale clinothem (>60 km long, 200 m‐high), with >10 km of depositional strike control, which allows a quasi‐3D study of a preserved shelf‐slope‐basin floor transition over a ca. 1,200 km² area. Sand‐prone, wave‐influenced topset deposits close to the shelf‐edge rollover zone can be physically mapped down dip for ca. 10 km as they thicken and transition into heterolithic foreset/slope deposits. These deposits progressively fine and thin over tens of km farther down dip into sand‐starved bottomset/basin‐floor deposits. Only a few km along strike, the coeval foreset/slope deposits are bypass‐dominated with incisional features interpreted as minor slope conduits/gullies. The margin here is steeper, more channelized and records a stepped profile with evidence of sand‐filled intraslope topography, a preserved base‐of‐slope transition zone and sand‐rich bottomset/basin‐floor deposits. Unit G is interpreted as part of a composite depositional sequence that records a change in basin margin style from an underlying incised slope with large sand‐rich basin‐floor fans to an overlying accretion‐dominated shelf with limited sand supply to the slope and basin floor. The change in margin style is accompanied with decreased clinoform height/slope and increased shelf width. This is interpreted to reflect a transition in subsidence style from regional sag, driven by dynamic topography/inherited basement configuration, to early foreland basin flexural loading. Results of this study caution against reconstructing basin margin successions from partial datasets without accounting for temporal and spatial physiographic changes, with potential implications on predictive basin evolution models.     

Water Cooperation Priorities in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin Based on Cooperative Events Since the Mekong River Commission Establishment

The Lancang-Mekong River has attracted much attention from researchers, but the cooperation on water issues in this river basin has been limited, even after the establishment of the Mekong River Commission(MRC). Cooperation on water resources has been determined as one of the key priority areas in the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Mechanism, but there are no details of targets. In order to establish the priorities of water cooperation under the mechanism, we adopted nine categories to classify the objectives of 87 water cooperation events based on the ‘Lancang-Mekong Water Cooperative Events Database' from 1995 to 2015. Based on the occurrence of cooperative events, cooperative objectives, cooperative scales, and approaches to cooperation, we conducted statistical, correlation, and text analyses. Our analyses indicated the following results: under the impact of economic conditions inside and outside the river basin, full cooperation appeared more difficult than bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Each of the partners adopted different preferences for cooperation targets. Cooperation with more definite objectives was easier to establish than cooperation with broader and more complex objectives. The potential objectives for water cooperation were navigation, hydropower, joint management, data sharing, flood control and water use. Because hydropower development is controversial, and because water cooperation is avoided by most existing regional cooperation mechanisms due to its complexity, we suggest the following priority areas for water cooperation in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin. 1) Navigation and flood control/drought relief are attractive objectives for all the riparian countries across the whole watershed. 2) Data sharing should be a priority for cooperation in the watershed due to its laying the foundation for the equitable and reasonable utilization of transboundary waters. 3) Hydropower is an objective best implemented mainly through bilateral cooperation, and on tributaries.     

Network analysis to inform invasive species spread among lakes

Often facilitated by human-mediated pathways,aquatic invasive species are a threat to the health and biodiversity of global ecosystems.We present a novel approach incorporating survey data of watercraft movement in a social network analysis to reconstruct potential pathways of aquatic invasive species spread between lakes.As an example,we use the green alga Nitellopsis obtusa,also known as starry stonewort,an aquatic invasive species affecting the Great Lakes region in the United States and Canada.The movement of algal fragments via human-mediated pathways(i.e.,watercraft)has been hypothesized as the primary driver of starry stonewort invasion.We used survey data collected at boat ramps during the 2013 and 2014 openwater seasons to describe the flow of watercraft from Lake Koronis,where N.obtusa was first detected in Minnesota,to other lakes in the state.Our results suggest that the risk of N.obtusa expansion is not highly constrained by geographic proximity and management efforts should consider highly connected lakes.Estimating human movement via network analysis may help to explain past and future routes of aquatic invasive species infestation between lakes and can improve evidence-based prevention and control efforts.     

Network analysis to inform invasive species spread among lakes

Often facilitated by human-mediated pathways,aquatic invasive species are a threat to the health and biodiversity of global ecosystems.We present a novel approach incorporating survey data of watercraft movement in a social network analysis to reconstruct potential pathways of aquatic invasive species spread between lakes.As an example,we use the green alga Nitellopsis obtusa,also known as starry stonewort,an aquatic invasive species affecting the Great Lakes region in the United States and Canada.The movement of algal fragments via human-mediated pathways(i.e.,watercraft)has been hypothesized as the primary driver of starry stonewort invasion.We used survey data collected at boat ramps during the 2013 and 2014 openwater seasons to describe the flow of watercraft from Lake Koronis,where N.obtusa was first detected in Minnesota,to other lakes in the state.Our results suggest that the risk of N.obtusa expansion is not highly constrained by geographic proximity and management efforts should consider highly connected lakes.Estimating human movement via network analysis may help to explain past and future routes of aquatic invasive species infestation between lakes and can improve evidence-based prevention and control efforts.     

