Field Measurement of Dissolved Oxygen: A Comparison of Methods

The ability to confidently measure the concentration of dissolved oxygen (D.O.) in ground water is a key aspect of remedy selection and assessment. Presented here is a comparison of the commonly practiced methods for determining D.O. concentrations in ground water, including colorimetric, membrane-covered electrode, and modified Winkler techniques. The Winkler titration (azide and permanganate modifications) is the most accurate and precise technique for determining D.O. and is appropriate for applications with stringent data quality objectives. In addition, excellent correlation over a wide range of D.O. concentrations was found between Winkler titrations and colorimetric tests using the rhodazine D (below 1 part per million [ppm]) and indigo carmine reagents (above 1 ppm). Electrode measurements represent the simplest method for determining D.O. concentrations on a continuous basis and electrode determinations positively correlate with Winkler results above 1 ppm. Below 1 ppm, electrodes provide only a qualitative measure of low D.O. level, apparently due to slow electrode response.     

New developments on estimating satellite interfrequency bias for SVN49

In order to estimating satellite interfrequency bias T_gd for the anomalously behaving SVN49, a modified JPL GIM software suite is presented. This research assumed that the single-frequency user will not need to perform any modification in the receiver software and will not need any detailed knowledge of the satellite anomaly using the code observable. We performed a point positioning analysis and investigated the range residuals for SVN49. It was discovered that the new satellite bias estimate resulted in near zero mean residuals with the shape of P2-P1 and L1-L2 observables being consistent with shapes from other satellites. Also, computed is a 10-day average of the estimated satellite interfrequency bias T_gd, which turned out to be −19.13 ns.     

Monument-antenna effects on GPS coordinate time series with application to vertical rates in Antarctica

We examine the electromagnetic coupling of a GPS antenna–monument pair in terms of its simulated affect on long GPS coordinate time series. We focus on the Earth and Polar Observing System (POLENET) monument design widely deployed in Antarctica and Greenland in projects interested particularly in vertical velocities. We base our tests on an absolute robot calibration that included the top ~0.15 m of the monument and use simulations to assess its effect on site coordinate time series at eight representative POLENET sites in Antarctica over the period 2000.0–2011.0. We show that the neglect of this calibration would introduce mean coordinate bias, and most importantly for velocity estimation, coordinate noise which is highly sensitive to observation geometry and hence site location and observation period. Considering only sub-periods longer than 2.5 years, we show vertical site velocities may be biased by up to ±0.4 mm/year, and biases up to 0.2 mm/year may persist for observation spans of 8 years. Changing between uniform and elevation-dependent observation weighting alters the time series but does not remove the velocity biases, nor does ambiguity fixing. The effect on the horizontal coordinates is negligible. The ambiguities fixed series spectra show noise between flicker and random walk with near-white noise at the highest frequencies, with mean spectral indices (frequencies <20 cycles per year) of approximately −1.3 (uniform weighting) and −1.4 (elevation-dependent weighting). While the results are likely highly monument specific, they highlight the importance of accounting for monument effects when analysing vertical coordinate time series and velocities for the highest precision and accuracy geophysical studies.     

A High-Performance,High-Accuracy RTK GPS Machine Guiadance System

As technology matures, Real Time Kinematic (RTK) global positioning system (GPS) receivers are providing increased performance in accuracy, on-the-fly (OTF) initialization times, measurement speed, and latency. Leica's Dozer 2000 machine guidance system combines an MC1000 GPS sensor, graphic intensive guidance software, a digital terrain model, and a digital site plan. Figure 1 shows the operator's view of the system. The end results is a highly accurate, extremely responsive local navigation system. Engineers can easily upload design information onto a touch-screen machine guidance personal computer (PC) and greatly reduce earthmoving costs while simultaneously recording “as-built” inspection data. The Leica MC1000 machine control sensor is a true 10-Hz, centimeter-level-accuracy, open-architecture GPS sensor specifically designed for machine guidance and control. At the heart of the MC1000's performance are a very stable oven-controlled oscillator (3 × 10⁻¹¹/s short-term stability), a low-power Intel 486-DX4-80 processor, and four user-configurable input/output (I7O) ports. Special algorithms mitigate the effects of multipath and Selective Availability (SA) while providing centimeter accuracy up to 10 times per second with only 30 milliseconds' latency. The high update rate and low latency are essential for machine guidance and control. The MC1000 GPS reference station is capable of outputting RTK and Differential GPS (DGPS) data simultaneously, providing and entire site with GPS information for machine guidance and control, tracking and dispatching of vehicles, and support of survey crews. This article describes how recent advances in technology have combined to produce the Leica Dozer 2000 – a machine guidance system that is ideal for a wide range of earthmoving and inspection applications. ? 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Local ecological knowledge and practical fisheries management in the tropics: A policy brief

This policy brief is a summary product of seven case studies examining the integration of local ecological knowledge in fisheries management. Each case began with a series of in-depth interviews with local fishers, after which their answers were examined using both social and biological approaches to assess the possibility of using the information as the basis of simple, valid and locally acceptable indictors for fisheries management. We found that allocation and knowledge issues are closely interlinked and must be addressed in concert, and that the negotiation of shared understandings between multiple sources of knowledge must be a continuous process within an adaptive framework rather than a question of identifying a fixed set of indicators.     

