Water Quality Co-Effects of Greenhouse Gas Mitigation in U.S. Agriculture

This study develops first-order estimates of water quality co-effects of terrestrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emission offset strategies in U.S. agriculture by linking a national level agricultural sector model (ASMGHG) to a national level water quality model (NWPCAM). The simulated policy scenario considers GHG mitigation incentive payments of $25 and $50 per tonne, carbon equivalent to landowners for reducing emissions or enhancing the sequestration of GHG through agricultural and land-use practices. ASMGHG projects that these GHG price incentives could induce widespread conversion of agricultural to forested lands, along with alteration of tillage practices, crop mix on land remaining in agriculture, and livestock management. This study focuses on changes in cropland use and management. The results indicate that through agricultural cropland about 60 to 70 million tonnes of carbon equivalent (MMTCE) emissions can be mitigated annually in the U.S. These responses also lead to a 2% increase in aggregate national water quality, with substantial variation across regions. Such GHG mitigation activities are found to reduce annual nitrogen loadings into the Gulf of Mexico by up to one half of the reduction goals established by the national Watershed Nutrient Task Force for addressing the hypoxia problem.     

A New Late Middle Cambrian Paleomagnetic Pole for the Ellsworth Mountains, Antarctica

A paleomagnetic study of the late Middle to possibly early Late Cambrian Liberty Hills Formation in the Ellsworth Mountains, Antarctica, reveals a stable magnetization with positive fold and reversal tests. The paleopole is based on 16 sites from volcanic and sedimentary rocks and lies at lat 7.3 degrees N and long 326.3 degrees E (A95=6.0&j0;). The new paleomagnetic data support the view that the Ellsworth Mountains are part of a microplate-the Ellsworth-Whitmore Mountains crustal block-that rotated independently of the main Gondwana continental blocks during breakup. The Liberty Hills pole differs from both previous poles recovered from Cambrian rocks in the Ellsworth Mountains and from the available Gondwana reference pole data. Our pole indicates a more northerly prebreakup position for the Ellsworth Mountains than previously suggested, contradicting the overwhelming geologic evidence for a prebreakup position close to southern Africa. The reasons for this are uncertain, but we suggest that problems with the Gondwana apparent polar wander path may be important. More well constrained, early Paleozoic paleomagnetic data are required from the Ellsworth Mountains and the Gondwana continents if the data are to constrain further the Middle-Late Cambrian location of the Ellsworth-Whitmore Mountains block.     

Localized multiscale energy and vorticity analysis: I. Fundamentals

A new methodology, multiscale energy and vorticity analysis (MS-EVA), is developed to investigate the inference of fundamental processes from oceanic or atmospheric data for complex dynamics which are nonlinear, time and space intermittent, and involve multiscale interactions. Based on a localized orthogonal complementary subspace decomposition through the multiscale window transform (MWT), MS-EVA is real problem-oriented and objective in nature. The development begins with an introduction of the concepts of scale and scale window and the decomposition of variables on scale windows. We then derive the evolution equations for multiscale kinetic and available potential energies and enstrophy. The phase oscillation reflected on the horizontal maps from Galilean transformation is removed with a 2D large-scale window synthesis. The resulting energetic terms are analyzed and interpreted. These terms, after being carefully classified, provide four types of processes: transport, transfer, conversion, and dissipation/diffusion. The key to this classification is the transfer–transport separation, which is made possible by looking for a special type of transfer, the so-called perfect transfer. The intricate energy source information involved in perfect transfers is differentiated through an interaction analysis.The transfer, transport, and conversion processes form the basis of dynamical interpretation for GFD problems. They redistribute energy in the phase space, physical space, and space of energy types. These processes are all referred to in a context local in space and time, and therefore can be easily applied to real ocean problems. When the dynamics of interest is on a global or duration scale, MS-EVA is reduced to a classical Reynolds-type energetics formalism.     

