The Mesoproterozoic Zig-Zag Dal basalts and associated intrusions of eastern North Greenland: mantle plume–lithosphere interaction

The lavas of the Zig-Zag Dal Formation of eastern North Greenland constitute a Mesoproterozoic tholeiitic flood basalt succession up to 1,350 m thick, extending >10,000 km², and underlain by a sill complex. U–Pb dating on baddeleyite from one of the sills thought to be contemporaneous with the lava extrusion, gives an age of 1,382±2 Ma. The lavas, subdivided from oldest to youngest into Basal, Aphyric and Porphyritic units, are dominantly basaltic (>6 wt.% MgO), with more evolved lavas occurring within the Aphyric unit. The most magnesian lavas occur in the Basal unit and the basaltic lavas exhibit a generalised upward decrease in Mg number (MgO/(MgO + Fe₂O₃^T)) through the succession. All of the lavas are regarded as products of variable degrees of olivine, augite and plagioclase fractionation and to be residual after generation of cumulates in the deep crust. The basaltic lavas display an up-section fall in the ratio of light to heavy rare-earth elements (LREE/HREE) but an up-section rise in Zr/Nb, Sc, Y and HREE. The older lavas (Basal and Aphyric units) are characterised by low _Nd and _Hf in contrast to higher values in the younger (Porphyritic unit) lavas. The Porphyritic Unit basalts are characterised by a notable enrichment in Fe and Ti. The Zig-Zag Dal succession is inferred to reflect an increase in melt fraction in the sub-lithospheric mantle, with melting commencing in garnet–lherzolite facies peridotites and subsequently involving spinel-facies mantle at increasingly shallow depths. Melting is deduced to have occurred beneath an attenuating continental lithosphere in conjunction with ascent of a mantle plume. Lithospheric contamination of primitive melts is inferred to have diminished with time with the Porphyritic unit basalts being products of essentially uncontaminated plume-source magmas. The high iron signature may reflect a relatively iron-rich plume source.     

Adaptation in Canadian Agriculture to Climatic Variability and Change

The effects of climatic variability and change on Canadian agriculture have become an important research field since the early 1980s. In this paper, we seek to synthesize this research, focusing on agricultural adaptation, a purposeful proactive or reactive response to changes associated with climate, and influenced by many factors. A distinctive feature of methods used in research on adaptation in Canadian agriculture is the focus on the important role of human agency. Many individual farmers perceive they are well adapted to climate, because of their extensive 'technological' tool-kit, giving them confidence in dealing with climatic change. In many regions, little concern is expressed over climatic change, except where there are particular types of climatic vulnerability. Farmers respond to biophysical factors, including climate, as they interact with a complex of human factors. Several of these, notably institutional and political ones, have tended to diminish the farm-level risks stemming from climatic variability and change, but may well increase the long term vulnerability of Canadian agriculture. Notwithstanding the technological and management adaptation measures available to producers, Canadian agriculture remains vulnerable to climatic variability and to climate change.     

Observational Evidence of Recent Change in the Northern High-Latitude Environment

Studies from a variety of disciplines documentrecentchange in the northern high-latitude environment.Prompted by predictions of an amplified response oftheArctic to enhanced greenhouse forcing, we present asynthesis of these observations. Pronounced winter andspring warming over northern continents since about 1970ispartly compensated by cooling over the northern NorthAtlantic. Warming is also evident over the centralArcticOcean. There is a downward tendency in sea ice extent,attended by warming and increased areal extent of theArctic Ocean's Atlantic layer. Negative snow coveranomalies have dominated over both continents sincethelate 1980s and terrestrial precipitation has increasedsince 1900. Small Arctic glaciers have exhibitedgenerally negative mass balances. While permafrost haswarmed in Alaska and Russia, it has cooled in easternCanada. There is evidence of increased plant growth,attended by greater shrub abundance and northwardmigration of the tree line. Evidence also suggeststhatthe tundra has changed from a net sink to a net sourceofatmospheric carbon dioxide.Taken together, these results paint a reasonablycoherent picture of change, but their interpretationassignals of enhanced greenhouse warming is open todebate.Many of the environmental records are either short,areof uncertain quality, or provide limited spatialcoverage. The recent high-latitude warming is also nolarger than the interdecadal temperature range duringthis century. Nevertheless, the general patterns ofchange broadly agree with model predictions. Roughlyhalfof the pronounced recent rise in Northern Hemispherewinter temperatures reflects shifts in atmosphericcirculation. However, such changes are notinconsistentwith anthropogenic forcing and include generallypositive phases of the North Atlantic and ArcticOscillations and extratropical responses to theEl-NiñoSouthern Oscillation. An anthropogenic effect is alsosuggested from interpretation of the paleoclimaterecord,which indicates that the 20th century Arctic is thewarmest of the past 400 years.     

