Recent water quality trends and a comparison to sediment-core records for two riverine lakes of the Upper Mississippi River basin: Lake St. Croix and Lake Pepin

Long-term water quality monitoring data from two riverine lakes in the Upper Mississippi River basin, Lakes St. Croix and Pepin, were analyzed to compare the long-term average water quality conditions and land use distributions, water quality trends and loads at lake inlets and outlets, trends from long-term versus short-term monitoring records, and the ability of paleolimnological cores to accurately infer lake water quality conditions. During the 1976–2004 period, the long-term average concentrations of nutrients, suspended solids, and chlorophyll-a were consistently lower at the Lake St. Croix inlet versus the Lake Pepin inlet, which drains a greater proportion of urban and agricultural runoff. Despite these differences, nutrient trends were similar at the inlets to both lakes; reductions in total phosphorus and ammonium concentrations were attributed to improvements in point source technologies, whereas increasing nitrate concentrations were attributed to both point source changes and nonpoint source increases. Despite improvements in several water quality variables, nitrate concentrations are increasing in both lakes, sediment trends indicate persistent nonpoint source inputs to Lake Pepin, and current total phosphorus concentrations remain well above pre-1950s levels in both lakes. Since urban development and agriculture are increasing in the Lake St. Croix and Lake Pepin Watersheds, continued point source regulation and additional nonpoint source control efforts will be needed to further improve water quality in these lakes. The 1976–2004 trends for most water quality variables were similar at inlet versus outlet sites on Lake St. Croix. Trends at Lake Pepin inlet versus outlet sites were less similar, but data availability limited the comparison to the 1993–2003 period. While the truncated data record highlighted short-term trends in both lakes, the full data record was most useful for exploring general patterns in water quality. Length of monitoring record affected our ability to detect trends at the inlets to both lakes, and altered the magnitude of detected trends. During the two decades of the 1980s and 1990s, paleolimnological estimates of retained phosphorus loads were similar to those estimated from recent water quality monitoring. These similarities support the use of paleolimnological approaches to infer past water quality conditions in Lakes St. Croix and Pepin. This is one of eight papers dedicated to the “Recent Environmental History of the Upper Mississippi River” published in this special issue of the Journal of Paleolimnology. D. R. Engstrom served as guest editor of the special issue.     

Contesting ‘Local’ Commemoration of the Second World War: the case of the Changi Chapel and Museum in Singapore

This paper concerns the performance of national war memory at the Changi Chapel and Museum, a site honouring the many prisoners interned in Japanese-Occupied Singapore—especially at Changi—during the Second World War. In the light of the global nature of ‘the Changi story’, and the predominantly transnational nature of its present in situ memorialisation, we first examine how the Singapore state has sought to ‘localise’ the site to make it equally appealing to Singaporeans, as a place where a sense of their ‘shared history’ may be invoked. We then explore the Singaporeans' views about the site and its reconfiguration as a national icon, arguing how the state's task of ‘localising’ the site has been a vexed process due to myriad factors such as ethnic and religious plurality, and the already foreign-centric bias of prevailing knowledge about Changi. Following that, we show how this performance of national memory is also inflected by Australia's national remembrance of the same event. More broadly, we highlight the contested process of ‘localising’ such war memoryscapes as national iconography, suggesting how it may be more fruitful to conceive them as ‘international memoryscapes’, or places to which all individuals can relate regardless of race or national affiliations.     

Strain fields and mechanical response of a highly to medium fissured bentonite clay

This article presents the developments of an ongoing research aimed at modelling the influence of fissuring on the behaviour of clays. In particular, it recalls the main results of an extensive laboratory investigation on a fissured bentonite clay from the south of Italy and presents the data of a new investigation on the evolution with shearing of the strain fields developing within the clay, resulting from Digital Image Correlation (DIC). Element test results are analysed in the framework of continuum mechanics and linked to the clay fissuring features, once characterised using the Fissuring IDentity (F‐ID) chart. This article compares the bentonite behaviour with that of other fissured clays of different F‐IDs, highlighting the common behavioural features. Thereafter, the soil response at the macro level is related to the DIC‐derived strain fields evolving within the clay with loading. For this purpose, DIC was successfully used to investigate the deformation processes active in the fissured clay and the sources of the localisation phenomena. DIC is shown to provide indications of the extent to which highly to medium fissured clays element test results can be of use to model the clay behaviour according to continuum mechanics. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Geomagnetic secular variation and secular acceleration in the Red Sea area

