Cooling and exhumation of the oldest Sanqiliu uranium ore system in Motianling district,South China Block

The Sanqiliu uranium deposit belongs to a uranium ore system in Motianling district. It is the oldest uranium deposit in South China. Primary uranium mineralization occurred almost simultaneously with the emplacement of the host granites and subsequent dykes, and it has a relatively high grade of uranium (0.421%). We clarify the age of mineralization and investigate the cooling history through new pitchblende U–Pb and apatite fission‐track thermochronology. The pitchblende U–Pb results indicate that uranium mineralization occurred at ~801–759 Ma. Fractionation of uranium and lead at ~374–295 Ma is interpreted as remobilization and resetting of the original uranium. The Motianling area has apatite fission‐track ages of 57 to 18 Ma. By combining our results with previous work, we conclude that the deposit cooled slowly and was exposed at the surface during the Cenozoic. The timing and depth of exhumation helped to preserve and avoid erosion of the uranium deposit, and highlight the potential for regional uranium exploration.     

Experimental verification of seismic vibration control using a semi‐active friction tuned mass damper

A tuned mass damper (TMD) system consists of an added mass with properly functioning spring and damping elements for providing frequency‐dependent damping in a primary structure. The advantage of a friction‐type TMD, that is, a nonlinear TMD, is its energy dissipation via a friction mechanism. In contrast, the disadvantages of a passive friction TMD (PF‐TMD) are its fixed and predetermined slip load and loss of tuning and energy dissipation capabilities when it is in a stick state. A semi‐active friction TMD (SAF‐TMD) is used to overcome these disadvantages. The SAF‐TMD can adjust its slip force in response to structure motion. To verify its feasibility, a prototype SAF‐TMD was fabricated and tested dynamically using a shaking table test. A nonsticking friction control law was used to keep the SAF‐TMD activated and in a slip state in earthquakes at varying intensities. The shaking table test results demonstrated that: (i) the experimental results are consistent with the theoretical results; (ii) the SAF‐TMD is more effective than the PF‐TMD given a similar peak TMD stroke; and (iii) the SAF‐TMD can also prevent a residual TMD stroke in a PF‐TMD system. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

River Seepage Conductance in Large‐Scale Regional Studies

Flow exchange between surface and groundwater is of great importance be it for beneficial allocation and use of water resources or for the proper exercise of water rights. In large‐scale regional studies, most numerical models use coarse grid sizes, which make it difficult to provide an accurate depiction of the phenomenon. In particular, a somewhat arbitrary leakance coefficient in a third type (i.e., Cauchy, General Head) boundary condition is used to calculate the seepage discharge as a function of the difference of head in the river and in the aquifer, whose value is often found by calibration. A different approach is presented to analytically estimate that leakance coefficient. It is shown that a simple equivalence can be deduced from the analytical solution for the empirical coefficient, so that it provides the accuracy of the analytical solution while the model maintains a very coarse grid, treating the water‐table aquifer as a single calculation layer. Relating the empirical leakance coefficient to the exact conductance, derived from physical principles, provides a physical basis for the leakance coefficient. Factors such as normalized wetted perimeter, degree of penetration of the river, presence of a clogging layer, and anisotropy can be included with little computational demand. In addition the river coefficient in models such as MODFLOW, for example, can be easily modified when grid size is changed without need for recalibration.     