Beach water table fluctuations due to spring–neap tides: moving boundary effects

Tidal water table fluctuations in a coastal aquifer are driven by tides on a moving boundary that varies with the beach slope. One-dimensional models based on the Boussinesq equation are often used to analyse tidal signals in coastal aquifers. The moving boundary condition hinders analytical solutions to even the linearised Boussinesq equation. This paper presents a new perturbation approach to the problem that maintains the simplicity of the linearised one-dimensional Boussinesq model. Our method involves transforming the Boussinesq equation to an ADE (advection–diffusion equation) with an oscillating velocity. The perturbation method is applied to the propagation of spring–neap tides (a bichromatic tidal system with the fundamental frequencies ω₁andω₂) in the aquifer. The results demonstrate analytically, for the first time, that the moving boundary induces interactions between the two primary tidal oscillations, generating a slowly damped water table fluctuation of frequency ω₁−ω₂, i.e., the spring–neap tidal water table fluctuation. The analytical predictions are found to be consistent with recently published field observations.     

Social Mix and the `Balanced Community' in British housing policy – a tale of two epochs

In Britain, concepts of `social mix' and the `balanced community' provide an example of how policy discourses have adapted to changing conceptions of the role of the state in public provision, forms of social division and inequality, and housing market transformations. The recent development of a policy agenda by the Labour government in Britain devised to promote more socially balanced neighbourhoods is not new, and its lineage may be traced back to the origins of housing and urban policy. However, the manner in which this objective has been framed and the intervention it has provoked have varied considerably over time. One is struck more by the episodic and discontinuous nature of the application of mix and balance in British policy than any sense of a coherent set of strategies pursued through changing times. This paper contrasts the place of social mix and balance in the discourses of the immediate post-war period in Britain with the renewed emphasis on such ideas in the policies of the New Labour government elected in 1997. In the first period, the claims of social mix were infused with the language of national reconstruction and the post-war settlement and the development of universal state provision. More recently, interest in social balance has arisen partly as a response to increased management difficulties and the process of `residualisation' in social housing and partly in response to new concepts of the underclass, social exclusion and social capital. The promotion of social mix and balance in contemporary policy has been shaped by notions of the underclass, social exclusion and the development of social capital in poorer communities. Policy intervention is overtly premised on the assumption that more mixed communities will promote more positive social interaction for residents, despite the lack of evidence for this claim. In practice, much of the discourse has now taken on a stronger sense of discipline and control in order to manage social housing estates. The meaning of social balance remains confused, however, and the achievement of this objective through policy intervention is likely to remain fraught with problems.     

Holocene Paleohydrology and Paleoclimate at Treeline, North-Central Russia, Inferred from Oxygen Isotope Records in Lake Sediment Cellulose

Lake-water oxygen-isotope histories for three lakes in northern Russia, derived from the cellulose oxygen-isotope stratigraphies of sediment cores, provide the basis for preliminary reconstruction of Holocene paleohydrology in two regions along the boreal treeline. Deconvolution of shifting precipitation δ¹⁸O from secondary evaporative isotopic enrichment is aided by knowledge of the distribution of isotopes in modern precipitation, the isotopic composition of paleo-waters preserved in frozen peat deposits, as well as other supporting paleoclimatic information. These data indicate that during the early Holocene, when the boreal treeline advanced to the current arctic coastline, conditions in the lower Yenisey River region were moist compared to the present, whereas greater aridity prevailed to the east near the lower Lena River. This longitudinal moisture gradient is consistent with the suggestion that oceanic forcing (increased sea-surface temperatures in the Nordic Seas and reduced sea-ice cover) was a major contributor to the development of a more maritime climate in western Eurasia, in addition to increased summer insolation. East of the Taimyr Peninsula, large tracts of the continental shelf exposed by glacial sea-level drawdown may have suppressed maritime climatic influence in what are now coastal areas. In contrast, during the late Holocene the two regions have apparently experienced coherent shifts in effective moisture. The similarity of the records may primarily reflect reduced North Atlantic influence in the Nordic Seas and southward retreat of coastline in eastern Siberia, coupled with declining summer insolation.     

