An assessment study of heavy metal distribution within soil in upper course of Zarqa River basin/Jordan

Levels of heavy metals are found in soils and waters of the major tributary valleys of the Jordan Valley. Heavy metal content in soils irrigated by treated waste water were measured for a 40 km reach of Zarqa River. Soil samples from eight different sites along the upper course of this river were analyzed to determine the concentration of selected heavy metals (CO, Cr, Cu, Pb, Ni, Zn). Silt forms the major component of the soils with an average of 54%. Clay fractions show an increase with depth from 17 to 41%. Trends in particle size distribution and metal contents were compared across sample sites. Samples contained moderate to considerable levels of Pb and Ni. Concentrations of Cu and Cr ranged between 33–59 and 65–90 ppm, respectively. These values represent a slight to moderate class of pollution. The concentration of Cr shows a decrease with depth and distance from the waste water plant. Cu, Zn, and Ni show increasing concentrations with depth but Pb and CO do not. The concentrations of the measured heavy metals increases near the waste water treatment plant but decreases with distance from the plant due to precipitation in the stream bed and dilution with stream water. This decline in metal content with distance from the treatment plant suggests that most metals reaching floodplain soils may derive from the same source. Although current metal concentrations are low to moderate, floodplain surface soils in this area should be regarded as a potential source for future heavy metal pollution downstream.     

Diagenesis and reservoir quality analysis in the Lower Cretaceous Qishn sandstones from Masila oilfields in the Sayun–Masila Basin,eastern Yemen

Lower Cretaceous sandstones of the Qishn Formation have been studied by integrating sedimentological, petrological and petrophysical analyses from wells in the Masila oilfields of eastern Yemen. These analyses were used to define the origin, type of diagenesis and its relation to reservoir quality. The sandstones of the Qishn Formation are predominately quartz arenite to subarkose arenite with sublitharenite and quartz wackes displaying a range of porosities, averaging 22.33%. Permeability is likewise variable with an average of 2844.2 mD. Cementation coupled with compaction had an important effect on porosity destruction after sedimentation and burial. The widespread occurrence of early calcite cement suggests that the sandstones of the Qishn Formation lost significant primary porosity at an early stage of its diagenetic history. In addition to poikilotopic calcite, several different cements including kaolinite, illite, chlorite and minor illite–smectite occur as pore‐filling and pore‐lining cements, which were either accompanied by or followed the development of the early calcite cement. Secondary porosity development occurred due to partial to complete dissolution of early calcite cements and feldspar grains. The new data presented in this paper suggest the reservoir quality of Qishn sandstones is strongly linked to their diagenetic history; hence, the reservoir quality is reduced by clay minerals, calcite and silica cements but is enhanced by the dissolution of the unstable grains, in addition to partial or complete dissolution of calcite cements and unstable grains. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Auto-detection and integration of tectonically significant lineaments from SRTM DEM and remotely-sensed geophysical data

A set of techniques was developed for automatically detecting tectonic lineaments from multi-source remotely-sensed data at various scales. The techniques include adaptive shading of grid data to enhance linear features, a segment-tracing algorithm to extract line segments from the shaded grid data, grouping of the segments by concatenating short segments, and connecting them by proximity and co-linearity criteria to form a lineament that represents significant tectonic structure. B-spline smoothing was adopted for lineament representation. Finally, a technique for assessing the orientations and styles of faulting (normal, reverse, and strike-slip types) was developed for use in characterizing the extrapolated fracture planes. The applicability of the developed techniques was examined using 30 arc-second topography/bathymetry grids, 1-min gravity anomaly grids, and 2-min total field magnetic intensity grids covering Egypt and its surroundings. Lineaments derived from data types so diverse in composition and from various depths corresponded well with the referenced tectonic features over much of the region. Prominent trends and faulting styles of lineaments provided important clues as to the timing of their development as well as strong support for a structural inheritance model. Results demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed techniques combined with integration of remotely-sensed data in detecting regional fracture systems accurately and in characterizing geodynamics over a long timeframe.     

