Spatial Variation of Haloacetic Acids in Indoor and Outdoor Desalinated Household Drinking Water in Kuwait

The present study reveals spatial variability of haloacetic acids and the basic physiochemical properties of drinking water samples through visualization based on the Kriging algorithm and hierarchical cluster analysis. Both projection and statistical method contributed to the logical classification of the indoor and outdoor water samples collected from various governorates covering more than 95% of the residential areas in Kuwait. Clustering of the variables led to the formation of several significant clusters corresponding to the effect of chlorine concentration and its residence time on the formation potential of chlorinated acetic acid derivatives in desalinated drinking water as well as to the total ionic composition of water samples and to the effect of the formation of brominated acetic acid derivatives. Clustering of samples, both indoor and outdoor, indicated that all of governorates located in the northern part of Kuwait are supplied with water containing high concentrations of chlorinated acetic acid derivatives, whereas significantly lower amounts of chlorinated or monobrominated acetic acids were found in water samples in the central and southern parts of the country.     

A Numerical Framework for Wall Dissolution Modeling

Scallops and flutes are common dissolution rock forms encountered in karst caves and surface streams. Their evolution is only partially understood and no numerical model that simulates their formation has been presented. This work at least partially fills the gap by introducing a numerical approach to simulate the evolution of different initial forms of soluble surfaces embedded in a turbulent fluid. The aim is to analyze wall dissolution phenomena from basic principles and to identify stable profiles. The analysis is based on a finite volume moving boundary method. The underlying mathematical model is a \(k-\epsilon \) turbulent model for fluid flow coupled with turbulent scalar transport. The rock wall is treated as a moving boundary, where the normal wall retreat velocity is proportional to the under-saturation of the boundary fluid cells with respect to the mineral comprising the wall. As the flow time scale is several orders of magnitude smaller than the dissolution time scale, stationary flow field, concentration field and wall propagation velocity are calculated for each iteration. The boundary at all points is then moved by distracting minimal velocity along the entire boundary from the actual velocity at a certain location, and then normalized to the maximum allowed shift, which is equal to half the height of the boundary cell. In this way only deformation of the initial wall is calculated. The method was applied to several different initial profiles. During the evolution, the profiles progressively converged towards stable forms. In this work, a framework is proposed for a computation of the moving boundary problem related to slow dissolution of a soluble surface.     

Evaluation of stable iodine status of the areas affected by the Chernobyl accident in an epidemiological study in Belarus and the Russian Federation

Variation of the stable iodine supply was evaluated in the soils of around more than 700 settlements in the regions (oblasts) of Belarus and the Russian Federation contaminated after the Chernobyl accident. It involved the use of regional information on iodine content in different types of soil cover, biogeochemical criteria of iodine deficiency in food chains, and the available soil maps.     

Special Contribution: An Overview of Recent Seismic Refraction Experiments in Central Europe

Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica -     

Special Contribution: SUDETES 2003 Seismic Experiment

Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica -     

A simple digital filter for the geophysical excitation of nutation

A simple digital filter is derived for application to studies concerning geophysical excitation of nutation. Attention is focused on the inverse solution, i.e., inferring the excitation function from the time-series of the celestial pole offsets observed by very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). Filter properties are discussed by comparing its transfer function with that of the original differential equation of nutation. An excellent agreement in both the amplitude and phase response is shown at frequencies between −5 and + 5 cycles per year, which is the frequency band with expected geophysical signals. The difference appears at higher frequencies, leading to a spurious oscillation produced by the filter. This undesired effect is considered and the algorithm enabling its removal is described.     

Effective sub-Zechstein salt imaging using low-frequency seismics — Results of the GRUNDY 2003 experiment across the Variscan front in the Polish Basin

The extent of the Variscan deformation front is one of the key problems of the regional geology of the Central European Permian Basin system, particularly in its Polish part. Conventional reflection seismics usually fails to produce a satisfactory image of the pre-Permian strata due to the shielding effect of Zechstein (Upper Permian) evaporites. Thus we used a novel seismic acquisition technique to study the base of the Permian complex and its Variscan basement. In the GRUNDY 2003 experiment we combined wide-angle reflection–refraction measurements with the near-vertical reflection seismics by the use of the constant geophone array with dense (100 m) receiver spacing occupying 50-km long profile. 3D design of the experiment, covering 50 × 10 km area, helped in eliminating the effect of out-of-plane propagations and local inhomogeneities. An effective integration of traveltime tomography, CDP reflection processing and prestack depth migration of wide-angle reflections applied to our data, allowed us to present the model in which we deduced the contact zone of the Variscan overthrust structure (Variscan front) with its molasse-filled foredeep. The latter might be a gas-generation zone, which is of a great importance for hydrocarbons prospecting in this area.     

Three-dimensional seismic modelling of crustal structure in the TESZ region based on POLONAISE''97 data

This paper reports the results of 3-D tomographic modelling of crustal structure in the Trans European Suture Zone region (TESZ) of Poland, eastern Germany and Lithuania. The data are the product of a large-scale seismic experiment POLONAISE'97, which was carried out in 1997. This experiment was designed to provide some 3-D coverage. The TESZ forms the boundary between the Precambrian crustal terranes of the East European Craton (EEC) and the younger Phanerozoic terranes to the southwest. The 3-D results generally confirm the earth models derived by earlier 2-D analyses, but also add some important details as well as a 3-D perspective on the structure. The velocity model obtained shows substantial horizontal variations of crustal structure across the study area. Seismic modelling shows low (<6.1 km/s) velocities suggesting the presence of sedimentary rocks down to a depth of about 20 km in the Polish basin. The shape of the basin in the vicinity of the profile P4 shows significant asymmetry. Three-dimensional modelling also allowed tracing of horizontal irregularities of the basin shape as well as variations of the Moho depth not only along profiles, but also between them. The slice between P2 and P4 profiles shows about 10-km variations of the Moho over a 100-km interval. The crustal thickness varies from about 30 km in SW, beneath the Palaeozoic platform, to about 42 km beneath East European Craton in NE. High seismic velocities of about 6.6 km/s were found in the depth range 2–10 km, which coincides with K trzyn anorthosite massif. The results of this 3-D seismic modelling of the POLONAISE'97 data will ultimately be supplemented by inversion of seismic data from previous experiments.