Distribution and speciation of mercury in surficial sediments from main mangrove wetlands in China

The purpose of this study was to establish the distribution, speciation and bioavailability of mercury in mangrove sediments. A systemic survey of surficial sediments from 13 mangrove wetlands of China was carried out. Hg concentrations ranged from 2.3–903.6 ng g⁻¹, with an average value of 189.4 ng g⁻¹. Of the 13 areas surveyed, the Hg content in sediments was similar to background levels in 6 areas but was much higher in the other seven areas. Hg levels were affected by natural and anthropogenic factors, including terrestrial pollutants, geomorphic properties, and indirectly by economic status. Hg levels were positively correlated with organic matter, pH, and silt and clay fractions, but Hg was negatively correlated with sand fraction. In most mangrove wetlands, Hg existed primarily in the form of volatile Hg. Hg is easily bioaccumulated in mangrove wetlands and may be the natural source of Hg emissions to the atmosphere.     

Modification of Stokes and Vening-Meinesz formulas for the inner zone of arbitrary shape by minimization of upper bound truncation errors

Traditionally, the evaluation of geoidal height by Stokes formula and the vertical deflection by Vening-Meinesz one, and the estimation of the influence of neglecting the distant zone on computing the geoidal height and the vertical deflection were done by taking the inner zone as a spherical cap. It is not very convenient from the point of view of modern numerical methods such as fast Fourier and Hartley transforms where the inner zone is not a spherical cap, but a spherical trapezoid. So, we generalized the known formulas for evaluating the geoidal height and the vertical deflection for an integration area of arbitrary shape. The corresponding formulas for computing the effects of neglecting the distant zone have been derived. Some issues on computation techniques have been investigated. As an example, the case where the inner zone is modeled as a spherical trapezoid was given special attention, and practical computations were performed.     

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.     

The Anna's Rust Sheet and related gabbroic intrusions in the Vredefort Dome-Kibaran magmatic event on the Kaapvaal Craton and beyond?

The Anna's Rust Sheet (ARS) and a suite of mineralogically and chemically related intrusions in the core and collar of the Vredefort Dome (in particular, the Vredefort Mafic Complex: VMC) represent a newly recognised type of high Ti gabbro in this central part of the Kaapvaal Craton. This lithology, referred to as the Vredefort Type IV mafic intrusion, is distinguished from chemically similar Type V intrusions (the Karoo dolerites) by the presence of glomeroporphyritic plagioclase and higher Th content and from Type III intrusions (≈ 1600 Ma gabbro) by the lack of cross-cutting pseudotachylitic breccia veinlets. Petrographic features and both major and trace element compositions of all Type IV intrusions are very similar. Based on its Rb-Sr isotope age and character, a gabbroic intrusion from Majuba Colliery (Mpumalanga Province) is also thought to belong to the ARS (Type IV) suite of tholeiitic intrusions. Rb-Sr isotopic analysis resulted in a preferred age of 1052±11 Ma (2ω) for biotite and plagioclase data for ARS, VMC and Majuba samples. The Rb-Sr age for the ARS is further supported by ⁴⁰Ar-³⁹Ar stepheating ages for plagioclase and pyroxene separates from two ARS and VMC samples, which favour formation of this gabbroic intrusion at ca 1000 Ma ago. These results suggest that an ≈ 120 m thick sheet intrusion may be present throughout a major part of the Vredefort Dome. While Kibaran-age (ca 1–1.2 Ga) alkaline, both mafic and felsic, magmatism, as well as tectonic and hydrothermal activity at that time, have been known in the central Kaapvaal Craton, a widespread tholeiitic magmatic component has now been added to this record. There is a strong likelihood that this magmatic event occurred throughout the southern African subcontinent and perhaps into Antarctica.     

The surface texture of the Saharan Debris Flow deposit and some speculations on submarine debris flow processes

Deep towed 30 kHz sidescan sonar data from the Saharan Debris Flow deposit, west of the Canary Islands, show spectacular backscatter patterns which are interpreted in terms of flow banding, longitudinal shears, lateral ridges (levees) and transported blocks. Identification of these features is based on high resolution seismic profiles and on a comparison with similar structures seen in better known environments including other marine debris flows and slides, subaerial sediment failures (particularly rock fall avalanches), glaciers and lava flows. Flow banding in the debris flow, picked out by bands of differing backscatter intensity, is on a scale of tens to hundreds of metres. It is considered to result from flow streaming of clasts, with variation in clast size between bands. This primary fabric is cut by a series of distinct flow-parallel longitudinal shears. Broad, high backscatter longitudinal bands along the edge of and within the debris flow are interpreted as lateral ridges associated with multiple flow pulses; the high backscatter possibly reflects either a concentration of coarse grained material or chaotic sediments deposited from a turbulent flow. Coherent, low backscatter patches are interpreted as rafted blocks, although streamlined haloes of high backscatter material around some blocks indicates differential movement between block and flow, possibly during the waning stages of the flow. A non-turbulent debris flow model is preferred, in which a raft of more or less coherent material is carried along by a base undergoing laminar flow. Speculatively, the lack of turbulent mixing preserves original sedimentological heterogeneity from the debris flow source area, possibly in the form of clast size distributions. These heterogeneous sediments are drawn out into a flow-parallel banding which is imaged as the flow-parallel backscatter intensity banding. The upper raft of material responds to cross-flow velocity differences, and perhaps to variations in the timing of flow movement, primarily by longitudinal shearing. More complex deformation of the flow banding occurs at the flow margins and around obstacles in the flow, where lateral velocity shear would be expected to be highest.     