Spatio-temporal characterization of the Pliocene aquifer conditions in Wadi El-Natrun area,Egypt

Wadi El-Natrun area has recently undergone extensive urban and agricultural expansion. Due to the absence of natural surface irrigation supplies, the only source of water in the area is the Pliocene groundwater aquifer. As a result, secondary salinization from increased abstractions is the major threat to the groundwater aquifer. There is a dire need for efficient strategies to ensure long-term sustainability of the area’s productive agriculture. These strategies should be based on scientific spatio-temporal monitoring and analysis of the groundwater conditions that is also lacking. To capture the spatio-temporal variability in groundwater conditions, field measurements of total dissolved solids, electrical conductivity, pH, temperature, and water level as well as lab-based ionic composition were performed on 47 groundwater samples collected during 2006 and 2007. Determinations of the hydrochemical characteristics, water types, salt assemblages, and the sodium adsorption ratio were carried out on the samples. Reference data sets recorded in 1973 and 1997 were available for the area and were used to monitor the changes occurred in these periods. Geographic information system (GIS) was appraised for mapping and for integrated analysis of the different layers. Remotely sensed change detection techniques were applied to the Landsat TM and the ETM + imageries and used to highlight the extensive reclamation and urbanization and to find key trends for the alterations in the groundwater conditions and their spatial association with land covers. Results revealed a topographic depression-induced flow pattern, predominance of leaching and dissolution processes, the presence of saline lakes, over-pumping from the Pliocene aquifer, and temporal changes in land uses are the main factors combined to control the spatio-temporal variability in the groundwater. Results also clarified the presence of two: northwestern and southeastern zones that varied distinctively in their hydrodynamic and hydrochemical characteristics. The northwestern zone showed an average water level decline of 15 m, the water of which is brackish (av. 2,037 mg/l) with dominant Na⁺, Cl⁻ and SO₄ ²⁻ ions. The groundwater of this zone is characterized by high to very high salinity hazard and high to very high alkali hazard and is not recommended for irrigation on soils with poor drainage and without proper management for salinity control. The southeastern zone showed water level decline less than 2 m, the water of which is fresh (av. 424 mg/l) with major Na⁺, HCO₃ ⁻, Cl⁻, and SO₄ ²⁻ ions, and quality suitable for irrigation with medium to high salinity and low to medium alkali hazards. The article represents the first step towards an integrated management of Wadi El-Natrun groundwater resources within a GIS framework.     

Spaxel analysis: probing the physics of star formation in ultraluminous infrared galaxies

This paper presents a detailed spectral pixel (spaxel) analysis of the ten Luminous Infrared Galaxies (LIRGs) previously observed with the Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS), an integral field spectrograph mounted on the ANU 2.3 m telescope, and for which an abundance gradient analysis has already been presented by Rich et al. (Astrophys. J., 753:5, 2012). Here we use the strong emission line analysis techniques developed by Dopita et al. (Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., accepted, 2013) to measure the ionisation parameter and the oxygen abundance in each spaxel. In addition, we use the observed Hα flux to determine the surface rate of star formation ( $\mathrm {M}_{\odot }{\rm yr}^{-1}$ kpc^?2) and use the [S II] λλ6717/6731 ratio to estimate the local pressure in the ionised plasma. We discuss the correlations discovered between these physical quantities, and use them to infer aspects of the physics of star formation in these extreme star forming environments. In particular, we find a correlation between the star formation rate and the inferred ionisation parameter. We examine the possible reasons for this correlation, and determine that the most likely explanation is that the more active star forming regions have a different distribution of molecular gas which favour higher ionisation parameters in the ionised plasma.     

The continuum and line spectra of SGR 1806-20 bursts

The defining property of Soft Gamma Repeaters is the emission of short, bright bursts of X-rays and soft γ-rays. Here we present the continuum and line spectral properties of a large sample of bursts from SGR 1806-20, observed with the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) onboard the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). Using 10 trail spectral models (5 single and 5 two component models), we find that the burst continua are best fitted by the single component models: cutoff power-law, optically thin bremsstrahlung, and simple power-law. Time resolved spectroscopy show that there are two absorption lines at ∼5 keV and 20 keV in some bursts. The lines are relatively narrow with 90% upper limit on the line widths of 0.5–1.5 keV for the 5 keV feature and 1–3 keV for the 20 keV feature. Both lines have considerable equivalent width of 330–850 eV for the 5 keV feature and 780–2590 eV for the 20 keV feature. We examined whether theses spectral lines are dependent upon the choice of a particular continuum model and find no such dependence. Besides, we find that the 5 keV feature is pronounced with high confidence in the cumulative joint spectrum of the entire burst sample, both in the individual detectors of the PCA and in the co-added detectors spectrum. We confront the features against possible instrumental effects and find that none can account for the observed line properties. The two features do not seem to be connected to the same physical mechanism because (1) they do not always occur simultaneously, (2) while the 5 keV feature occurs at about the same energy, the 20 keV line centroid varies significantly from burst to burst over the range 18–22 keV, and (3) the centroid of the lines shows anti-correlated red/blue shifts. The transient appearance of the features in the individual bursts and in portions of the same burst, together with the spectral evolution seen in some bursts point to a complex emission mechanism that requires further investigation.      