Effect of polychromatic X‐ray microtomography imaging on the amino acid content of the Murchison CM chondrite

X‐ray microcomputed tomography (μCT) is a useful means of characterizing cosmochemical samples such as meteorites or robotically returned samples. However, there are occasional concerns that the use of μCT may be detrimental to the organic components of a chondrite. Small organic compounds such as amino acids comprise up to ~10% of the total solvent extractable carbon in CM carbonaceous chondrites. We irradiated three samples of the Murchison CM carbonaceous chondrite under conditions akin to and harsher than those typically used during typical benchtop X‐ray μCT imaging experiments to determine if detectable changes in the amino acid abundance and distribution relative to a nonexposed Murchison control sample occurred. After subjecting three meteorite samples to ionizing radiation dosages between ~300 Gray (Gy) and 3 kGy with bremstrahlung X‐rays, we analyzed the amino acid content of each sample. Within sampling and analytical errors, we cannot discern differences in the amino acid abundances and amino acid enantiomeric ratios when comparing the control samples (nonexposed Murchison) and the irradiated samples. We conclude that a polychromatic X‐ray μCT experiment does not alter the abundances of amino acids to a degree greater than how well those abundances are measured with our techniques and therefore any damage to amino acids is minimal.     

A hierarchical indexing strategy for optimizing Apache Spark with HDFS to efficiently query big geospatial raster data

ABSTRACT

Earth observations and model simulations are generating big multidimensional array-based raster data. However, it is difficult to efficiently query these big raster data due to the inconsistency among the geospatial raster data model, distributed physical data storage model, and the data pipeline in distributed computing frameworks. To efficiently process big geospatial data, this paper proposes a three-layer hierarchical indexing strategy to optimize Apache Spark with Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) from the following aspects: (1) improve I/O efficiency by adopting the chunking data structure; (2) keep the workload balance and high data locality by building the global index (k-d tree); (3) enable Spark and HDFS to natively support geospatial raster data formats (e.g., HDF4, NetCDF4, GeoTiff) by building the local index (hash table); (4) index the in-memory data to further improve geospatial data queries; (5) develop a data repartition strategy to tune the query parallelism while keeping high data locality. The above strategies are implemented by developing the customized RDDs, and evaluated by comparing the performance with that of Spark SQL and SciSpark. The proposed indexing strategy can be applied to other distributed frameworks or cloud-based computing systems to natively support big geospatial data query with high efficiency.     

Sediment routing in the Zagros foreland basin: Drainage reorganization and a shift from axial to transverse sediment dispersal in the Kurdistan region of Iraq

In the northwestern sector of the Zagros foreland basin, axial fluvial systems initially delivered fine-grained sediments from northwestern source regions into a contiguous basin, and later transverse fluvial systems delivered coarse-grained sediments from northeastern sources into a structurally partitioned basin by fold-thrust deformation. Here we integrate sedimentologic, stratigraphic, palaeomagnetic and geochronologic data from the northwestern Zagros foreland basin to define the Neogene history of deposition and sediment routing in response to progressive advance of the Zagros fold-thrust belt. This study constrains the depositional environments, timing of deposition and provenance of nonmarine clastic deposits of the Injana (Upper Fars), Mukdadiya (Lower Bakhtiari) and Bai-Hasan (Upper Bakhtiari) Formations in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Sediments of the Injana Formation (~12.4–7.75 Ma) were transported axially (orogen-parallel) from northwest to southeast by meandering and low-sinuosity channel belt system. In contrast, during deposition of the Mukdadiya Formation (~7.75–5 Ma), sediments were delivered transversely (orogen-perpendicular) from northeast to southwest by braided and low-sinuosity channel belt system in distributive fluvial megafans. By ~5 Ma, the northwestern Zagros foreland basin became partitioned by growth of the Mountain Front Flexure and considerable gravel was introduced in localized alluvial fans derived from growing topographic highs. Foredeep accumulation rates during deposition of the Injana, Mukdadiya and Bai-Hasan Formations averaged 350, 400 and 600 m/Myr respectively, suggesting accelerated accommodation generation in a rapidly subsiding basin governed by flexural subsidence. Detrital zircon U-Pb age spectra show that in addition to sources of Mesozoic-Cenozoic cover strata, the Injana Formation was derived chiefly from Palaeozoic-Precambrian (including Carboniferous and latest Neoproterozoic) strata in an axial position to the northwest, likely from the Bitlis-Puturge Massif and broader Eastern Anatolia. In contrast, the Mukdadiya and Bai-Hasan Formations yield distinctive Palaeogene U-Pb age peaks, particularly in the southeastern sector of the study region, consistent with transverse delivery from the arc-related terranes of the Walash and Naopurdan volcano-sedimentary groups (Gaveh-Rud domain?) and Urumieh-Dokhtar magmatic arc to the northeast. These temporal and spatial variations in stratigraphic framework, depositional environments, sediment routing and compositional provenance reveal a major drainage reorganization during Neogene shortening in the Zagros fold-thrust belt. Whereas axial fluvial systems initially dominated the foreland basin during early orogenesis in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, transverse fluvial systems were subsequently established and delivered major sediment volumes to the foreland as a consequence of the abrupt deformation advance and associated topographic growth in the Zagros.