Use of ultrasonic telemetry to determine the area of bait influence and trapping area of American lobster,Homarus americanus,traps

Using ultrasonic telemetry, we measured the distance of attraction to a baited trap and then used this value to calculate the “area of bait influence”. This value, along with the mean daily home range for the same animals, was used to calculate the “trapping area” of an individual trap. Lobsters (n = 25) were tracked inside a large underwater mesocosm containing a single baited lobster trap. During the study, 14 of the 25 lobsters approached the trap from a mean (+SEM) distance of 11.0 ± 0.7 m. Using this distance as the radius of a circle, the resulting circular area of bait influence was 380 m². The movements of 18 lobsters were used to calculate a mean daily home range of 1002.4 ± 195.7 m². The radius of a circle with this area (17.8 m) was then combined with the mean distance of bait attraction to calculate the trapping area, defined as: the total area from which the catch is drawn (2604.0 m²; a circle with a radius of 28.8 m or 17.8 m + 11.0 m). A demonstration of the potential use of empirical data about lobster home ranges, trap dynamics and area of bait influence to improve our understanding of the relationship between the density of lobsters on the bottom and catch is included.     

The Measurement of the Orientation of the Magnetic Field in Molecular Clouds

We discuss how the combination of polarimetry and ion-to-neutral molecular line width ratio measurements permits the determination of the magnitude and orientation of the magnetic field in the weakly ionized parts of molecular clouds. Polarimetry measurements give the field orientation in the plane of the sky and the ion-to-neutral molecular line width ratio determines the angle between the magnetic field and the line of sight. We show the first results obtained with this technique on the M17 and Orion A star-forming region using Hertz 350 μm polarimetry maps and HCO⁺-to-HCN molecular line width ratios to provide the first view of the spatial orientation of the magnetic field these molecular clouds.     

A cladoceran-based paleolimnological assessment of the impact of forest harvesting on four lakes from the central interior of British Columbia, Canada

To investigate the impact of forest harvesting on lake ecosystems, six lakes (four impact, two reference) from central British Columbia, Canada were assessed using cladoceran remains preserved in the lake sediment cores. Two temporal resolutions were analyzed: a decadal scale for the past 70 years, and a high-resolution scale (2 year intervals for ten years before and after harvesting). Three lakes which experienced forestry activity in their watersheds in the early 1960s, and one lake which experienced forestry activityin the mid 1970s, showed subtle but statistically significant changes in cladoceran species composition following forest harvesting (analysis of similarity tests) at the decadal scale, whereas only two of these lakes showed significant changes at the higher resolution. These changes may be due to increased nutrient levels that might be associated with forest harvesting. The two reference lakes, which had not experienced any known large-scale anthropogenic watershed disturbances in the past century, showed no significant shifts in the cladoceran species assemblages at either temporal scale.     

Using 2MASS to detect main sequence companions to subdwarf B stars

We explore the binary fraction of subdwarf B (sdB) stars by using the Two Micron All Sky Survey to search for main sequence companions. We have convolved Kurucz models with appropriate filter bandpasses to examine how various combinations separate single sdB stars from sdB+MS binaries. We notice that the 2MASS magnitude limits greatly increase the fraction of inferred sdB+MS binaries and examine a magnitude-limited sample appropriate for single sdB stars.     

Barium content of marine sediments near drilling sites: A potential pollutant indicator

Barite is commonly used as a weighting agent in oil- and gas-well drilling mixture; therefore, the distribution pattern of barium in marine sediments near drilling sites may provide an indicator of anthropogenic chemical contamination from these operations. Present average content of barium in benthic sediments from the Southern California Bight was determined to be 637 ppm, with a range from 43 to 1899 ppm, and that of the mainland and the channel island intertidal sediments averaged 879 and 388 ppm, respectively.     

A diatom-conductivity transfer function for Spanish salt lakes

Diatom-salinity transfer functions for interpretation of palaeosalinity and palaeoclimate change have been developed successfully for parts of North America and North and East Africa, but there is a need for data-sets in other saline lake regions of the world. A data-set of 74 modern diatom samples and associated water chemistry data is described from Spain. The influence of conductivity and other environmental variables on diatom distribution is explored using canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) and partial CCAs. A transfer function is derived for conductivity (70 samples) whose apparent predictive ability is high (apparent r² = 0.91). Performance under jackknifing is poor due to the heterogeneous nature of the data-set and poor coverage of the freshwater end of the salinity gradient. There is a lack of suitable low-salinity sites in Spain, and the accuracy of estimated salinity optima and tolerance ranges may be improved by merging this data-set with those of other regions. The Spanish transfer function has strong affinities with the African data-set and contributes important ecological data for diatom taxa which are absent or poorly represented in the modern flora of African lakes, and for which, in fossil material, there were previously no good modern analogues.     

