Method for Constructing a Model of a Geoelectric Section Taking into Account Seasonal Variations Based on Data from Long-Term Vertical Electric Sounding Monitoring in Search of Earthquake Precursors

The study analyzes data from high-precision measurements of the apparent resistivity by a stationary multielectrode vertical electric sounding (VES) system including 12 current and 4 potential lines spaced 2–650 m apart. Observations had been being carried out at the Garm test area on a daily basis for 12 years in an earthquake prediction experiment. The use of special technical methods during measurements ensured an instrumental error of about 0.01%. The virtual error of each individual measurement of apparent resistivity (taking into account all possible noise) was 0.1–0.2%. The availability of more than 3000 VES curves measured in different seasons allows us to propose a new approach to constructing a geoelectric section model. To solve the inverse VES problem, a set of 36 averaged 10-day VES curves was analyzed, each of which was obtained by averaging approximately 100 individual VES curves accumulated in the same 10-day period of the annual (seasonal) cycle in different years. Comparative analysis of these curves made it possible to calculate and include corrections for stationary geological noise in the model. As a result, it was possible to substantially reduce (by an order of magnitude) the discrepancies in fitting the curves and dramatically narrow the equivalence domain. Based on the results of our analysis, we have constructed a model of a four-layer horizontally layered geoelectric section of the Khazor-Chashma depression to adequately describe not only the averaged section, but also its seasonal variations throughout the year. The stability in estimating the model parameters is studied. To further reduce the equivalence domain, we propose that the layer thicknesses be fixed. This model can be used not only to study the aforementioned characteristics of the section, but also to monitor time variations of resistivity in individual layers of the section. This will significantly improve the resolving power of systems for detecting time variations in geoelectric sections, including when searching for earthquake precursors.     

Capture Versus Capture Zones: Clarifying Terminology Related to Sources of Water to Wells

The term capture, related to the source of water derived from wells, has been used in two distinct yet related contexts by the hydrologic community. The first is a water‐budget context, in which capture refers to decreases in the rates of groundwater outflow and (or) increases in the rates of recharge along head‐dependent boundaries of an aquifer in response to pumping. The second is a transport context, in which capture zone refers to the specific flowpaths that define the three‐dimensional, volumetric portion of a groundwater flow field that discharges to a well. A closely related issue that has become associated with the source of water to wells is streamflow depletion, which refers to the reduction in streamflow caused by pumping, and is a type of capture. Rates of capture and streamflow depletion are calculated by use of water‐budget analyses, most often with groundwater‐flow models. Transport models, particularly particle‐tracking methods, are used to determine capture zones to wells. In general, however, transport methods are not useful for quantifying actual or potential streamflow depletion or other types of capture along aquifer boundaries. To clarify the sometimes subtle differences among these terms, we describe the processes and relations among capture, capture zones, and streamflow depletion, and provide proposed terminology to distinguish among them.     

Effect of Present-Day Climate Changes and Agricultural Activities on Spring Overland Runoff in Forest-Steppe and Steppe Regions of the Russian Plain

Space and time analysis of the formation of spring overland runoff in forest-steppe and steppe regions of the Russian Plain has been carried out. It has been shown that, in addition to zonal climate conditions, its distribution over the area is largely determined by the agricultural load on river catchment areas, primarily, the structure of agricultural lands—the proportions of areas under winter tillage and consolidated tillage. The character of overland runoff response to present-day climate changes and agricultural activity has been identified, and quantitative estimates have been given to the manifold hydrological role of these factors.     

Field Simulation of Cadmium Pollution of a Freshwater Body

An experiment in mesocosms installed in a fish-rearing pond was used to adequately simulate the character of self-purification, migration, and the redistribution of cadmium and its chemical forms in major components of a freshwater ecosystem, into which this chemical is imported in concentrations far in excess of its MAC. The major portion of the imported cadmium was found to be removed from the water mass within a few days, mostly, as a component of particulate matter settling onto the bed, including dead plankton remains, as ion-exchange cadmium forms adsorbed by suspension (37%), and as forms associated with ferromanganese oxides (41%). The rate of cadmium removal from the water mass is determined both by the amount of particulate matter settling onto the bed and the efficiency of cadmium sorption by it, depending on the acid–alkaline and redox conditions in the water body.     

On Stress Distribution in Layered Rock Masses

Spatial distribution of principal stresses in a layered elastic medium is considered in the paper. Transformations of the principal stresses across an interface between the layers are analyzed. A method for reconstructing the spatial stress distributions in layered medium from several spot measurements is proposed. The introduced approach is capable of obtaining the stable solution of the stress reconstruction problem with respect to the noise in input data. A typical layered medium is considered for which the stresses are reconstructed from few independent spot measurements of the stress state. The proposed approach may be used for solving an inverse problem of tectonic stresses reconstruction from the borehole logging data.     