Supervised Mineral Classification with Semiautomatic Training and Validation Set Generation in Scanning Electron Microscope Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy Images of Thin Sections

This paper addresses the problem of classifying minerals common in siliciclastic and carbonate rocks. Twelve chemical elements are mapped from thin sections by energy dispersive spectroscopy in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Extensions to traditional multivariate statistical methods are applied to perform the classification. First, training and validation sets are grown from one or a few seed points by a method that ensures spatial and spectral closeness of observations. Spectral closeness is obtained by excluding observations that have high Mahalanobis distances to the training class mean. Spatial closeness is obtained by requesting connectivity. Second, class consistency is controlled by forcing each class into 5–10 subclasses and checking the separability of these subclasses by means of canonical discriminant analysis. Third, class separability is checked by means of the Jeffreys–Matusita distance and the posterior probability of a class mean being classified as another class. Fourth, the actual classification is carried out based on four supervised classifiers all assuming multinormal distributions: simple quadratic, a contextual quadratic, and two hierarchical quadratic classifiers. Overall weighted misclassification rates for all quadratic classifiers are very low for both the training (0.25–0.33%) and validation sets (0.65–1.13%). Finally, the number of rejected observations in routine runs is checked to control the performance of the SEM image acquisition and the classification. Although the contextual classifier performs marginally best on the validation set, the simple quadratic classifier is chosen in routine classifications because of the lower processing time required. The method is presently used as a routine petrographical analysis method at Norsk Hydro Research Centre. The data can be approximated by a Poisson distribution. Accordingly, the square root of the data has constant variance and a linear classifier can be used. Near orthogonal input data, enable the use of a minimum distance classifier. Results from both linear and quadratic minimum distance classifications are described briefly.     

法国阿尔卑斯山(Mt.Alps,France) 溪流型喀斯特瀑布水生苔藓植物群落生态研究

对法国阿尔卑斯山(M t. Alps, France) 6个溪流型喀斯特瀑布水生苔藓植物群落进行了研究。报道典型瀑布水生苔藓群落14个,苔藓植物种类由11科16属20种(含变种亚种) 组成; 生殖系统由雌雄异株( Dio ecious, 95% )和雌雄同株异苞( Auto ecious, 5% )两种类型构成,无性繁殖是繁殖的主要方式; 区系地理成分含北温带分布( 60% ) 、欧洲- 北美分布( 10% )、旧世界温带分布( 5% )和世界广泛分布( 25% ) 等4种成分; 生活型含高丛集型( 20% )、矮丛集型( 10% )、交织型( 60% )和平铺型( 10% ) 4种类型。根据喀斯特沉积环境特征, 划分瀑布水生苔藓群落为峡谷瀑布苔藓群落、温泉瀑布苔藓群落、瀑布水帘洞苔藓群落、悬崖瀑布苔藓群落和悬崖季节性瀑布苔藓群落等5种生态类型。法国阿尔卑斯山溪流型瀑布生物喀斯特沉积物具有分布广泛,但沉积规模较小的特点。      

法国阿尔卑斯— 罗讷(Rhone-Alps)岩溶洞穴弱光带苔藓植物群落研究

报道了法国阿尔卑斯-罗讷( Rhone-Alps )地区3个岩溶洞穴苔藓植物群落研究结果。记载典型洞穴苔藓群落11个,苔藓植物种类8科12属15种(含变种); 区系地理成分含北温带分布(46. 66%)、温带欧洲分布(6. 67% )、欧洲-亚洲分布(6. 67%)、欧洲-北美分布(13. 33%)和世界广泛分布(26. 67%) 5种成分; 生活型含高丛集型(20%)、矮丛集型(33. 33%)、交织型(40%)和平铺型(6. 67%) 4种类型。根据岩溶沉积环境特征,划分洞穴苔藓群落为钟乳石苔藓群落、洞壁钙华苔藓群落、洞底泉华苔藓群落和石灰土苔藓群落等4种生态类型。      

Trends and low-frequency variability of storminess over western Europe, 1878–2007

