Organic Contamination of Soil and Goundwater in the Piedimont Plain of the Taihang Mountains

The risk of groundwater contamination following the infiltration of waste surface water, is of great interest, particularly in areas experiencing water shortage. In this study, the distribution characteristics of contaminants along the Cihe River, in the piedimont plain of the Taihang Mountains, China, was investigated by measuring the soil and water samples. The main organic contaminants detected in different media include hydrocarbons, chlorinated hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and pesticides. The main contaminants found in different media are mostly derived from the river water, which can be seen from the results of waste water from the river and groundwater, from the soil samples from different depth and distance of the profiles along the river. The distribution characteristics showed that there has been a natural attenuation of the contaminants from the river during their transportation through the soils and groundwater. The sorption of organic compounds to soil organic matter is thought to be a main mechanism of natural attenuation.     

Svecofennian Orogen of the Fennoscandian Shield: Compositional and isotopic zoning and its tectonic interpretation

Endogenic events in the form of intrusive activity and regional metamorphism developed asynchronously in various parts in the Svecofennian Orogen of Fennoscandia. The Early and Late Svecofennian stages of regional high-temperature metamorphism and related plutonism are distinguished from isotopic evidence. The composition, structural features, and asynchronous peaks of endogenic activity within the orogen indicate that at least two zones (inner and outer) should be distinguished in the Svecofennides. The lateral heterogeneity of the orogen in present-day coordinates is traced southward from the margin of the Archean craton. The conjugation zone of the Svecofennian Orogen and the Archean Karelian Craton is characterized by transition from negative to positive εNd (1.9 Ga) values as evidence for a decreased contribution of Archean crustal material to the source of Proterozoic granitoids from the north toward the Proterozoic domain in the south. With allowance for lateral compositional and isotopic heterogeneity of the Svecofennian Orogen and asynchronous culmination of endogenic events in different parts of this orogen, a new scheme of tectonic regionalization has been proposed.     

MEDICAL GEOGRAPHIC MAPPING AND THE ASSESSMENT OF THE INFLUENCE OF SURFACE WATER POLLUTION ON THE HUMAN ORGANISM

The paper presents results of applied medical-geographic mapping work by the Uzbek SSR Academy of Sciences in support of public health studies in Central Asian areas where water supplies are contaminated by runoff from irrigated fields. The final product of the work is a map depicting surface water quality in aggregate terms and according to indices for specific pollutants (for water quality monitoring points), which is described both in terms of its content and methods of data compilation and transformation. Translated by Elliott B. Urdang, Providence, RI 02906 from: Izvestiya vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniy: Geodeziya i aerofotos “yemka, 1989, No. 2, pp. 166–171.     

Variations of the Solar Differential Rotation Associated with Polarity Reversal

Variations of solar differential rotation have been studied using observations of solar quiescent Hα filaments obtained during 1965–1993 at the Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory. In both hemispheres of the Sun, propagation of a quasi-biennial pulse of residual rotation velocities of filaments was found. There is a pulse drift from high latitudes to the equator in the northern hemisphere in 1968–1970, 1979–1981, 1988–1990 and in the southern one in 1969–1971, 1979–1981, 1989–1991. Propagation of a pulse starts near the time of the polarity reversal of the circumpolar regions of the Sun. High-latitude double peaks of rapid motion were found in the northern hemisphere for cycle 20 and in the southern hemisphere for cycle 22. The relation of the appearance of suggested double pulse peaks of residual velocities with the threefold polarity changing of the circumpolar areas is suggested.     

