Sinkholes formed by piping into buried channels

Piping-induced sinks in flood-irrigated alfalfa fields on the distal part of a compound alluvial fan in California's Central Valley lack discharge conduits. It is suggested that all inflow and sediment are dispersed underground in former distributary channels that are now buried.     

Review: Advances in delta-subsidence research using satellite methods

Most of the world’s major river deltas are sinking relative to local sea level. The effects of subsidence can include aquifer salinization, infrastructure damage, increased vulnerability to flooding and storm surges, and permanent inundation of low-lying land. Consequently, determining the relative importance of natural vs. anthropogenic pressures in driving delta subsidence is a topic of ongoing research. This article presents a review of knowledge with respect to delta surface-elevation loss. The field is rapidly advancing due to applications of space-based techniques: InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar), GPS (global positioning system), and satellite ocean altimetry. These techniques have shed new light on a variety of subsidence processes, including tectonics, isostatic adjustment, and the spatial and temporal variability of sediment compaction. They also confirm that subsidence associated with fluid extraction can outpace sea-level rise by up to two orders of magnitude, resulting in effective sea-level rise that is one-hundred times faster than the global average rate. In coming years, space-based and airborne instruments will be critical in providing near-real-time monitoring to facilitate management decisions in sinking deltas. However, ground-based observations continue to be necessary for generating complete measurements of surface-elevation change. Numerical modeling should seek to simulate couplings between subsidence processes for greater predictive power.     

Palaeoenvironments of early hominins in temperate and Mediterranean Eurasia: new palaeobotanical data from Palaeolithic key-sites and synchronous natural sequences

The present study focuses on new palaeobotanical data (pollen, phytoliths and fruits) from three of the oldest Early Palaeolithic sites in Eurasia (Dmanisi in Georgia, Ca’ Belvedere di Monte Poggiolo in Italy and Pont-de-Lavaud in France). The main aim is to examine the ecological factors associated with the first human dispersals out of Africa into Eurasia. The palaeoecological data are discussed with regards to chronology and geographical location of the settlements. The vegetation pattern of each site consists of temperate Eurasian and Mediterranean taxa, subtropical trees being more or less recorded depending on climatic and geographic features. The new palaeobotanical data show that different vegetation structures occurred between the first human dispersal in Caucasus and the later dispersals in western Eurasia. However, in all cases hominins seemed to be adapted to temperate ecosystems. In Caucasus, human occupation took place at 1.7 Ma in a forest-steppe environment, while at ca 1 Ma human populations occupied various settings such as open landscapes or dense forests. These data suggest that during the Early Pleistocene, human populations evolved and dispersed in western Eurasia, gradually increasing their degree of adaptation to diversified environments.     

Fractures,hydrothermal alterations and permeability in the Soultz Enhanced Geothermal System

Borehole studies of the Soultz-sous-Forêts granite are dedicated to deep geothermics. The hydraulic properties of the reservoir are mainly controlled by the occurrence of some altered cataclastic shear zones showing a low natural permeability characterized by the occurrence of brines. Those zones show a fracture cluster organisation with sealed fractures of various types (post-filled joints, sheared fractures, veins). The main hydrothermal deposits observed within the permeable zones are geodic quartz, carbonates, illite and more locally sulphides. The fracture wall–rocks are intensely transformed: dissolution of igneous minerals, crystallization of new minerals, porosity and permeability increase. It is important to characterize the newly-formed minerals in order to choose the reagents used to improve the permeability of the exchanger by chemical stimulations. This article represents a synthesis of the studies completed by the authors between 1990 and 2008 on the fracture networks, hydrothermal alterations and mineral crystallizations they induced and data about the flow pathways in the exchanger.     

Long period multiple suppression by predictive deconvolution in the x–t domainl1

There are two forms of systematic error in conventional deconvolution as applied to the problem of suppressing multiples with periodicities longer than a hundred milliseconds. One of these is the windowing effect due to the assumption that a true autocorrelation function can be computed from a finite portion of data. The second form of error concerns the assumption of periodicity, which is strictly true only at zero offset for a 1D medium. The seriousness of these errors increased with the lengthening of the multiple period. This paper describes and illustrates a rigorous 2D solution to the predictive deconvolution equations that overcomes both of the systematic errors of conventional 1D approaches. This method is applicable to both the simple or trapped system and to the complex or peg-leg system of multiples. It does not require that the design window be six to ten times larger compared to the operator dimensions and it is accurate over a wide range of propagation angles. The formulation is kept strictly in the sense of the classical theory of prediction. The solution of normal equations are obtained by a modified conjugate gradient method of solution developed by Koehler. In this algorithm, the normal equations are not modified by the autocorrelation approximation. As with all linear methods, approximate stationary attitude in the multiple generating process is assumed. This method has not been tested in areas where large changes in the characteristic of the multiple-generating mechanism occur within a seismic spread length.     

Magma dynamics beneath Kameni volcano, Thera, Greece, as revealed by crystal size and shape measurements

Size distributions of plagioclase crystals in series of recent porphyritic dacite lavas from Kameni volcano, Greece, can be modelled by mixing two populations of crystals, each with overlapping linear crystal size distributions (CSD)—termed microlites and megacrysts. The magmas bearing the microlites and megacrysts started to crystallise 6–13 and 24–96 years, respectively, before each eruption. The dates of initiation of crystallisation of the megacrysts indicate that they are left-overs of earlier injections of new magma into a shallow chamber: some magma remains after each eruption and continues to crystallise. New magma with few or no crystals is then introduced and the microlites crystallise from the mixed magma. Eruption followed 6–13 years after mixing. Such a model would suggest that some porphyritic magmas are products of a shallow magma chamber that is never completely emptied, just topped up from time to time.     

Biogenic hydrocarbons in fluid inclusions from the aberfoyle tin-tungsten deposit, Tasmania, Australia

Trace components in fluid inclusions from the Aberfoyle tin-tungsten deposit in Tasmania, Australia, were examined by thermal decrepitation-mass spectrometry. The technique involves the decrepitation of fluid inclusions by stepwise heating in the source of a mass spectrometer. In addition to water, other species identified were carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons. Detailed analysis of these hydrocarbons showed that they ranged in carbon number from C₁ up to at least C₃₃ and probably comprised, in part, biological marker compounds, previously unreported in such high-temperature environments. Their presence suggests that the fluid responsible for mineralisation was not entirely magmatic but contained a non-magmatic component evolved through fluid-rock interaction in the sedimentary country rocks.