Summary. Estimates of the secular variation in the Red Sea over the period 1959 to 1972 have been obtained from an analysis of marine magnetic data. A total of 318 crossings of ships' tracks were used to determine the mean secular variation for the intervals 1959–72, 1959–65 and 1965–72. The mean secular variation 1959–72 shows a marked northward increase from approximately -10 nT/yr at 13°N to +27 nT/yr at 24°N. North of this, the data suggest a small decrease to + 25 nT/yr at 27° N. These values are consistent with the secular variation recorded at the nearby geomagnetic observatory at Helwan, Egypt, but less than those predicted by the 1965 IGRF for the same period.
Comparison of the mean secular variations for 1959–65 and 1965–72 yields a rough estimate of the secular acceleration of - 1.5 nT yr⁻². Analysis of the cross-over information, corrected for the latitude dependence of the secular variation, shows a regular decrease in the secular change over the period 1959–72 at all latitudes of about -1 nTyr⁻². This secular acceleration makes a substantial contribution to the overall secular change in the Red Sea and as such must be included in the correction of magnetic data covering more than a few years.     

Tafoni development in a cryotic environment: an example from Northern Victoria Land,Antarctica

Tafoni are a type of cavernous weathering widespread around the world. Despite the extensive distribution of the tafoni, their genesis is not clear and is still a matter of debate, also because they occur in such different climatic conditions and on so many different types of substrate. Geomorphological characterization of more than 60 tafoni in three different Antarctic sites (two coastal and one inland) between 74 and 76° S with sampling of weathering products and salt occurrences are described together with thermal data (on different surfaces) and wind speed recorded in different periods of the year in a selected tafone close to the Italian Antarctic station. The aim of this present study is to provide further information to help understand the processes involved in the growth of tafoni in a cryotic environment, and the relationship of these processes to climate, with particular attention to the thermal regime and the role of wind. The new data presented in this paper suggest that there is no single key factor that drives the tafoni development, although thermal stress seems the most efficient process, particularly if we consider the short‐term fluctuations. The data also confirm that other thermal processes, such as freezing–thawing cycles and thermal shock, are not really effective for the development of tafoni in this area. The wind speed measured within the tafoni is half that recorded outside, thus favouring snow accumulation within the tafoni and therefore promoting salt crystallization. On the other hand, the wind effect on the thermal regime within the tafoni seems negligible. While both salt weathering and thermal stress appear active in this cryotic environment, these are azonal processes and are therefore active in other climatic areas where tafoni are widespread (such as the Mediterranean region). Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS to Detect Pockets of Urban Poverty: The Case of Rosario, Argentina

The advent of high spatial resolution, multispectral satellite imagery has allowed analysis of remotely sensed images of urban land cover to become more useful to urban planning and decision making than in the past. The addition of radar imagery at relatively high spatial resolution (6 metres at best), with the advantages that it is not affected by cloud and diurnal light conditions and that it is sensitive to the target's geometric shape, surface roughness and moisture content offers additional capability in this regard. This paper incorporates analysis of Canadian RADARSAT-1 and American Landsat TM satellite imagery and ground-based GIS data to identify known pockets of urban poverty. Poverty is defined, based on a limited number of census variables related to dwelling construction materials and per household overcrowding. The objective is to provide a proof of concept that remote sensing data, especially from synthetic aperture radar, and ground-based GIS data can be successfully integrated for urban planning purposes. The results suggest that the approach used is reasonable and that, with future refinement, it offers planners and decision makers a timely and cost effective means to locate and monitor poverty pockets in urban areas. This is especially important in large, rapidly urbanising areas in the developing world.     

