Nocturnal behavior of gulls in coastal New Jersey

We studied the behavior of gulls at night with an image intensifier telescope to determine whether they were active at night, and the extent of their foraging in coastal habitats of New Jersey in the summer, fall, and winter of 1989–1990. Regression models and Kruskal-Wallis tests indicated that date, time of day, tide, cloud cover, moon phase, and study location all influenced variations in the presence and nocturnal activities of gulls. For each site and species, an, average of 48–88% of the nocturnal surveys recorded gulls foraging or flying about. More laughing gulls (Larus atricilla) foraged at night at Brigantine Beach compared to ring-billed gulls (L. delawarensis) at the northern New Jersey sites. However, more gulls were flying about at the Raritan River site compared to the other places. We suggest that more laughing gulls fed at night compared to ring-billed gulls because the former were breeding. Breeding gulls spend half their time incubating or caring for chicks, and thus might have time constraints on foraging during the day. Laughing gulls foraged at all times of the night on some surveys, but were more frequent around midnight, and the number of flying laughing gulls decreased after 0200 hours. Ring-billed gulls, however, seemed to be equally active all night. Our data indicate that gulls can be active all night, and in all habitats.     

The effect of human disturbance on foraging behavior and habitat use in piping plover (Charadrius melodus)

Piping plovers breed in coastal areas where they experience intense competition with man. I studied habitat use (using transects) and foraging behavior (using focal animals) at three habitats on each of three nesting beaches over a 2-yr period (1988–1989) in New Jersey, USA, to understand how plovers use space. Piping plovers forage along in tidal oceanfront, in the dunes, and in backbays, and their relative use of tehse habitats partially depends on the presence of people. Within each habitat the plovers select sites that contain fewer people than the habitat as a whole. The time devoted to vigilance (when they are not searching for food) is directly related to the number of people near them, and to the overall human use of that habitat. Thus, in habitats with few people the plovers can spend 90% of their foraging time actively searching for prey and feeding, whereas on beaches with many people they may spend less than 50% of their foraging time in direct feeding behaviors. A diversity of habitats allows the birds to move between habitats to minimize interactions with people and maximize the time devoted to foraging. The results suggest that it is critical to maintain high habitat diversity in coastal environments to help mitigate competition with people.     

Les auditeurs polonais des cours de minéralogie de René Just Haüy au Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle,Paris

The paper analyses a list of thirty-four Poles, listeners to the mineralogy lectures given by R.-J. Haüy at MNHN in Paris. These students played an important role in the history of Polish Earth Sciences (S. Staszic and F. Drzewiński), but also in other scientific fields (J. Markowski, I. Ab?amowicz, F. Drzewiński, M.A. Paw?owicz, J.K. Skrodzki, E.K. Nowicki), and even in political and cultural life of Poland (A. Downarowicz, J. Weyssenhoff, S. Plater, J. Bieliński, F. Potocki). This paper presents later relations between R.-J. Haüy and his Polish students. A possibility of the Poles' attendance to mineralogy lectures given at other Parisian scientific institutions, like the ‘École des mines’ and the ‘College de France’, is also discussed. To cite this article: R. Tarkowski, P. Daszkiewicz, C. R. Geoscience 338 (2006).     

Moment magnitude determination of local seismic events recorded at selected Polish seismic stations

The paper presents the method of local magnitude determination used at Polish seismic stations to report events originating in one of the four regions of induced seismicity in Poland or its immediate vicinity. The method is based on recalculation of the seismic moment into magnitude, whereas the seismic moment is obtained from spectral analysis. The method has been introduced at Polish seismic stations in the late 1990s but as of yet had not been described in full because magnitude discrepancies have been found between the results of the individual stations. The authors have performed statistics of these differences, provide their explanation and calculate station corrections for each station and each event source region. The limitations of the method are also discussed. The method is found to be a good and reliable method of local magnitude determination provided the limitations are observed and station correction applied.     

