Market intermediaries and rural people in Bolivia's forest products sector: Are trusting partnerships possible?

Decentralization in access to and control of Bolivia's forest resources, coupled with a rising global demand for tropical hardwoods, raises important questions about whether increased trade and community forest management (CFM) initiatives can enable forms of market integration that have more favourable outcomes for rural communities. This paper assesses the prospects for such a transition through an examination of the relationships linking wood product market intermediaries (brokers and buyers) to rural suppliers and forest communities in Bolivia. The analysis centres on whether trust – conceptualized as a power‐laden sociospatial process driven by multiscalar factors – can evolve between buyers and suppliers such that more progressive (sustainable and mutually beneficial) partnerships devolop. Focusing on three types of buyer–supplier relationships in Bolivia – direct ties between wood brokers/buyers and suppliers, nongovernmental organization (NGO) mediated exchange relationships and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of suppliers – our findings show how trust building initiatives that focus on one scale may fail if factors at other scales create obstacles to collaboration, Given these relational constraints, CFM strategies in Bolivia currently face limitation on their viability as economic development strategies.     

Reaction mechanism for the replacement of calcite by dolomite and siderite: implications for geochemistry, microstructure and porosity evolution during hydrothermal mineralisation

Carbonate reactions are common in mineral deposits due to CO₂-rich mineralising fluids. This study presents the first in-depth, integrated analysis of microstructure and microchemistry of fluid-mediated carbonate reaction textures at hydrothermal conditions. In doing so, we describe the mechanisms by which carbonate phases replace one another, and the implications for the evolution of geochemistry, rock microstructures and porosity. The sample from the 1.95 Moz Junction gold deposit, Western Australia, contains calcite derived from carbonation of a metamorphic amphibole—plagioclase assemblage that has further altered to siderite and dolomite. The calcite is porous and contains iron-rich calcite blebs interpreted to have resulted from fluid-mediated replacement of compositionally heterogeneous amphiboles. The siderite is polycrystalline but nucleates topotactically on the calcite. As a result, the boundaries between adjacent grains are low-angle boundaries (<10°), which are geometrically similar to those formed by crystal–plastic deformation and recovery. Growth zoning within individual siderite grains shows that the low-angle boundaries are growth features and not due to deformation. Low-angle boundaries develop due to the propagation of defects at grain faces and zone boundaries and by impingement of grains that nucleated with small misorientations relative to each other during grain growth. The cores of siderite grains are aligned with the twin planes in the parent calcite crystal showing that the reactant Fe entered the crystal along the twin boundaries. Dolomite grains, many of which appear to in-fill space generated by the siderite replacement, also show alignment of cores along the calcite twin planes, suggesting that they did not grow into space but replaced the calcite. Where dolomite is seen directly replacing calcite, it nucleates on the Fe-rich calcite due to the increased compatibility of the Fe-bearing calcite lattice relative to the pure calcite. Both reactions are interpreted as fluid-mediated replacement reactions which use the crystallography and elemental chemistry of the calcite. Experiments of fluid-mediated replacement reactions show that they proceed much faster than diffusion-based reactions. This is important when considering the rates of reactions relative to fluid flow in mineralising systems.     

Examples of convective fractionation in high‐temperature granites from the Lachlan Fold Belt

Igneous rocks derived from high‐temperature, crystal‐poor magmas of intermediate potassic composition are widespread in the central Lachlan Fold Belt, and have been assigned to the Boggy Plain Supersuite. These rocks range in composition from 45 to 78% SiO₂, with a marked paucity of examples in the range 65–70% SiO₂, the composition dominant in most other granites of the Lachlan Fold Belt. Evidence is presented from two units of the Boggy Plain Supersuite, the Boggy Plain zoned pluton and the Nallawa complex, to demonstrate that these high‐temperature magmas solidified under a regime of convective fractionation. By this process, a magma body solidified from margin to centre as the zone of solidification moved progressively inwards. High‐temperature near‐liquidus minerals with a certain proportion of trapped interstitial differentiated melt, separated from the buoyant differentiated melt during solidification. In most cases much of this differentiated melt buoyantly rose to the top of the magma chamber to form felsic sheets that overly the solidifying main magma chamber beneath. Some of these felsic tops erupted as volcanic rocks, but they mainly form extensive high‐level intrusive bodies, the largest being the granitic part of the Yeoval complex, with an area of over 200 km². Back‐mixing of fractionated melt into the main magma chamber progressively changed the composition of the main melt, resulting in highly zoned plutons. In the more felsic part of the Boggy Plain zoned pluton back‐mixing was dominant, if not exclusive, forming an intrusive body cryptically zoned from 63% SiO₂ on the margin to 72% SiO₂ in the core. It is suggested that tonalitic bodies do not generally crystallise through convective fractionation because the differentiated melt is volumetrically small and totally trapped within the interstitial space: back‐mixing is excluded and homogeneous plutons with essentially the composition of the parental melt are formed.     

Modern sedimentation and hydrology in Lake Tyrrell,Victoria

Lake Tyrrell is a large ephemeral salt lake, the level of which is controlled by climate and groundwater. Up to a metre of water fills the basin during the wetter and cooler winter season, but evaporates during the summer, precipitating up to 10 cm of halite. Each year essentially the same pool of ions is redissolved by this annual freshening. The small percentage of gypsum precipated (< 2%) in the surface salt crust reflects the low calcium content of the brine which, in turn, is a function of the negligible net discharge of calcium from the groundwater system. The small influx of fine‐grained clastic sediment to the lake floor comes from surface runoff, wind, and reworking of older sediment from the shoreline.