Fossil brines preserved in the St-Lawrence Lowlands, Québec, Canada as revealed by their chemistry and noble gas isotopes

Brines in Cambrian sandstones and Ordovician dolostones of the St-Lawrence Lowlands at Bécancour, Québec, Canada were sampled for analysis of all stable noble gases in order to trace their origin and migration path, in addition to quantifying their residence time. Major ion chemistry indicates that the brines are of Na-Ca-Cl type, possibly derived from halite dissolution. ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios and Ca excess indicate prolonged interactions with silicate rocks of the Proterozoic Grenville basement or the Cambrian Potsdam sandstone. The brines constrain a 2-3% contribution of mantle ³He and large amounts of nucleogenic ²¹Ne^∗ and ³⁸Ar^∗ and radiogenic ⁴He and ⁴⁰Ar^∗. ⁴He/⁴⁰Ar^∗ and ²¹Ne^∗/⁴⁰Ar^∗ ratios, corrected for mass fractionation during incomplete brine degassing, are identical to their production ratios in rocks. The source of salinity (halite dissolution), plus the occurrence of large amounts of ⁴⁰Ar^∗ in brines constrain the residence time of Bécancour brines as being older than the Cretaceous. Evaporites in the St-Lawrence Lowlands likely existed only during Devonian-Silurian time. Brines might result from infiltration of Devonian water leaching halite, penetrating into or below the deeper Cambrian-Ordovician aquifers. During the Devonian, the basin reached temperatures higher than 250 °C, allowing for thermal maturation of local gas-prone source rocks (Utica shales) and possibly facilitating the release of radiogenic ⁴⁰Ar^∗ into the brines. The last thermal event that could have facilitated the liberation of ⁴⁰Ar^∗ into fluids and contributed to mantle ³He is the Cretaceous Monteregian Hills magmatic episode. For residence times younger than the Cretaceous, it is difficult to find an appropriate source of salinity and of nucleogenic/radiogenic gases to the Bécancour brines.     

Granitic magmatism,basement ages,and provenance indicators in the Malay Peninsula: Insights from detrital zircon U–Pb and Hf-isotope data

The Malay Peninsula lies on two continental blocks, Sibumasu and East Malaya, which are intruded by granitoids in two provinces: the Main Range and Eastern. Previous models propose that Permian–Triassic granitoids are subduction-related and syn-to post-collisional. We present 752 U–Pb analyses that were carried out on zircons from river sands in the Malay Peninsula; of these, 243 grains were selected for Hf-isotope analyses. Our data suggest a more complex Sibumasu–East Malaya collision history. ¹⁷⁶Hf/¹⁷⁷Hf_i ratios reveal that Permian–Triassic zircons were sourced from three magmatic suites: (a) Permian crustally-derived granitoids, (b) Early-Middle Triassic granitoids with mixed mantle–crust sources, and (c) Late Triassic crustally-derived granitoids. This suggests three Permian–Triassic episodes of magmatism in the Malay Peninsula, two of which occurred in the Eastern Province. Although the exact timing of the Sibumasu–East Malaya collision remains unresolved, current data suggest that it occurred before the Late Triassic, probably in Late Permian–Early Triassic. Our data also indicate that Sibumasu and East Malaya basements are chronologically heterogeneous, but predominantly of Proterozoic age. Some basement may be Neoarchaean but there is no evidence for basement older than 2.8 Ga. Finally, we show that Hf-isotope signatures of Triassic zircons can be used as provenance indicators.     

The most extensive Holocene advance in the Stauning Alper, East Greenland, occurred in the Little Ice Age

We present glacial geologic and chronologic data concerning the Holocene ice extent in the Stauning Alper of East Greenland. The retreat of ice from the late-glacial position back into the mountains was accomplished by at least 11 000 cal years B.P. The only recorded advance after this time occurred during the past few centuries (the Little Ice Age). Therefore, we postulate that the Little Ice Age event represents the maximum Holocene ice extent in this part of East Greenland.