Determination of ammonium regeneration rates in the oligotrophic ocean by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

A method has been developed for the determination of ammonium concentration and isotopic enrichment in seawater samples at the low nanomolar range (10–100 nmol/kg). It is based on the reaction of phenol/hypochlorite with ammonium to form indophenol, with subsequent solid phase extraction, derivatisation and analysis by Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry. The precision of the method was maximised by incorporating a deuterated indophenol internal standard. A system was developed which generated seawater with extremely low ammonium concentrations thus matching sample and standard matrices for quantitative analysis. Data are presented from a study of ammonium regeneration rates at three stations in the oligotrophic North–East Atlantic where ambient ammonium concentrations were < 21 nmol/kg. Results suggested that ammonium availability for phytoplankton was limited by the rate of ammonium regeneration. Efficient ammonium assimilation contributed to the very low ambient ammonium concentrations measured at these stations. The study highlights the need for the accurate determination of ammonium regeneration rates in studies of new production, particularly in extreme oligotrophic conditions. If not corrected for isotope dilution, f-ratio estimates may be overestimated by 10.7–13.7%.     

Impact of lateral flow and spatial scaling on the simulation of semi‐arid urban land surfaces in an integrated hydrologic and land surface model

Understanding and representing hydrologic fluxes in the urban environment is challenging because of fine scale land cover heterogeneity and lack of coherent scaling relationships. Here, the impact of urban land cover heterogeneity, scale, and configuration on the hydrologic and surface energy budget (SEB) is assessed using an integrated, coupled land surface/hydrologic model at high spatial resolutions. Archetypes of urban land cover are simulated at varying resolutions using both the National Land Cover Database (NLCD; 30 m) and an ultra high‐resolution land cover dataset (0.6 m). The analysis shows that the impact of highly organized, yet heterogeneous, land cover typical of the urban domain can cause large variations in hydrologic and energy fluxes within areas of similar land cover. The lateral flow processes that occur within each simulation create variations in overland flow of up to ±200% and ±4% in evapotranspiration. The impact on the SEB is smaller and largely restricted to the wet season for our semi‐arid forcing scenarios. Finally, we find that this seasonal bias, predominantly caused by lateral flow, is displaced by a systematic diurnal bias at coarser resolutions caused by deficiencies in the method used for scaling of land surface and hydrologic parameters. As a result of this research, we have produced land surface parameters for the widely used NLCD urban land cover types. This work illustrates the impact of processes that remain unrepresented in traditional high‐resolutions land surface models and how they may affect results and uncertainty in modeling of local water resources and climate. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

River flooding, storm resuspension, and event stratigraphy on the northern California shelf: observations compared with simulations

Coast-hugging surface flood plumes occur on the inner shelf of northern California during the winter season, generating dense, near-bottom suspensions which may attain fluid mud concentrations as particles settle. The period of storm-heightened waves may continue into the flood period, leading to gravity-driven seaward displacement of the bottom suspension; or the wave regime may ameliorate, leaving the suspension to consolidate as a short-lived, inner-shelf flood bed. Such beds tend to be resuspended within days or weeks by subsequent storm events that may recreate the original high concentrations. The sediment is thus dispersed seaward by gravity flows, to be deposited as a muddy flood bed on the central shelf. The locus of deposition of these “high-concentration regimes” is a function of the relative intensities of river discharge and storm wave height. Greater discharge piles thicker storm beds nearer shore, while intense wave regimes allow deposition of the fluid mud further seaward. During events with high values of both parameters, large amount of fluid mud may bypass over the shelf edge. In contrast, “low-concentration regimes” occur during storm periods when there has been no recent flood deposition on the inner shelf. The shelf floor is better consolidated than in the previous case, and the resulting suspended sediment concentrations are lower. As a consequence, low-concentration regimes are winnowing and bypassing regimes, and the beds deposited are thinner and sandier. Algorithms describing deposition by high and low-concentration regimes have been embedded in a probabilistic model. A simulation of a 400-year sequence of beds deposited by winter storms and floods suggests that on the Eel shelf, the Holocene transgressive systems tract consists of back-stepping, seaward-fining event beds, whose timelines (bedding planes) dip more gently than do their gradational facies boundaries. At these longer time scales, flood beds dominate over storm beds.