The Lake Tyrrell basin lies in a setting in which three different groundwater types, identified by distinct salinities, interact with surface waters. A refluxing cycle that goes from discharging groundwater at the basin margin, to surface evaporation on the lake floor, to recharge through the floor of the lake, controls the major chemical characteristics of the basin. In this process, salts are leached downward from the lake floor to join a brine pool below the lake. This provides an outlet from the lake, especially under conditions that have been both drier and wetter than those of today. Enhanced discharge occurs under drier conditions, when the enclosing regional groundwater divide is lowered, whereas a rise in lake level increases the hydraulic head over that of the sub‐surface brine and promotes an increase in brine loss from the lake.

Sulphate‐reducing bacteria in a zone of black sulphide‐rich mud beneath the salt crust help prevent gypsum from being incorporated into the recent sedimentary record. However, below the upper 5 to 10 cm zone of bacterial activity, discoidal gypsum is being precipitated within the mud from the groundwater. These crystals have grown by displacing the mud and typically “float” in a clay matrix; in some zones, they form concentrations exceeding 50% of the sediment. The occasional laminae of more prismatic gypsum that occur within the upper metre of mud have crystallised from surface brines. The scarcity of these comparatively pure prismatic‐crystal concentrations probably is a function of unfavourable chemical conditions in the lake brine and of the role that sulphate‐reducing bacteria have played.     

A new Ordovician eurypterid (Arthropoda: Chelicerata) from southeast Turkey: Evidence for a cryptic Ordovician record of Eurypterida

A new species of eurypterid, Paraeurypterus anatoliensis gen. et sp. nov., is described from the Upper Ordovician (Katian) ?ort Tepe Formation of southeast Turkey. The single specimen, preserving the carapace, mesosoma and fragments of appendages, appears morphologically intermediate between the eurypteroid families Dolichopteridae and Eurypteridae. P. anatoliensis retains the plesiomorphic conditions of crescentic eyes with enlarged palpebral lobes and a quadrate carapace with ornamentation consisting of small pustules but also displaying the derived characteristics of genal facets and a row of large acicular scales across the posterior of each tergite. Phylogenetic analysis incorporating each of the major eurypterine clades and all Eurypterina having a three-segmented genital operculum (the triploperculate condition) resolves eurypteroids to be an unnatural group, with Dolichopteridae and Eurypteridae forming part of a grade leading to diploperculate Eurypterina. P. anatoliensis is intermediate between the two eurypteroid families, as is ‘Eurypterus’ minor from the Pentland Hills of Scotland, which is shown to be a distinct genus and assigned to Pentlandopterus gen. nov. Using the phylogenetic topology to infer ghost ranges for each of the major eurypterid clades reveals that the majority of eurypterid superfamilies must have originated by the Katian, indicating a largely unsampled record of Ordovician eurypterids. The occurrence of poor dispersers such as Paraeurypterus in the Ordovician of Gondwana is puzzling, and it has been suggested that they dispersed to the continent during periods of sea level lowstand in the Sandbian and Hirnantian, however this does not explain the lack of Ordovician species in North America and Europe, given the well-sampled nature of these continents, and an alternative is proposed whereby eurypterids originated in Gondwana and radiated out to Laurentia and Baltica in the late Ordovician and early Silurian, thus explaining their sudden appearance in the European and North American rock record.     

Delineating and defining the boundaries of an active landslide in the rainforest of Puerto Rico using a combination of airborne and terrestrial LIDAR data

Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) is a remote sensing technique that uses light, often using pulses from a laser to measure the distance to a target. Both terrestrial- and airborne-based LIDAR techniques have been frequently used to map landslides. Airborne LIDAR has the advantage of identifying large scarps of landslides covered by tree canopies and is widely applied in identifying historical and current active landslides hidden in forested areas. However, because landslides naturally have relatively small vertical surface deformation in the foot area, it is practically difficult to identify the margins of landslide foot area with the limited spatial resolution (few decimeters) of airborne LIDAR. Alternatively, ground-based LIDAR can achieve resolution of several centimeters and also has the advantages of being portable, repeatable, and less costly. Thus, ground-based LIDAR can be used to identify small deformations in landslide foot areas by differencing repeated terrestrial laser scanning surveys. This study demonstrates a method of identifying the superficial boundaries as well as the bottom boundary (sliding plane) of an active landslide in National Rainforest Park, Puerto Rico, USA, using the combination of ground-based and airborne LIDAR data. The method of combining terrestrial and airborne LIDAR data can be used to study landslides in other regions. This study also indicates that intensity and density of laser point clouds are remarkably useful in identifying superficial boundaries of landslides.     

Development of Water Quality Index (WQI) model for the groundwater in Tirupur district, South India

Groundwater quality of the Tiruppur district in Tamil Nadu was investigated in this study to develop a Water Quality Index (WQI) model. Hydrochemical parameters showed tremendous variation in certain location over the seasons. Ionic chemistry of groundwater suggested that textile industries and rock-water interaction are major threats to the water quality. Analysis of Na and Ca concentration indicates that direct as well as the inverse cation exchange controls the natural cation chemistry. NO3 concentration shows that the pre-monsoon samples were affected by the fertilizer usage in agricultural fields. Na-Cl type of the water was dominant throughout the study area except few locations. WQI showed that 55% of the pre-monsoon samples and the 47% of the post monsoon samples were classified as poor/very poor/unsuitable for drinking category. Leaching of the textile waste and their transport to the downstream was well observed during the post-monsoon season. The specific contribution of river Noyyal in the transport of the solutes to the discharge zones was proved by the hydrochemistry of the samples.