This study analyzes extremes of geostrophic wind speeds derived from sub-daily surface pressure observations at 13 sites in the European region from the Iberian peninsula to Scandinavia for the period from 1878 or later to 2007. It extends previous studies on storminess conditions in the Northeast (NE) Atlantic-European region. It also briefly discusses the relationship between storminess and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The results show that storminess conditions in the region from the Northeast Atlantic to western Europe have undergone substantial decadal or longer time scale fluctuations, with considerable seasonal and regional differences (especially between winter and summer, and between the British Isles-North Sea area and other parts of the region). In the North Sea and the Alps areas, there has been a notable increase in the occurrence frequency of strong geostrophic winds from the mid to the late twentieth century. The results also show that, in the cold season (December–March), the NAO-storminess relationship is significantly positive in the north-central part of this region, but negative in the south-southeastern part.     

Groundwater dynamics in a till hillslope: flow directions,gradients and delay

Knowledge of groundwater dynamics is important for the understanding of hydrological controls on chemical processes along the water flow pathways. To increase our knowledge of groundwater dynamics in areas with shallow groundwater, the groundwater dynamics along a hillslope were studied in a boreal catchment in Southern Sweden. The forested hillslope had a 1‐ to 2‐m deep layer of sandy till above bedrock. The groundwater flow direction and slope were calculated under the assumption that the flow followed the slope of the groundwater table, which was computed for different triangles, each defined by three groundwater wells. The flow direction showed considerable variations over time, with a maximum variation of 75°. During periods of high groundwater levels the flow was almost perpendicular to the stream, but as the groundwater level fell, the flow direction became gradually more parallel to the stream, directed in the downstream direction. These findings are of importance for the interpretation of results from hillslope transects, where the flow direction usually is assumed to be invariable and always in the direction of the hillslope. The variations in the groundwater flow direction may also cause an apparent dispersion for groundwater‐based transport. In contrast to findings in several other studies, the groundwater level was most responsive to rainfall and snowmelt in the upper part of the hillslope, while the lower parts of the slope reached their highest groundwater level up to 40 h after the upper parts. This can be explained by the topography with a wetter hollow area in the upper part. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessment of carbon in woody plants and soil across a vineyard-woodland landscape

Background

Quantification of ecosystem services, such as carbon (C) storage, can demonstrate the benefits of managing for both production and habitat conservation in agricultural landscapes. In this study, we evaluated C stocks and woody plant diversity across vineyard blocks and adjoining woodland ecosystems (wildlands) for an organic vineyard in northern California. Carbon was measured in soil from 44 one m deep pits, and in aboveground woody biomass from 93 vegetation plots. These data were combined with physical landscape variables to model C stocks using a geographic information system and multivariate linear regression.

Results

Field data showed wildlands to be heterogeneous in both C stocks and woody tree diversity, reflecting the mosaic of several different vegetation types, and storing on average 36.8 Mg C/ha in aboveground woody biomass and 89.3 Mg C/ha in soil. Not surprisingly, vineyard blocks showed less variation in above- and belowground C, with an average of 3.0 and 84.1 Mg C/ha, respectively.

Conclusions

This research demonstrates that vineyards managed with practices that conserve some fraction of adjoining wildlands yield benefits for increasing overall C stocks and species and habitat diversity in integrated agricultural landscapes. For such complex landscapes, high resolution spatial modeling is challenging and requires accurate characterization of the landscape by vegetation type, physical structure, sufficient sampling, and allometric equations that relate tree species to each landscape. Geographic information systems and remote sensing techniques are useful for integrating the above variables into an analysis platform to estimate C stocks in these working landscapes, thereby helping land managers qualify for greenhouse gas mitigation credits. Carbon policy in California, however, shows a lack of focus on C stocks compared to emissions, and on agriculture compared to other sectors. Correcting these policy shortcomings could create incentives for ecosystem service provision, including C storage, as well as encourage better farm stewardship and habitat conservation.