Constraints on sedimentary ages of the Chuanlinggou Formation in the Ming Tombs,Beijing, North China Craton: LA-ICP-MS and SHRIMP U–Pb dating of detrital zircons

Detrital zircons in five sedimentary samples, MC1 to MC5, from the bottom of the Chuanlinggou Formation in the Ming Tombs District, Beijing, were dated with the LA-ICP-MS and SHRIMP U–Pb methods. Age spectra of the five samples show a major peak at 2500 Ma and a secondary peak at 2000 Ma, suggesting their provenances were mainly from the crystalline basement of the North China Craton and the Trans-North China Orogen. The youngest zircon has an age of 1673 ± 44 Ma, indicating that the Chuanlinggou Formation was deposited after this age. From sample MC4 to MC5, lithology changed from a clastic rock (fine-grained sandstone) to a carbonate rock (fine-grained dolomite), suggesting that the depositional basin became progressively deeper. The age spectrum of sample MC5 shows a major peak at 2500 Ma and a secondary peak at 2000 Ma. Sample MC4, which is stratigraphically lower than sample MC5, only had one peak at 2500 Ma. We conclude that there was a transgressive event when sediments represented by MC5 was deposited, and seawater carried ca. 2000 Ma clastic materials to the basin where the Chuanlinggou Formation was deposited, leading to the addition of ca. 2000 Ma detritus. Our research indicates that the source area for the sediments became more extensive with time. We conclude that the Chuanlinggou Formation in the Ming Tombs District was deposited in a low-energy mud flat sedimentary environment in the inter-supra tidal zone because it is mainly composed of silty mudstone and fine-grained sandstone with relatively simple sedimentary structures.     

Mechanical behavior and micro-structure of cement kiln dust-stabilized expensive soil

In this study, the effects of cement kiln dust (CKD) on the swelling properties, strength properties, and microstructures of CKD-stabilized expansive soil were investigated. Samples were prepared and stabilized with different CKD content ratios, ranging from 0 to 18% by dry mass. The results obtained show that the maximum swelling pressures decrease exponentially with increases in CKD content. Both the cohesion and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) increase at ratios below 10% CKD and then decrease slightly, above that ratio. CKD can also improve the strength of saturated, expansive soil. There is no visible change of UCS for soil without CKD when cured, while the UCS of a sample with 10% CKD content after curing for 90 days is higher than that after curing for only 1 day. This indicates that CKD can improve the long-term strength of expansive soil. Finally, microstructure analysis reveals that the addition of CKD reduces the montmorillonite content of expansive soil and decreases its swelling properties. The addition of CKD also changes the pore volume distribution, both the size and amount of macro-pores and micro-pores decrease with increase in CKD content. For saturated samples, the size of macro-pores is obviously reduced, while that of micro-pores is slightly increased for both treated and untreated soils. Hydration and saturation processes make the soil structure become dispersive which results in a lower strength, and adding CKD can restrain this process. The suggested optimal CKD content is between 10 and 14% and with a curing time of more than 27 days.     

Study on Water Internal Recycle Process and Mechanism in Typical Mountain Areas of Inland Basins,Northwest China: Progress and Challenge

The water resource and its change of mountainous area are very important to the oasis economic system and ecosystem in the arid areas of northwest China. Accurately understanding the water transfer and circulation process among vegetation, soil, and atmosphere over different hydrological units in mountainous areas such as snow and ice, cold desert, forest and grassland is the basic scientific issue of water research in cold and arid regions, which is also the basis of water resource delicacy management and regulation. There are many research results on the hydrological function of different land covers in mountain areas, basin hydrological processes, however, there are only very limited studies on the water internal recycle at basin scale. The quantitative study on the mechanism of water internal recycle is still at the starting stage, which faces many challenges. The key project “Study on water internal recycle processes and mechanism in typical mountain areas of inland basins, Northwest China” funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China will select the Aksu River and Shule River Basin, which have better observation basis, as study area. The internal mechanism of moisture transfer and exchange process of different land cover and atmosphere, the internal mechanism of water cycle in the basin, and water transfer paths in atmosphere will be studied through enhancing runoff plot experiments on different land cover, analyzing the mechanism of water vapor transfer and exchange between different land covers in the watershed by isotope tracing on the water vapor flux of vegetation water, soil moisture and atmospheric moisture, improving the algorithms of remote sensing inversion and ground verification on land surface evapotranspiration on different land cover, and analyzing the water vapor flux from reanalysis data, and the coupling modeling of regional climate model and land surface process model. At last, the effect of different land cover in hydrological process of mountain area, and the impact of land cover on downstream oasis will be systematically analyzed.     