Springtime effects in the mesosphere and ionosphere observed at northern midlatitudes

Nighttime volume emission rates and rotational temperatures, obtained from simultaneous observations of molecular oxygen and hydroxyl airglow at Almaty (43.25°N, 76.92°E) and Sierra-Nevada (37.2°N, 356.7°E), along with ionospheric density derived from foF2 in the vertical sounding ionograms over Almaty are analysed to study the variability and coupling of parameters observed in the upper mesosphere and ionosphere during the period of February - April, 2000.Ionospheric critical frequency measurements and airglow observations by the Mesopause Rotational Temperature Imager (MORTI) at Almaty and the Spectral Airglow Temperature Imager (SATI) at Sierra-Nevada Observatories show an increase in long-period planetary wave (PW) activity from the end of February until the middle of March, 2000.Very good agreement was found in the temporal variations of emission rates and rotational temperatures from March 1-15, 2000 measured at the Almaty and Sierra-Nevada sites. Similar perturbations could also be seen in the ionospheric critical frequency (ΔfoF2) obtained as a difference between current foF2 values and an ionospheric background level.The perturbations observed have been interpreted employing the Met office stratospheric model results. Latitudinal structure of a quasi 5-day wave was identified, for which the first-symmetric-mode amplitude and symmetric behaviour of phase are in good agreement with theoretical prediction. The analysis of the Met office stratospheric data indicate the presence of westward-propagating PW with periods of ∼5 and 10 days during the period of interest. The temporal correlation between planetary scale oscillations observed in the datasets examined (ionospheric, optical and meteorological) suggest dynamical coupling with the stratosphere. A negative disturbance in ΔfoF2 of ∼25% observed 1 day before a sharp increase in the MORTI mesospheric rotational temperature registered on March 10 at Almaty, is also discussed in the context of the possible stratosphere/mesosphere/ionosphere coupling.     

Interaction of acoustic oscillations with an active region on the Sun

Based on MDI data, we constructed acoustic maps of the high-degree solar oscillations as they interacted with the active region NOAA 7978 using the acoustic imaging technique. We analyze the reconstructed power maps for the incoming and outgoing oscillations, as well as the phase-shift maps and the envelope-shift maps of wave packets in the frequency range 3.0–5.0 mHz. We perform a cross-correlation analysis of the time series for the acoustic oscillations before and after their interaction with the active region and analyze direct observational data. Our results point to a difference between the phase and envelope shifts. Thus, for example, the phase and group velocities of the oscillations increase as they pass through a sunspot, with the increase in group velocity being more significant. We found a phase-shift difference between the inward and outward propagating oscillations, ~0.4–0.5 min. This difference is interpreted as the effect of subsurface flow from the active region.     

The Borodinskii Massif of potassium porphyric granite: Results of U–Pb dating and its tectonic position (Fennoscandian Shield)

It has been demonstrated for the first time that the Svecofennian crustal porphyric granites in the southeastern part of the Fennoscandian Shield are clearly subdivided into two age groups of 1.87 and 1.80 Ga. The representative of the first group is the Kuznechenskii Massif of porphyric granites with a U–Pb age of 1874 ± 4 Ma belongs to the group of plutons formed during the orogenic stage of Svecofennide evolution. The Borodinskii Massif with an age of 1797 ± 2 Ma is a member of the second group: these plutons were formed under tectonically stable (epiplatform) conditions. Therefore, the formation of porphyric granites occurred as the result of repeated generation of crustal magmas during multistage accretional growth of the Svecofennian crust.     

SWAT hydrological model as a DaaS cloud service

Earth Science community depends on the exploration, analysis and reprocessing of high volumes of data as well as the modeling and simulation of complex coupled systems on multiple scales. The main aim of this article is to introduce a new hydrological modeling service based on the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) (Arnold et al. J American Water Resour Assoc 34(1), 73–89, 1998 ; Arnold and Fohrer Hydrol Process 19(3), 563–572, 2005) model using high efficiency, resource sharing and low cost cloud computing resources (Astsatryan et al. International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research 1(1), 1130–1133, 2014). Such a Desktop as a Service (DaaS) approach allowing users to work from anywhere, and gives centralized desktop management and great performance. Within the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and cloud platform, the DaaS service gives secure access to the model and a centralized data storage to get a SWAT model input. The article illustrates the analyses of the implementation of the SWAT model for the Sotk watershed of Lake Sevan in Armenia (Sargsyan 2007).