Quantifying CO2 fluxes from soil surfaces to the atmosphere

Measurements of CO₂ fluxes from ground surface of the atmosphere (soil respiration) are needed to quantify biotic and abiotic reaction rates in unsaturated zones and to gain insight into the importance of these processes on global warming. The use of three techniques (dynamic closed chambers, static chambers, and gradient calculations) to determine soil respiration was assessed by measuring fluxes of microbially produced CO₂ from an unsaturated mesocosm (2.4 m dia.×3.2 m thick) and two unsaturated minicosms (0.58 m dia.×1.2 m thick), one maintained at 18–23 °C (HT) and the other at 5 °C (LT). By injecting known and constant CO₂ fluxes into the bottom of the HT minicosm and measuring the resulting fluxes, it was shown that the dynamic closed chamber (DCCS) technique yielded accurate measurements of fluxes over the range observed from natural unsaturated media. Over this same range, results showed that the concentration gradient method yielded reasonable estimates of fluxes but its accuracy was limited by uncertainties in both the concentration gradient and the gaseous diffusion coefficient in the soil atmosphere. The static chamber method underestimated the actual flux at higher CO₂ fluxes and when adsorption times of >24 h were used.     

Polar cap particle precipitation and aurora: Review and commentary

Polar rain has a beautiful set of symmetry properties, individually established, but not previously discussed collectively, which can be organized by a single unifying principle. The key polar rain properties are favored hemisphere (controlled by the interplanetary magnetic field B_x), dawn/dusk gradient (IMF B_y), merging rate (IMF B_z or more generally dΦ_MP/dt), nightside/dayside gradient, and seasonal effect. We argue that all five properties involve variants on a single theme: the further downstream a field line exits the magnetosphere (or less directly points toward the solar wind electron heat flux), the weaker the polar rain. This effect is the result of the requirements of charge quasi-neutrality, and because the ion thermal velocity declines and the tailward ion bulk flow velocity rises moving down tail from the frontside magnetopause.Polar cap arcs (or more properly, high-latitude sun-aligned arcs) are largely complementary to the polar rain, occurring most frequently when the dayside merging rate is low, and thus when polar rain is weak. Sun-aligned arcs are often considered as originating either in the polar rain or the expansion of the plasma sheet into the polar cap. In fact three quite distinct types of sun-aligned high-latitude arcs exist, two common, and one rare. One type of arc occurs as intensifications of the polar rain, and is common, but weak, typically <0.1 ergs/cm² s, and lacks associated ion precipitation. A second category of Sun-aligned arcs with energy flux >0.1 ergs/cm² s usually occurs adjacent to the auroral oval, and includes ion precipitation. The plasma regime of these common, and at times intense, arcs is often distinct from the oval which they abut. Convection alone does not specify the open/closed nature of these arcs, because multiple narrow convection reversals are common around such arcs, and the arcs themselves can be embedded within flows that are either sunward or anti-sunward. These observational facts do not neatly fit into either a plasma sheet origin or a polar rain origin (e.g., the necessity to abut the auroral oval, and the presence of ions does not fit the properties of polar rain, which can in any event be nearly absent for northward interplanetary magnetic field). One theory is that such arcs are associated with merging tailward of the cusp. Both of these common types of sun-aligned arcs fade within about 30 min of a southward IMF turning.The third, and rarest, category of sun-aligned arcs are intense, well detached from the auroral oval, contain plasma sheet origin ion precipitation as well as electrons, and persist for hours after a southward turning. These intense detached sun-aligned arcs can rapidly cross the polar cap, sometimes multiple times. Most events discussed in the literature as “theta-aurora” do not fit into this category (for example, although they may appear detached in images, they abut the oval in particle data, and do not have the persistence of detached events under southward IMF turnings). It is possible that no single theory can account for all three types of sun-aligned arcs.Solar energetic particle (SEP) events are at times used to demarcate polar cap open/closed boundaries. Although this works at times, examples exist where this method fails (e.g., very quiet conditions for which SEP reaches below L=4), and the method should be used with caution. Finally, it is shown that, although it is rare, the polar cap can at times completely close.     

Chemical Reduction of Hexavalent Chromium Present in Contaminated Soil using a Packed-bed Column Reactor

Soil samples extracted from a contaminated landfill with hexavalent chromium, Cr(VI), were treated in a packed-bed column reactor applying different reductant solutions under controlled flow conditions. In all cases, the kinetic study concerning removal of Cr(VI) from packed soil revealed the overall process (leaching and redox reaction) is described by pseudo-first order kinetics. The complexity of the process taking place in non-isotropic medium (packed soil) was evidenced by dependence of the overall pseudo-first order kinetic rate constant, k*, on treatment time, volumetric flow rate, and composition and concentration of the reductant solution. A phenomenological equation was proposed in order to represent k* in non-ideal conditions. The comparative study concerning the use of different reductants revealed application of ferrous sulphate, Fe(II), under flow conditions furnished the best results, since in this case the redox process reached a considerable extent and the reduced chromium, Cr(III), was immobilized in packed soil as an insoluble mixed compound.