Characteristics and dynamics of multiple intertidal bars,north Lincolnshire,England

Multiple intertidal bars and troughs, often referred to as ‘ridges and runnels’, are significant features on many macrotidal sandy beaches. Along the coastline of England and Wales, they are particularly prevalent in the vicinity of estuaries, where the nearshore gradient is gentle and a large surplus of sediment is generally present. This paper examines the dynamics of such bar systems along the north Lincolnshire coast. A digital elevation model of the intertidal morphology obtained using LIDAR demonstrates that three to five intertidal bars are consistently present with a spacing of approximately 100 m. The largest and most pronounced bars (height = 0·5–0·8 m) are found around mean sea level, whereas the least developed bars (height = 0·2–0·5 m) occur in the lower intertidal zone. Annual aerial photographs of the intertidal bar morphology were inspected to try to track individual bars from year to year to derive bar migration rates; however, there is little resemblance between concurrent photographs, and ‘resetting’ of the intertidal profile occurs on an annual basis. Three‐dimensional beach surveys were conducted monthly at three locations along the north Lincolnshire coast over a one‐year period. The intertidal bar morphology responds strongly to the seasonal variation in the forcing conditions, and bars are least numerous and flattest during the more energetic winter months. Morphological changes over the monthly time scale are strongly affected by longshore sediment transport processes and the intertidal bar morphology can migrate along the beach at rates of up to 30 m per month. The behaviour of intertidal bars is complex and varies over a range of spatial and temporal scales in response to a combination of forcing factors (e.g. incident wave energy, different types of wave processes, longshore and cross‐shore sediment transport), relaxation time and morphodynamic feedback. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ionospheric specification and forecasting based on observations from European ionosondes participating in DIAS project

There are two main objectives of the DIAS (European Digital Upper Atmosphere Server) project. First, it establishes a pan-European repository of raw and derived digital data describing the state of ionospheric part of the upper atmosphere, which is capable of ingesting real-time information and maintaining historical data collections provided by most operating ionospheric stations in Europe. Second, the DIAS system produces and distributes, based on the raw data collection, several operational products required by various user groups for ionospheric nowcasting, prediction and forecasting purposes. The project completed on May 2006 and the DIAS server operates since then continuously. The basic products that are delivered are real-time and historical ionograms from all DIAS-affiliated ionospheric stations, frequency plots and maps of the ionosphere over Europe based on the foF2, M(3000)F2, MUF and electron density parameters, as well as long term prediction and short term forecasting up to 24 hour ahead. The paper describes use of the ionospheric measurements in the DIAS modelling techniques for specification, predict-tion and forecasting of the ionosphere over the European region, and details the final products available to the DIAS user community.     

The Prograde C7 Resonance for Earth and Mars Satellite Orbits

The resonance C7 is a 1:1 eccentricity (apsidal) resonance between the longitude of a satellite's pericentre and the mean longitude of the Sun. A previous paper by the author (Breiter, 1999) identified it as the strongest of the lunisolar apsidal resonances. After the reduction to a single degree of freedom, the problem is studied qualitatively for the prograde orbits around the Earth and Mars. Pitchfork, saddle-node, and saddle connection bifurcations give rise to a complicated phase flow, which may involve up to nine critical points. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Explicit Symplectic Integrator for Rotating Satellites

An explicit symplectic integrator is constructed for the problem of a rotating planetary satellite on a Keplerian orbit. The spin vector is fixed perpendicularly to the orbital plane. The integrator is constructed according to the Wisdom-Holman approach: the Hamiltonian is separated in two parts so that one of them is multiplied by a small parameter. The parameter depends on the satellite’s shape or the eccentricity of its orbit. The leading part of the Hamiltonian for small eccentricity orbits is similar to the simple pendulum and hence integrable; the perturbation does not depend on angular momentum which implies a trivial ‘kick’ solution. In spite of the necessity to evaluate elliptic function at each step, the explicit symplectic integrator proves to be quite efficient. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Application of turning bands technique to simulate values of copper ore deposit parameters in Rudna mine (Lubin-Sieroszowice region in SW part of Poland)

ABSTRACT

The turning bands simulation is a valuable and highly useful tool in solving various geological-mining, environmental and geological-engineering problems when it is essential to determine the uncertainty of the estimates of simulated values Z_s (realizations) and assess the risk. This paper presents an investigative methodology and the results of calculations connected with the use of conditional turning bands simulation and bundled indicator kriging, making it possible to analyse the risk at different levels of uncertainty in the solution of optimization of the exploitation problems encountered in the mining of the polymetallic copper ore deposits in the Lubin-Sieroszowice region (Foresudetic monocline, the SW part of Poland). Examples of the evaluation of simulated values Z_s and probability P average values Z* of the deposit parameters within the block located in the Rudna Mine (the block R-3) area are provided.