Scale effects on modelling the seismic signature of gas: results from an outcrop analogue

Numerous examples of reservoir fields from continental and marine environments involve thin‐bedded geology, yet, the inter‐relationship between thin‐bedded geology, fluid flow and seismic wave propagation is poorly understood. In this paper, we explore the 4D seismic signature due to saturation changes of gas within thin layers, and address the challenge of identifying the relevant scales and properties, which correctly define the geology, fluid flow and seismic wave propagation in the field. Based on the study of an outcrop analogue for a thin‐bedded turbidite, we model the time‐lapse seismic response to fluid saturation changes for different levels of model scale, and explore discrepancies in quantitative seismic attributes caused by upscaling. Our model reflects the geological complexity associated with thin‐bedded turbidites, and its coupling to fluid flow, which in turn affects the gas saturation distribution in space, and its time‐lapse seismic imprint. Rock matrix and fluid properties are modelled after selected fields to reproduce representative field models with realistic impedance contrasts. In addition, seismic modelling includes multiples, in order to assess their contribution in seismic propagation through thin gas layers. Our results show that multiples could contribute significantly to the measured amplitudes in the case of thin‐bedded geology. This suggests that forward/inverse modelling involving the flow simulation and seismic domains used in time‐lapse seismic interpretation should account for thin layers, when these are present in the geological setting.     

Locating a Community Recycling Center within a Residential Area: A Belgian Case Study

This article demonstrates the operation of a simple optimal location‐allocation technique for solving the problem of locating one or several community recycling center(s) within a residential area. The article attempts to measure both transportation and externality costs in comparable units, and to incorporate them into the model. A sensitivity analysis of the results at the level of the nuisance provides further insight into the operation of the model and the relative importance of the quantification of pollution in applied location‐allocation problems.     

Magnetostratigraphy of the Neogene Chaka basin and its implications for mountain building processes in the north‐eastern Tibetan Plateau

Magnetostratigraphy of sedimentary rock deposited in the Chaka basin (north‐eastern Tibetan Plateau) indicates a late Miocene onset of basin formation and subsequent development of the adjacent Qinghai Nan Shan. Sedimentation in the basin initiated at ～11 Ma. In the lower part of the basin fill, a coarsening‐upward sequence starting at ～9 Ma, as well as rapid sedimentation rates, and northward paleocurrents, are consistent with continued growth of the Ela Shan to the south. In the upper section, several lines of evidence suggest that thrust faulting and topographic development of the Qinghai Nan Shan began at ～6.1 Ma. Paleocurrent indicators, preserved in the basin in the proximal footwall of the Qinghai Nan Shan, show a change from northward to southward flow between 6.5 and 3.8 Ma. At the same location, sediment derived from the Qinghai Nan Shan appears at 6.1 Ma. Finally, the initiation of progressively shallowing dips observed in deformed basin strata and a change to pebbly, fluvial deposits at 6.1 Ma provide a minimum age for the onset of slip on the thrust fault that dips north‐east beneath the Qinghai Nan Shan. We interpret a decrease in sediment accumulation rates since ～6 Ma to indicate a reduction in Chaka basin accommodation space due to active faulting and folding along the Qinghai Nan Shan and incorporation of the basin into the wedge‐top depozone. Declination anomalies indicate the beginning of counter‐clockwise rotation since 6.1 Ma, which we associate with local deformation, not regional block rotation. The emergence of the Qinghai Nan Shan near the end of the Miocene Epoch partitioned the once contiguous Chaka‐Gonghe and Qinghai basin complex. In a regional framework, our study adds to a growing body of evidence that points to widespread initiation and/or reactivation of fault networks during the late Miocene across the north‐eastern Tibetan Plateau.     

Remote sensing methods to detect land‐use/cover changes in New Zealand's ‘indigenous’ grasslands

We compared four remote sensing methods to detect changes in New Zealand's grasslands (image differencing, normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) differencing post‐classification and visual interpretation). The visual interpretation resulted in the best classification results, with a 98% overall accuracy when compared with ground‐truthed data. The tests on automatic classification (image differencing, NDVI differencing) and post classification had much lower accuracies, ranging from 47% to 56%. In the New Zealand grassland landscape, automatic detection methods were not able to differentiate between variations of soil moisture and vegetation phenology from variations in land‐use change. This, in combination with topographic effects, which have hampered the automated mapping of vegetation, is the main reason why visual interpretation of high‐resolution imagery is still needed.     

