The northern Patagonia Somuncura plateau basalts: a product of slab‐induced,shallow asthenospheric upwelling?

The Meseta de Somuncura forms the largest basaltic plateau (20 000 km²) of southern Argentina (extra-Andean domain). Most of these tholeiitic to alkaline rocks were extruded at ˜ 25 Ma (late Oligocene). The absence of rifting–thinning processes, plume activity, or slab-window phenomena leaves only one major possibility for the generation of Somuncura: asthenospheric ('OIB-like') corner flow leading to a transient thermal anomaly above the subducting plate. It is suggested herein that the intake of hot asthenosphere was forced into a favourable topography (concave-up) of the subducting plate, when a major plate reorganization event (Farallon to Nazca) was taking place in late Oligocene to early Miocene time. The fast and vigorous intake of asthenosphere would have been induced by slab roll-back, leading to decoupling of the subducting plate. The Somuncura volcanic episode can be regarded as a marker of the passage from the extremely oblique subduction of Farallon, to the birth of the Nazca plate and roughly perpendicular convergence between South America and Nazca.     

Revisiting Sustainable Development of Dry Valleys in Hengduan Mountains Region

Dry valleys are a striking geographic landscape in Hengduan Mountains Region and are characterized by low rainfall, desert type of vegetation and fragile environment. Past efforts and resources have been concentrated mainly on rehabilitation of degraded ecosystem and fragile environment, particularly reforestation, while socio-economic development has been largely overlooked. Despite successes in pocket areas, the overall trend of unsustainability and environmental deterioration are continuing. It is important to understand that uplift of the Tibetan Plateau is the root cause of development of dry valleys, and development and formation of dry valleys is a natural process. Human intervention has played a secondary role in development of dry valleys and degradation of dry valleys though human intervention in many cases has speeded up environmental degradation of the dry valleys. It is important to understand that dry valleys are climatic enclaves and an integrated approach that combines rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems and socio-economic development should be adopted if the overall goal of sustainable development of dry valleys is to be achieved. Promotion of niche-based cash crops, rural energy including hydropower, solar energy, biogas and fuelwood plantation is recommended as the priority activities.     

Geochemical survey of thermal system in Northeast China and their geothermometric characters

The chemical composition of several thermal springs around Changbaishan area has been investigated. Cenozoic basaltic rocks are widely distributed in Northeast China and geothermal characteristics have been described. About one hundred hot springs exist around Changhaishan Volcano at the border between China and D.P.R.Korea with high temperature about 82~C. The pH values of the spring water range from 6.9 to 7.1 and the total flow rate is about 4.8 L/sec. The chemical composition of the thermal springs is sodium carbonate; the high-mineral contents of thermal water are believed to have medicinal properties. Bathhouses are already built along the hot springs to take the advantage of the supposed healing properties. The high quality of those hot springs is believed to be utilitized for mineral water. The chemical equilibrium temperatures were estimated at about 160℃ based on the Na-K-Ca geochemical thermometer.     

AGGLOMERATION AND RADIATION EFFECT OF THE PULL OF URBANIZATION

In order to explore the train of thought for China‘s urbanizing development and coordinated rural eco-nomic development, and to find good ways of solving rural problems through urbanization, this paper absorbs the push-and-pull forces theory and the systematic dynamic theory in the traditional population migration theories, views urbanization as a dynamic system, makes research on the push-and-pull mechanism of urbanization. The pulling power of urbanization is analyzed according to two aspects, the agglomeration effect and the radiation effect of cities. The agglomeration effect provides continuous propelling force for urbanization, and the radiation effect further accelerates the urbanization process by pushing forward the development of rural economy. Of course, the slow de-velopment of urbanization can result in the hindrance to rural economic development.     

BRINGING FORWARD OF THE CONCEPT OF COGIS AND ITS ARCHITECUTRE RESEARCH

Based on the analysis of the development of GIS technology and application,this paper brought forward the concept of GoGIS,namely Cooperative GIS ,CoGIS is GIS facing group-users and supporting human-human interaction,which makes it differ from the former GISs,Then,the characteristics of general Computer Spport Cooperative Work (CSCW)applications and the complexity of Geographic Information Science were analyzed,and the conclusion the CoGIS was not a simple GIS layer on CSCW was reached,Further,this paper gaver the hierarchical architecture of CoGIS,and analyzed the coperative platform in detail from the following:1)basic elements;2) collaboration patterns;3) cooperation control mechanism;4) synchronization mechanism;5) security and 6) group communication and so on.With those,the problems about GIS applications are discussed,such as 1)distributed multi-source GIS information and knowledge sharing platform;2)the fusion and visualization of GIS information;3)virtual reality cooperative modeling;4) dymamic simulation;5)expert system and 6) decision-making.Finally,this paper analyzed CoGIS application mode in brief.     