Influences of mulching durations on soil erosion and nutrient losses in a peanut (Arachis hypogaea)-cultivated land

Plastic film mulching is widely employed to improve crop yields. Mulching for the entire crop growth period is a widespread practice. However, a shorter plastic film mulching duration is suggested for obtaining larger grain yield recently. To quantify the effects of plastic film mulching durations on soil erosion and nutrient losses, a three-treatment experiment with three replicates was constructed in field. The designed treatments were control (M0, non-mulched treatment), mulching from sowing to the end of the peanut pod-setting stage (M1) and pod-filling stage (M2). Plastic film mulching significantly increased the mean runoff and sediment yield. With film mulching, the mean runoff and soil losses among M1 and M2 treatments had no significant difference, and significantly larger than that in M0 treatment. After mulching removing, there were no significant differences between the mean runoff and soil losses of M0 and M1 treatments. Compared with the M2 treatment, the M0 treatment had significantly reduced mean runoff and soil losses of all the events. Non-mulching increased the total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) losses. The M0 treatment had the highest TN (23.0 mg m^?2) and TP (3.02 mg m^?2) losses in the three treatments. The M2 treatment significantly reduced the TN and TP losses. In conclusion, mulching from sowing to the end of pod-setting stage was suggested as the appropriate choice for the largest yield and less soil erosion. But, some soil conservation measurements should be taken in furrow areas to effectively reduce soil erosion, under the condition of film mulching.     

Optimization of sample preparation method of total sulphur measurement in mine tailings

A sample preparation method of total sulphur measurement of reactive mine tailings was optimized. The total sulphur was measured by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, and ultrasound technique was used for sample digestion. The optimization process was adopted by a combined approach of experimental design and response surface methodology. The digestion time, temperature and acid-oxidant combination (i.e. effect of H₂O₂ with a fixed amount of acid mixture) were investigated. A two-level and three-factor (2³) full factorial design of experiment was applied to identify the most significant factors, and a central composite design was used to optimize the digestion procedure. KZK-1, a sericite schist, was selected as the certified reference material. The optimum methodology at 95 % confidence level (P < 0.05) was identified to be 10 min of digestion at 77 °C, with a solution of 1 ml HNO₃:1 ml HCl:1.35 ml H₂O₂. This combination resulted in 100 % sulphur recovery. The investigated method was verified by X-ray diffraction analysis. The optimum digestion level was applied to a reactive mine tailings, which achieved satisfactory results with a percentage relative standard deviation < 3 %.     

生态地球化学预测预警若干问题探讨

回顾了生态地球化学危害效应的作用机理,提出了区域地球化学调查-地球化学环境监测-机理研究相结合的生态地球化学预测预警基本思路。根据当前中国多目标区域地球化学调查和生态地球化学评价工作的现状,举例说明了土壤重金属元素累积、土壤环境变化、生态效应机理的若干研究方法,提出了预测预警成果体现的若干建议。     

A 2000-yr reconstruction of air temperature in the Great Basin of the United States with specific reference to the Medieval Climatic Anomaly

A sediment core representing the past two millennia was recovered from Stella Lake in the Snake Range of the central Great Basin in Nevada. The core was analyzed for sub-fossil chironomids and sediment organic content. A quantitative reconstruction of mean July air temperature (MJAT) was developed using a regional training set and a chironomid-based WA-PLS inference model (r²_jack = 0.55, RMSEP = 0.9°C). The chironomid-based MJAT reconstruction suggests that the interval between AD 900 and AD 1300, corresponding to the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), was characterized by MJAT elevated 1.0°C above the subsequent Little Ice Age (LIA), but likely not as warm as recent conditions. Comparison of the Stella Lake temperature reconstruction to previously published paleoclimate records from this region indicates that the temperature fluctuations inferred to have occurred at Stella Lake between AD 900 and AD 1300 correspond to regional records documenting hydroclimate variability during the MCA interval. The Stella Lake record provides evidence that elevated summer temperature contributed to the increased aridity that characterized the western United States during the MCA.     

Local responses in 2D assemblies of elliptical rods when subjected to biaxial shearing

Acta Geotechnica - This study explored the characteristics of local responses in 2D assemblies of elliptical particles when subjected to shearing. A biaxial shearing system was designed for this...