Homogenization of spatial patterns of hydrologic response in artificially drained agricultural catchments

Anthropogenic modifications to the landscape, with agricultural activities being a primary driver, have resulted in significant alterations to the hydrologic cycle. Artificial drainage, including surface and subsurface drainage (tile drains), is one of the most extensive manipulations in agricultural landscapes and thus is expected to provide a distinct signature of anthropogenic modification. This study adopts a data synthesis approach in an effort to characterize the signature of artificial subsurface drainage. Daily discharge data from 24 basins across the state of Iowa, which encapsulate a range of anthropogenic modifications, are assessed using a variety of flow metrics. Results indicate that the presence of artificial subsurface drainage leads to a homogenization of landscape hydrologic response. Non‐tiled watersheds exhibit a decrease in the area‐normalized peak discharge and an increase in the baseflow ratio (baseflow/streamflow) with increases in the spatial scale, while scale invariance is apparent in tiled basins. Within‐basin variability in hydrograph recession coefficients also appears to decrease with increases in the proportion of the catchment that is artificially drained. Finally, the differences between tiled and non‐tiled landscapes disappear at scales greater than approximately 2200 km², indicating that this may be a threshold scale for studying the effects of tile drainage. This decrease in within‐basin variability and the scale invariance of hydrologic metrics in artificially drained watersheds are attributed to the creation of a bypass flow hydrologic pathway that bypasses the complexity of the catchment travel paths. Spatial homogeneity in responses implies that it may be possible to develop more parsimonious hydrologic models for these regions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flow Characteristics of Microbubble Suspensions in Porous Media as an Oxygen Carrier

Microbubble suspensions were generated as an oxygen carrier for aerobic biodegradation, and their flow characteristics in porous media were investigated. Commercial surfactants including sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), and dodecylethyldimethylammonium bromide (DEDAB), saponin (a natural surfactant), and collagen (a protein hydrolysate) were examined as base materials for generating microbubble suspensions. Among them, 2×CMC (critical micellar concentration) of SDS, DEDAB, and saponin developed microbubble suspensions with the highest gas hold‐up and half‐drainage time. Visualization of the flow patterns in sand showed that the microbubble suspensions were separated into a liquid and gas phase directly after injection, showing much faster movement of liquid phase flow. The gas front of the microbubble suspensions flowed in a plug‐flow manner, particularly in cases of SDS and DEDAB. The experimental results from both homogeneous and heterogeneous cells confirmed that the microbubble flow could overcome the heterogeneity in porous media. However, the plug‐flow characteristics and flow propagation of the microbubble suspensions to the low‐permeability zone was accompanied by a large pressure drop, which needs to be considered for future field application.     

Column restraint in post‐tensioned self‐centering moment frames

Gaps between beam‐to‐column interfaces in a post‐tensioned (PT) self‐centering frame with more than one column are constrained by columns, which causes beam compression force different from the applied PT force. This study proposes an analytical method for evaluating column bending stiffness and beam compression force by modeling column deformation according to gap‐openings at all stories. The predicted compression forces in the beams are validated by a cyclic analysis of a three‐story PT frame and by cyclic tests of a full‐scale, two‐bay by first‐story PT frame, which represents a substructure of the three‐story PT frame. The proposed method shows that compared with the strand tensile force, the beam compression force is increased at the 1st story but is decreased at the 2nd and 3rd stories due to column deformation compatibility. The PT frame tests show that the proposed method reasonably predicts beam compression force and strand force and that the beam compression force is 2 and 60% larger than the strand force with respect to a minor restraint and a pin‐supported boundary condition, respectively, at the tops of the columns. Therefore, the earlier method using a pin‐supported boundary condition at upper story columns represents an upper bound of the effect and is shown to be overly conservative for cases where a structure responds primarily in its first mode. The proposed method allows for more accurate prediction of the column restraint effects for structures that respond in a pre‐determined mode shape which is more typical of low and mid‐rise structures. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.