Gully development in eastern Romania: a case study from Falciu Hills

The gullied systems from the Falciu Hills within the Chioara catchment (2997 ha) consist of both main types of gullies, discontinuous and large continuous ones along valley bottoms, and lots of ephemeral gullies. Several methods have been used to measure and estimate gully characteristics. Then, the gully development stages, the effect of the natural conditions, and especially the impact of land management on gullying in the Falciu Hills over the last two centuries have been defined. In addition, the role of gully erosion in triggering landslides has also been studied. Two main periods have been distinguished (until 1960 and 1961–2012) for assessing major characteristics of land degradation. The results show that total gully area in the Chioara catchment is 66.4 ha excepting for the ephemeral gullies, and areas occupied by gullies from the five study sub-catchments (2334 ha) account for two-thirds. Total length of the main gully network in the entire catchment is 33.2 km from which the five sub-catchments account for 71 %. The mean gully density of 1.11 km km⁻² supports the evidence that here gullying is the major environmental threat. Half of the gully areal growth and three-quarters of the new landslide area occurred over the 1961–2012 period. Delayed deforestation peaking during 1830–1930 and land conversion to arable use resulted in severe soil erosion, high aggradation along the non-gullied valley bottoms, and severe gullying. The average gully head retreat rate over the last two centuries from four trunk continuous gullies is 14 m year⁻¹, and the sediment yield from gullying only accounted for 54–69 % of the sediment mass produced by water erosion. The evolution of gullies is linked to major land-use changes in the study area. Despite a decreasing tendency of gullying and catchment area over the last half century, gullying still remains problematically high in East Romania.

     

The local effect of intermittency on the inertial subrange energy spectrum of the atmospheric surface layer

Orthonormal wavelet expansions are applied to atmospheric surface layer velocity measurements. The effect of intermittent events on the energy spectrum of the inertial subrange is investigated through analysis of wavelet coefficients. The local nature of the orthonormal wavelet transform in physical space makes it possible to identify a relationship between the inertial subrange slope of the local wavelet spectrum and a simple indicator (i.e. the local variance of the signal) of local intermittency buildup. The slope of the local wavelet energy spectrum in the inertial subrange is shown to be sensitive to the presence of intermittent events. During well developed intermittent events (coherent structures), the slope of the energy spectrum is somewhat steeper than -5/3, while in less active regions the slope is found to be flatter than -5/3. When the slopes of local wavelet spectra are ensemble averaged, a slope of -5/3 is recovered for the inertial subrange.     

A hybrid deterministic and stochastic approach for tsunami hazard assessment in Iquique,Chile

Natural Hazards - This paper presents an investigation of the collapse of a 325-year-old multi-tiered heritage temple during the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal. The research comprises a...     

Environmental controls on the Late Holocene carbonate sedimentation of a karstic lake in the Middle‐Atlas Mountains (Lake Afourgagh,Morocco)

The Lake Afourgagh sediment record and facies successions provide an outstanding example of environmentally controlled carbonate sedimentation. Afourgagh is a small, shallow permanent lake located in the Middle‐Atlas Mountains in Morocco in a karstic context. It is fed by ground waters that are relatively enriched in Mg resulting from the leaching of the Jurassic dolomitic bedrock of the catchment. This eutrophic lake is episodically restricted and characterized by alkaline waters with a fluctuating high Mg/Ca ratio. The maximum extension of the Holocene shoreline coincides with evidence of a lake stabilization level corresponding to the outflow of the lake through a wadi. Lakeshore terrace sediments deposited on an alluvial fan siltstone during the past ca 2500 cal yr bp comprise four main facies: a littoral crust, palaeosols, palustrine silts and charophyte tufas, which reflect different environments from the shoreline toward the deeper water. In the more distal parts, the charophyte tufas display a well‐expressed lamination punctuated by the development of microstromatolites on algae thalli. The mineralogical composition of the carbonates is linked to the facies. While the charophyte tufas are characterized by a relatively high content in aragonite, in addition to low‐Mg calcite, the littoral crust is mainly composed of magnesite. This pattern is related to the evolving chemistry of water due to the influence of charophyte proliferation during dry summers. Calcium‐carbonate precipitation on algae thalli (both bioinduced and microbially mediated) progressively induces an increase in the Mg/Ca ratio of the lake water, while the capillary evaporation of shallow ground waters causes precipitation of a magnesite precursor on the shoreline, producing magnesite during early diagenesis. This effect is characteristic of two episodes: part of the Roman Warm Period and the beginning of the Dark Age Cold Period. The carbonate mineralogy of the different depositional sequences at Afourgagh indicates lake‐level and water‐chemistry fluctuations under a climatic influence. Therefore, among other regional records, the Lake Afourgagh sedimentary record provides useful evidence for reconstructing these environmental changes.     