Mapping flood susceptibility in an arid region of southern Iraq using ensemble machine learning classifiers: a comparative study

This study examined the efficacy of three machine ensemble classifiers, namely, random forest, rotation forest and AdaBoost, in assessing flood susceptibility in an arid region of southern Iraq. A dataset was created from flooded and non-flooded areas to train and validate the ensemble classifiers using a binary classification scheme (1—flood, 0—non-flood). The prepared dataset was then partitioned into two sets with a 70/30 ratio: 70% (2478 pixels) for training and 30% (1062 pixels) for testing. A total of 10 influential flood factors were selected and prepared based on data availability and a literature review. The selected factors were surface elevation, slope, plain curvature, topographic wetness index, stream power index, distance to rivers, drainage density, lithology, soil and land use/land cover. The information gain ratio was first utilised to explore the predictive abilities of the factors. The predictive performances of the three ensemble models were compared using six statistical measures: sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, kappa, root mean square error and area under the operating characteristics curve. The results revealed that the AdaBoost classifier was the best in terms of the statistical measures, followed by the random forest and rotation forest models. A flood susceptibility map was prepared based on the result of each classifier and classified into five zones: very low, low, moderate, high and very high. For the model with the best performance, i.e., the AdaBoost model, these zones were distributed over an area of 6002 km² (44%) for the very low–low zone, 2477 km² (18%) for the moderate zone and 5048 km² (40%) for the high–very high zones. This study proved the high capabilities of ensemble machine learning classifiers to decipher flood susceptibility zones in an arid region.     

Unsteady magnetic boundary-layer flow of power-law non-Newtonian conducting fluid through a porous medium past an infinite porous flat plate

In this paper, the nonsteady flow of non-Newtonian power-law conducting fluid through a porous medium past an infinite porous plate is investigated. The system is stressed by a constant transverse magnetic field. The velocity outside the boundary layer depends exponentially on time. The rheological effects are shown and discussed on the shear stress in terms of rheological parameter of power-law fluid. The approximate solution in a closed form were obtained by using the Galerkin method. Also the effect of the magnetic field and permeability parameter are discussed.     

The actualization of neoliberal space and the loss of housing affordability in Santa Monica,California

This paper reveals the contingent aspect associated with the actualization of a neoliberal space. The paper examines the material, institutional, and economic conditions necessary for a neoliberal agenda to transform its urban policy objectives into a material reality. The study follows changes in housing conditions in Santa Monica, California from 1990 to 2008. During this period, the confluence of three sets of events led to the actualization of a neoliberal space. First, housing damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake removed “dead capital” from the housing sector. Second, subsequent administrative actions at the local level and more importantly deregulation legislation at the state level eliminated rent control regulations and created market incentives that favored upscale development. Finally, the state’s economic recovery generated a substantial flow of private investments into the real estate market. These combined factors led not only to the dismantling of affordable housing in Santa Monica, but also to the erosion of residents’ and local authorities’ ability to manage housing choices and, consequently, to a historic restructuring of Santa Monica’s physical and social space. These changes had a disproportionately and negative effect on low-income and minority renters.     

Isotopic and chemical variation of organic nanoglobules in primitive meteorites

Organic nanoglobules are microscopic spherical carbon‐rich objects present in chondritic meteorites and other astromaterials. We performed a survey of the morphology, organic functional chemistry, and isotopic composition of 184 nanoglobules in insoluble organic matter (IOM) residues from seven primitive carbonaceous chondrites. Hollow and solid nanoglobules occur in each IOM residue, as well as globules with unusual shapes and structures. Most nanoglobules have an organic functional chemistry similar to, but slightly more carboxyl‐rich than, the surrounding IOM, while a subset of nanoglobules have a distinct, highly aromatic functionality. The range of nanoglobule N isotopic compositions was similar to that of nonglobular ¹⁵N‐rich hotspots in each IOM residue, but nanoglobules account for only about one third of the total ¹⁵N‐rich hotspots in each sample. Furthermore, many nanoglobules in each residue contained no ¹⁵N enrichment above that of bulk IOM. No morphological indicators were found to robustly distinguish the highly aromatic nanoglobules from those that have a more IOM‐like functional chemistry, or to distinguish ¹⁵N‐rich nanoglobules from those that are isotopically normal. The relative abundance of aromatic nanoglobules was lower, and nanoglobule diameters were greater, in more altered meteorites, suggesting the creation/modification of IOM‐like nanoglobules during parent‐body processing. However, ¹⁵N‐rich nanoglobules, including many with highly aromatic functional chemistry, likely reflect preaccretionary isotopic fractionation in cold molecular cloud or protostellar environments. These data indicate that no single formation mechanism can explain all of the observed characteristics of nanoglobules, and their properties are likely a result of multiple processes occurring in a variety of environments.