A modified mix-differenced approach for estimating multi-GNSS real-time satellite clock offsets

A modified mixed-differenced approach for estimating multi-GNSS real-time clock offsets is presented. This approach, as compared to the earlier presented mixed-differenced approach which uses epoch-differenced and undifferenced observations, further adds a satellite-differenced process. The proposed approach, based on real-time orbit products and a mix of epoch-differenced and satellite-differenced observations to estimate only satellite clock offsets and tropospheric zenith wet delays, has fewer estimated parameters than other approaches, and thus its implementing procedure is efficient and can be performed and extended easily. To obtain high accuracy, the approach involves three steps. First, the high-accuracy tropospheric zenith wet delay of each station is estimated using mixed-differenced carrier phase observations. Second, satellite clock offset changes between adjacent epochs are estimated using also mixed-differenced carrier phase observations. Third, the satellite clock offsets at the initial epoch are estimated using satellite-differenced pseudorange observations. Finally, the initial epoch clock results and clock offset changes are concatenated to obtain the clock results of the current epoch. To validate the real-time satellite clock results, multi-GNSS post-processing clock products from IGS ACs were selected for comparison. From the comparison, the standard deviations of the GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo systems clock results are approximately 0.1–0.4 ns, except for the BeiDou GEO satellites. The root mean squares are about 0.4–2.3 ns, which are similar to those of other international real-time products. When the clock estimates were assessed based on a pseudo-kinematic PPP procedure, the positioning accuracies in the East, North and Up components reach 5.6, 5.5 and 7.6 cm, respectively, which meet the centimeter level and are comparable to the application of other products.     

1960—2017年河西地区降水时空变化特征

利用1960—2017年日降水量资料,采用线性倾向趋势分析、滑动分析和泰森多边形法等,对河西地区多年降水时空变化特征及不同量级降水日数及降水强度的变化趋势进行了研究。结果表明：河西地区年均降水量为99.0 mm,呈现明显的逐年上升趋势,平均倾向率为8.72 mm?（10a）^-1,月降水量为单峰分布,5—10月夏秋汛期降水量占年降水量的89.2%,各季节降水量均呈现显著上升趋势;年均降水日数为36.7天,呈现明显的上升趋势,增幅为3.18 d?（10a）^-1,降水日数主要分布在夏季,约占总降水日数的54.6%;平均降水强度为2.70 mm?d^-1,呈现减弱趋势,变化速率为-0.04 mm?d^-1?（10a）^-1;零星小雨和小雨降水日数均呈现增加趋势,而二者平均降水强度均为下降趋势,小到中雨降水日数和降水强度呈现增加趋势,中雨及以上的降水变化趋势不明显。     

塔里木盆地塔中志留系柯坪塔格组物源示踪:碎屑锆石U-Pb年代学证据

目前对塔中志留系物源的认识仍存在不确定性.利用LA-ICP-MS分析技术对塔里木盆地塔中地区志留系柯坪塔格组2件样品开展碎屑锆石U-Pb年代学研究.结果表明塔中志留系碎屑锆石主要为岩浆结晶成因,锆石年龄主要分布在早古生代460~490 Ma、新元古代760~1 000 Ma、古元古代1 600~2 200 Ma及新太古代晚期-古元古代早期2 400~2 600 Ma四个时期,其中新元古代760~1 000 Ma碎屑锆石年龄占绝对优势（56.8%）,峰值~850 Ma.结合志留纪时期塔里木板块南北缘的板块动力学背景,通过盆内构造演化及地貌特征的分析以及和潜在源区锆石年龄的详细对比,确定塔中志留系碎屑锆石主要来源于塔里木盆地西南缘的铁克里克隆起构造带.      

Variations of methane stable isotopic values from an Alpine peatland on the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Acta Geochimica - Isotopic signature is a powerful tool to discriminate methane (CH4) source types and constrain regional and global scale CH4 budgets. Peatlands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau are...