Analytical solution for the response of a flexible retaining structure with an elastic backfill

An extension of an existing analytical solution for the response of a flexible retaining wall subjected to seismic loading is presented. The solution is based on the assumption that the wall and the soil remain elastic and that there are no shear stresses at the wall–soil interface while the contact remains tied. In addition to the wall displacements due to bending, the wall can experience rigid‐body motions due to rotation and horizontal and vertical movements. The solution is verified by comparing its results with those of a finite element method. Results from the analytical solution together with those of the (FEM) are used to identify and quantify the relative importance of key parameters on the seismic response of a wall. The study shows that wall flexibility and horizontal rigid‐body motions of the wall and frequency content of the seismic input have a significant effect on the wall loads. The pressures behind a rigid wall decrease as the wall rotates about its base, whereas for a flexible wall, the soil pressures decrease as the friction between the backfill and the wall increases. The rigid‐body vertical movements of a wall have little impact on the dynamic pressures induced in the wall, except for a flexible wall where, when prevented, the dynamic loads may be reduced. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Late Permian–Middle Jurassic lithospheric thinning in Peru and Bolivia, and its bearing on Andean-age tectonics

Integrated studies and revisions of sedimentary basins and associated magmatism in Peru and Bolivia (8–22°S) show that this part of western Gondwana underwent rifting during the Late Permian–Middle Jurassic interval. Rifting started in central Peru in the Late Permian and propagated southwards into Bolivia until the Liassic/Dogger, along an axis that coincides with the present Eastern Cordillera. Southwest of this region, lithospheric thinning developed in the Early Jurassic and culminated in the Middle Jurassic, producing considerable subsidence in the Arequipa basin of southern Peru. This 110-Ma-long interval of lithospheric thinning ended 160 Ma with the onset of Malm–earliest Cretaceous partial rift inversion in the Eastern Cordillera area.The lithospheric heterogeneities inherited from these processes are likely to have largely influenced the distribution and features of younger compressional and/or transpressional deformations. In particular, the Altiplano plateau corresponds to a paleotectonic domain of “normal” lithospheric thickness that was bounded by two elongated areas underlain by thinned lithosphere. The high Eastern Cordillera of Peru and Bolivia results from Late Oligocene–Neogene intense inversion of the easternmost thinned area.     

Changes in Climate and Crop Production During the 20th Century in Argentina

This work was focused on the assessment of changes occurring in crop production and climate during the 20th century in Argentina. The study was carried out for nine sites located in the Pampas region that are representative of contrasting environments. We have considered the four main crops cultivated in this area (wheat, maize, sunflower and soybean). Historical climatic data and crop production related variables (yield, planted area, harvested area) were analyzed and, by means of crop simulation models, we quantified the impact of climate on crop yields. Changes occurring in climate during the three last decades of the 20th century were characterized by important increases in precipitation especially between October and March, decreases in maximum temperature and solar radiation in particular during spring and summer and increases in minimum temperature during almost all of the year. These changes contributed to increases in yields, especially in summer crops and in the semiarid zone, mostly due to increases in precipitation, although changes in temperature and radiation also affected crop yields but to a lesser extent. Comparing the period 1950–1970 with 1971–1999, yields increases attributable to changes in climate were 38% in soybean, 18% in maize, 13% in wheat, and 12% in sunflower while mean observed yield increases were 110% for maize, 56% for wheat and 102% for sunflower.     

Assessment of the flash flood potential of Bâsca River Catchment (Romania) based on physiographic factors

The purpose of this paper is to identify areas with high flash-flood potential based on an evaluation of physiographic factors controlling the formation of surface runoff. The research method relies on the use of the Flash Flood Potential Index (FFPI), which incorporates physiographic characteristics from the catchment (terrain slope, profile curvature, land use and soil texture). The spatial distribution of the physiographic factors (which contribute to the creation, control and concentration within the drainage network of the overland flow) and the classified zoning of areas according to their hydrological response were achieved with GIS techniques. The results obtained show that physiographic factors on 227 sq km (29%) favor surface runoff on slopes and its localization towards the drainage network. Notably, the highest values of FFPI belong to the lower part of the catchment, where high human population density can be found, reflecting an increased vulnerability to floods and inundations of this area.     

Ejective and Sweeping Motions Above a Peatland and Their Role in Relaxed-Eddy-Accumulation Measurements and Turbulent Transport Modelling

The three turbulent velocity components, water vapour (\(\text {H}_2\text {O}\)), carbon dioxide (\(\text {CO}_{2}\)), and methane (\(\text {CH}_{4}\)) concentration fluctuations are measured above a boreal peatland and analyzed using conditional sampling and quadrant analysis. The overarching question to be addressed is to what degree lower-order cumulant expansion methods describe transport efficiency and the relative importance of ejections and sweeps to momentum, \(\text {CH}_{4}\), \(\text {CO}_{2}\) and \(\text {H}_2\text {O}\) fluxes across a range of atmospheric flow regimes. The patchy peatland surface creates distinctly different source and sink distributions for the three scalars in space and time thereby adding to the uniqueness of the set-up. The measured and modelled fractional contributions to the momentum flux show that sweep events dominate over ejections in agreement with prior studies conducted in the roughness sublayer. For scalar fluxes, ejections dominate the turbulent fluxes over sweeps. While ejective motions persist longer for momentum transport, sweeping events persist longer for all three scalars. Third-order cumulant expansions describe many of the results detailed above, and the results are surprising given the highly non-Gaussian distribution of \(\text {CH}_{4}\) turbulent fluctuations. Connections between the asymmetric contributions of sweeps and ejections and the flux-transport term arising in scalar turbulent-flux-budget closure are derived and shown to agree reasonably well with measurements. The proposed model derived here is much simpler than prior structural models used to describe laboratory experiments. Implications of such asymmetric contributions on, (i) the usage of the now proliferating relaxed-eddy-accumulation method in turbulent flux measurements, (ii) the constant-flux assumption, and (iii) gradient-diffusion closure models are presented.