Automated analysis of eclipsing binary light curves – II. Statistical analysis of OGLE LMC eclipsing binaries

In the first paper of this series, we presented EBAS – Eclipsing Binary Automated Solver, a new fully automated algorithm to analyse the light curves of eclipsing binaries, based on the ebop code. Here, we apply the new algorithm to the whole sample of 2580 binaries found in the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) photometric survey and derive the orbital elements for 1931 systems. To obtain the statistical properties of the short-period binaries of the LMC, we construct a well-defined subsample of 938 eclipsing binaries with main-sequence B-type primaries. Correcting for observational selection effects, we derive the distributions of the fractional radii of the two components and their sum, the brightness ratios and the periods of the short-period binaries. Somewhat surprisingly, the results are consistent with a flat distribution in log P between 2 and 10 d. We also estimate the total number of binaries in the LMC with the same characteristics, and not only the eclipsing binaries, to be about 5000. This figure leads us to suggest that  (0.7 ± 0.4)  per cent of the main-sequence B-type stars in the LMC are found in binaries with periods shorter than 10 d. This frequency is substantially smaller than the fraction of binaries found by small Galactic radial-velocity surveys of B stars. On the other hand, the binary frequency found by Hubble Space Telescope ( HST ) photometric searches within the late main-sequence stars of 47 Tuc is only slightly higher and still consistent with the frequency we deduced for the B stars in the LMC.     

Central regions of the early-type galaxies in the NGC 3169 group

We have investigated the central regions of the galaxies in the NGC 3169/NGC 3166/NGC 3156 group with the multipupil fiber spectrograph of the 6-m telescope; the first (central) galaxy in the group is a spiral (Sa) one and the other two galaxies are lenticular ones. The group is known to have an extended HI cloud with a size of more than 100 kpc that is associated in its position, orientation, and rotation with the central galaxy NGC 3169. The mean age of the stellar populations in the centers of all three galaxies has been found to be approximately the same, ～1 Gyr. Since the galaxies are early-type ones and since NGC 3166 and NGC 3156 show no global star formation, we are dealing here with a synchronous star formation burst in the centers of all three galaxies.     

Size-Flux Relation in Solar Active Regions

We present a study of the relationship between integral area and corresponding total magnetic flux for solar active regions. It is shown that some of these relationships are satisfied to simple power laws. Fractal examination showed that some of these power laws can not be justified inside the simple models of stationary magnetic flux tube aggregation. All magnetic fluxes and corresponding areas were calculated using the data measured with the Solar Magnetic Field Telescope of the Huairou Solar Observing Station in Beijing.     

Approach to Mountain Hazards in Tibet, China

Tibet is located at the southwest boundary of China. It is the main body of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the highest and the youngest plateau in the world. Owing to complicated geology, Neo-tectonic movements, geomorphology, climate and plateau environment, various mountain hazards, such as debris flow, flash flood, landslide, collapse, snow avalanche and snow drifts, are widely distributed along the Jinsha River (the upper reaches of the Yangtze River), the Nu River and the Lancang River in the east, and the Yarlungzangbo River, the Pumqu River and the Poiqu River in the south and southeast of Tibet. The distribution area of mountain hazards in Tibet is about 589,000 km^2, 49.3% of its total territory. In comparison to other mountain regions in China, mountain hazards in Tibet break out unexpectedly with tremendously large scale and endanger the traffic lines, cities and towns, farmland, grassland, mountain environment, and make more dangers to the neighboring countries, such as Nepal, India, Myanmar and Bhutan. To mitigate mountain hazards, some suggestions are proposed in this paper, such as strengthening scientific research, enhancing joint studies, hazards mitigation planning, hazards warning and forecasting, controlling the most disastrous hazards and forbidding unreasonable human exploring activities in mountain areas.