Response of Sandy Lake in Schirmacher Oasis,East Antarctica to the glacial-interglacial climate shift

Freshwater lakes in Antarctica fluctuate from ice-free state (during austral summer) to ice-cover state (during austral winter). Hence the lakes respond instantly to the seasonal climate of the region. The Antarctic seasons respond sharply to the glacial and interglacial climates and these signatures are archived in the lake sediments. A sediment core from Sandy Lake, a periglacial lake located in Schirmacher Oasis of East Antarctica records distinct changes in grain-size, C, N, C/N ratios (atomic), δ¹³C_OM and δ¹⁵N_OM contents during the last 36 ky. The contents of the sedimentary organic matter (OM) proxies (C_org ~ 0.3 ± 0.2%, C/N ratios ~9 ± 5 and δ¹³C_OM ~?18 ± 6‰) indicate that the OM in this lake sediment is a product of mixing of terrestrial and lacustrine biomass. Distinctly lower contents of C_org (~0.2%) and sand (~50%), low C/N ratios (~8) and depleted δ¹³C_OM (~?20‰) during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM: 32–17 ky BP based on Vostok Temperatures) suggest greater internal (autochthonous) provenance of organic matter and limited terrestrial (allochthonous) inputs probably due to long and intense winters in the Antarctic. Such intense winters might have resulted the lake surface to be ice-covered for most part of the year when the temperatures remained consistently colder than the Holocene temperatures. The denitrification within the lake evident by enriched δ¹⁵N_OM (>10‰) during Antarctic LGM might have resulted from oxygen-limitation within the lake environment caused by insulated lake surface. The gradual increases in δ¹³C_OM, C/N and sand content starting at ~11 ky BP and attaining high values (~?11‰, ~10 and ~80% respectively) at ~6 ky BP together suggest a subtle change in the balance of sources of organic matter between algal and macrophyte/bryophyte nearly 8–9 ky later to the beginning of the deglaciation. Thus the seasonal opening-up of the Sandy Lake similar to the modern pattern started with the establishment of the optimum temperature conditions (i.e., 0 °C anomaly) in the Antarctic, prior to which the lake environment might have remained mostly insulated or closed.     

Erosion and sedimentation in Kalpakkam (N Tamil Nadu, India) from the 26th December 2004 tsunami

Laterally extensive sand sheets deposited by the 26th December 2004 Asian tsunami provide a valuable modern analogue for comparison with wash over deposits of unknown origin. In many places on the east coast of India, distinct deposits of marine sand drape the landscape and overlie the muddy soils of the coastal plain. This paper discusses detailed measurements of coastal topography, tsunami flow height, and deposit thickness made at Kalpakkam, India. Five transects were examined in detail to assess the sedimentology and spatial distribution of the tsunami deposit. Near the mean water line, the tsunami eroded approximately 10–25 cm of sand from the beach and berm. At Kalpakkam the sand sheet deposited by the tsunami begins 25 m from the shore extending 420 m inland where it becomes thin and patchy approximately 30 m from the limit of inundation. In some cases, the deposit consists of 2 to 4 normally graded units, with coarse sand near the base and fine sand at the top, a characteristic observed in many tsunami deposits worldwide. In many places, the deposits also contain numerous thin laminated units, a characteristic usually associated with storm over wash. The presence of the laminated beds is indicative of the complexity of tsunami sedimentation on the coast. Such observations are essential to the formation of definitive facies models for palaeo-overwash studies that are capable of distinguishing between sediments deposited by storms or tsunami.     

Image processing and GIS techniques applied to high resolution satellite data for lineament mapping of thermal power plant site in Allahabad district,U.P., India

The present study is based on digital analysis of IRS 1C/1D LISS-III and IRS P6 LISS-IV images for identification of lineaments in Meja Thermal Power Plant site in Allahabad district. In spite of all limitations due to anthropogenic activities of stone quarrying and criss cross unmetalled roads, almost non-existent vegetation indicators and soil moisture, the efforts were made to identify and map a number of lineaments in the study area and these were subsequently verified in the field. Most of the lineaments identified and mapped are not having any major displacement along them or are not displacing or truncating any major rock unit. Field investigations have revealed that there is no drastic change in the trend of rocks along the lineaments mapped in the study area. On the basis of digital analysis of IRS P6 LISS-IV data NE–SW and NW–SE trending lineaments have been identified and mapped. Some NNE–SSW trending lineaments have also been mapped. All the lineaments demarcated in this area still need to be correlated with the seismic data of the area by superimposing the microseismicity data over lineaments.     

Effect of slope steepness parameter computations on soil loss estimation: review of methods using GIS

In the analysis of soil loss equation, the researchers have suggested two methods of deriving the slope steepness parameter. One method is having percentage slope term, while the other method is having sinθ as its term. In this paper, both the methods were analysed and compared in soil loss computation using Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation, over a Gangapur catchment area in India, having steep slopes. The soil loss rates derived were 0.98 million tonnes per year in case of steepness parameter derived by sinθ and 1.226 million tonnes per year in case of steepness parameter derived by percentage slope term. The observed rate of soil loss is 1.23 million tonnes per year. This methodology of soil loss estimation was also validated with similar catchment of Punegaon dam. It is concluded that for medium to steep terrain, percentage slope method estimates more accurate soil loss than other empirical methods for slope steepness estimation.     

Event-driven flood management: design and computational modules

Flood management is a set of activities that have to be carried out in collaboration with multiple agencies. Advanced flood information with early warning generated using remote sensing satellite technologies can help the agencies to effectively manage the situation on ground. Various environmental parameters and forecasts provided by different agencies can be analyzed and compared with historical flood events for generating probable flood event alerts. The information (environmental parameters) provided by the agencies are heterogeneous and noncompliant to standards and distributed in nature. Synchronization of data from distributed resources and automation of data analysis process for flood management is a primary prerequisite for faster and efficient decision-making. Web 2.0-based web services enable data creation, sharing, communication, and collaboration on web. Spatial data sharing on web 2.0 for making quality of service using open-source software for efficient flood management is a challenge. Available software architectures proposed for risk and environmental crisis management are too generic in nature and needs lot of modification for flood management. An event-driven model coupled with data standardization procedures using service-oriented architecture provides an effective framework for flood management. In this paper, a framework capable of collecting heterogeneous distributed flood-related information for analyzing and alerting probable flood events is proposed. The framework has been implemented to generate automatic flood extent maps, by analyzing the distributed satellite data (as service). The automation of flood delineation process reduces the overall flood product generation time. Open-source web tools have been utilized in development of spatial information system to visualize and analyze the actual situation on ground facilitating overall decision-making process.     

Re-Analysis of QPO in 3C 273 Light Curve

We have developed analysis tools to search for quasi periodic oscillations in light curves from active galactic nuclei, using the following time series techniques: Wavelets, periodogram, Lomb–Scargle periodogram, structure function and multi-harmonic analysis of variance. The analysis tools incorporate different noise models with significant levels for all the techniques that is an improvement over the previous work. By looking for consistently high significance, we make the detection of periodicities more robust. We apply this tool to a previously reported QPO (Espaillat et al. 2008) in the X-ray light curve of 3C 273 with a periodicity of ~3300 s and find that the significance is only 74% in the wavelet and fails to show up above 95% significance in the periodogram and multi-harmonic analysis of variance.