Post Gondwana breakup evolution of the SE Australia rifted margin revisited

Low‐temperature thermochronology (LTT) is commonly used to investigate onshore records of continental rifting and geomorphic evolution of passive continental margins. The SE Australian passive margin, like many others, has an elevated plateau separated from the coastal plain by an erosional escarpment, presumed to originate through Cretaceous rifting prior to Tasman Sea seafloor spreading. Previous LTT studies have focused on reconciling thermal histories with development of the present‐day topography. New apatite LTT data along an escarpment‐to‐coast transect define a classic “boomerang” (mean track length vs. fission‐track age), indicating variable overprinting of late‐Palaeozoic cooling ages by a younger, mid‐Cretaceous cooling event. Regionally, however, the boomerang trend diverges NNW away from the coast and crosses the escarpment, implying the underlying thermal history pre‐dates escarpment formation and is largely independent from post‐breakup landscape evolution. We suggest that Cretaceous cooling might relate to erosion of Permo‐Triassic sedimentary cover from a formerly more extensive Sydney Basin.     

Fundamental studies on kinetic isotope effect (KIE) of hydrogen isotope fractionation in natural gas systems

Based on quantum chemistry calculations for normal octane homolytic cracking, a kinetic hydrogen isotope fractionation model for methane, ethane, and propane formation is proposed. The activation energy differences between D-substitute and non-substituted methane, ethane, and propane are 318.6, 281.7, and 280.2 cal/mol, respectively. In order to determine the effect of the entropy contribution for hydrogen isotopic substitution, a transition state for ethane bond rupture was determined based on density function theory (DFT) calculations. The kinetic isotope effect (KIE) associated with bond rupture in D and H substituted ethane results in a frequency factor ratio of 1.07. Based on the proposed mathematical model of hydrogen isotope fractionation, one can potentially quantify natural gas thermal maturity from measured hydrogen isotope values. Calculated gas maturity values determined by the proposed mathematical model using δD values in ethane from several basins in the world are in close agreement with similar predictions based on the δ¹³C composition of ethane. However, gas maturity values calculated from field data of methane and propane using both hydrogen and carbon kinetic isotopic models do not agree as closely. It is possible that δD values in methane may be affected by microbial mixing and that propane values might be more susceptible to hydrogen exchange with water or to analytical errors. Although the model used in this study is quite preliminary, the results demonstrate that kinetic isotope fractionation effects in hydrogen may be useful in quantitative models of natural gas generation, and that δD values in ethane might be more suitable for modeling than comparable values in methane and propane.     

Factors Determining the Location of the Chlorophyll Maximum and the Fate of Algal Production within the Tidal Freshwater James River

Longitudinal variation in factors affecting phytoplankton production were analyzed to better understand the mechanisms that cause the formation of a chlorophyll maximum within the tidal freshwater James River. Phytoplankton production was two- to threefold higher in the region where persistent elevated chlorophyll concentrations occurred. Near this site, the morphology of the James transitions from a narrow, deep channel to a broad expanse with shallow areas adjoining the main channel. Shallower depths resulted in greater average irradiance within the water column and suggest that release from light limitation was the principal factor accounting for the location of the chlorophyll maximum. Grazing rates were low indicating that little of the algal production was directly consumed by zooplankton. Low exploitation by zooplankton was attributed to poor food quality due to high concentrations of non-algal particulate matter and potential presence of cyanobacteria. Metabolism data suggest that two thirds of net primary production was respired in the vicinity of the chlorophyll maximum and one third was exported via fluvial and tidal advection. Comparison of water column and ecosystem metabolism indicates that the bulk of respiration occurred within the sediments and that sedimentation was the dominant loss process for phytoplankton.