Plume Mode of Thermal Convection in the Earth’s Mantle

In our previous works, based on numerical models, it was shown that under certain conditions a hot material can rise in portions in the tails of thermal mantle plumes. The spectrum of these pulsations can correspond to the observed spectra of catastrophic hotspot eruptions. Since most of the existing numerical models of thermal convection for the mantle of the present Earth do not reveal these pulsations, in this work, we analyze the physical cause and initiation conditions of pulsations of thermal plumes. The results of a numerical solution of the thermal convection equations for a material with varying parameters in the extended Boussinesq approximation are presented. It is shown how the structure of the convection is transformed with the increase of convection intensity. At the Rayleigh numbers Ra > 10⁶, convection becomes unsteady, and the configuration of the ascending and descending flows changes. The new flow emerging at the mantle bottom acquires a mushroom shape with a head and a tail. After the rise of the plume’s head to the surface, the tail remains in the mantle in the form of a quasi-stationary hot steam. It turns out that at Ra ~ 5 × 10⁷, the thermal mantle plume becomes pulsating and its tail is in fact a heated channel through which the hot material rises in successive portions. At the Rayleigh numbers Ra > 5 × 10⁸, the tail of the thermal plume breaks and the plume becomes a regular conveyor of separate ascending portions of the hot material, which are referred to as thermals. Thus, thermal convection with pulsating plumes takes place at the transitional stage from the regime of quasi-stationary plumes to the regime of thermals.     

Introduction of the soil/vegetation/atmosphere continuum in a conceptual rainfall/runoff model

Abstract

This paper presents the inclusion of the soil-vegetation-atmosphere interactions in a proven conceptual model. This new scheme simulates the daily streamflows over small catchments by taking into account the average characteristics of the surface (soil and vegetation) for the calculation of actual evaporation and evapotranspiration. The model also simulates the daily evolution of soil moisture in two layers: the surface layer representing the first ten centimetres of the soil and the bulk layer representing the root zone. The results of the model calibration on a test site, and the results of the model validation on 36 watersheds, show its good capability to simulate streamflows and soil moisture in the surface layer and in the bulk soil layer. These first results are very encouraging and open the possibility of using these quantities for hydrological applications.     

Evaluation of significant sources influencing the variation of physico-chemical parameters in Port Blair Bay,South Andaman,India by using multivariate statistics

Port Blair is the capital city of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, the union territory of India. More than 50% of the population of these islands lives around Port Blair Bay. Therefore the anthropogenic effects in the bay water were studied for monitoring purpose from seven stations. Physico-chemical parameters of seawater were analyzed in samples collected once in every 3 months for 2 years from seven sampling stations located in Port Blair Bay, South Andaman Island to evaluate the spatial and tidal variation. Cluster analysis and factor analysis were applied to the experimental data in an attempt to understand the sources of variation of physico-chemical parameters. In cluster analysis, the stations Junglighat Bay and Phoenix Bay having high anthropogenic influence formed a separate group. The factors obtained from factor analysis indicated that the parameters responsible for physico-chemical variations are mainly related to land run-off, sewage outfall and tidal flow.     

Environmental determinants of leech assemblage patterns in lotic and lenitic habitats

Leeches (Clitellata: Hirudinida) are abundant predators or ecto-parasites inhabiting various freshwater habitats; however many biotic and abiotic drivers of their assemblage patterns have been deduced rather than directly tested. To study species richness and composition changes in leech assemblages, 109 sites of running and stagnant water bodies were sampled in three regions of the Czech Republic in 2007–2010, together with several explanatory variables that are known or expected to be important predictors of leech distribution. In total, 17 species of leeches were recorded, varying between 0–7 and 0–9 species in lotic and lenitic sites, respectively. These differences in species richness of lotic and lenitic sites were highly significant, contrary to the abundances, which varied between 0–283 and 0–295 individuals. The main change in species composition was controlled by water temperature and morphological characteristics (e.g. substrate and cover of macrophytes), mostly reflecting the differences between lotic and lenitic habitats. We found the density of benthos (i.e. prey availability) to be the best predictor of species composition in both lotic and lenitic sites, together with the percentage of canopy cover. However, the other significant predictors (i.e. the substrate and water conductivity found to be significant in lotic sites, and the mean annual temperature and PO₄^3? in lenitic sites), differed between these habitats. Other than mean annual temperature and water temperature, which had different effects on species richness in lotic and lenitic sites, there were no other differences between lotic and lenitic sites in terms of how species richness and abundance responded to all other analyzed predictors. Our results stress the importance of prey availability and canopy for leech distribution patterns. Differences in the significant predictors of leech assemblage patterns between lotic and lenitic sites raise fundamental questions about the underlying mechanisms and ecological constraints to leech distribution in these main types of aquatic systems.     

Investigation of the groundwater modelling component of the Integrated Water Flow Model (IWFM)

ABSTRACT

The Integrated Water Flow Model (IWFM), developed by the California Department of Water Resources, is an integrated hydrological model that simulates key flow processes including groundwater flows, streamflow, stream–aquifer interactions, rainfall–runoff and infiltration. It also simulates the agricultural water demand as a function of soil, crop and climatic characteristics, as well as irrigation practices, and allows the user to meet these demands through pumping and stream diversions. This study investigates the modelling performance of the groundwater module of IWFM using several hypothetical test problems that cover a wide range of settings and boundary conditions, by comparing the simulation results with analytical solutions, field and laboratory observations, or with results from MODFLOW outputs. The comparisons demonstrate that IWFM is capable of simulating various hydrological processes reliably.

EDITOR M.C. Acreman; ASSOCIATE EDITOR A. Efstratiadis