The Gondwanan Carboniferous-Permian Boundary Revisited: New Data from Australia and Argentina

The identification and correlation of the Carboniferous-Permian (Gzhelian-Asselian) boundary within the sedimentary sequences of Gondwana has always been a topic of debate. Type latest Carboniferous and earliest Permian marine sequences are characterised by warm tropical faunas and come from the Uralian Region of Russia and Kazakhstan. Faunas include conodonts and fusulinid foraminiferids which are prime tools for correlation. Such faunal groups are absent from most Gondwanan sequences where reliance for correlations must be placed primarily on brachiopods, bivalve molluscs and palynology. The Western Australian marine sequences, with their contained ammonoids, provide a pivotal link for the dating and correlating of Early Permian Gondwanan sequences with those of the type regions and their palynostratigraphical record is essential for trans-Australian correlations and correlations elsewhere throughout Gondwanaland.New data from the fully cored DM Tangorin DDHl bore hole, drilled in the Cranky Corner Basin, New South Wales, Australia, reveals a sequence of descending faunal zones. The stratigraphically highest zone with Eurydesrna cordaturn, encompasses the Late Sakmarian (Sterlitamakian). The middle zone with Torniopsis elongata, Sulciplica c r a m and Trigonotreta tangorini straddles the Sterlitamakian-Tastubian boundary, with the palynomorphs Pseudoreticulatispora pseudoreticulata high in the zone and Granulatisporites confluens low in the zone. An impoverished fauna with Trigonotreta nov., low in the Granulatisporites confluens Zone, is probably of latest Asselian or Tastubian age.Significant new data from Argentina has revealed marine faunas from below the occurrence of Granulatisporites confluens. These are considered to be of Asselian age. Outcrops of the Tupe Formation, with a marine fauna, at La Herradura Creek in the western Paganzo Basin, San Juan Province, are best regarded as being of mid to late Asselian age. The Tupe Fauna has been recognised as the Tivertonia jachalensis-Streptorhynchus inaequiornatus Zone. Previously, this fauna was considered to be of Late Carboniferous or Stephanian age. Three faunal associations are known from the Rio del Peii6n Formation, Rio Blanco Basin, La Rioja Province. The middle assemblage with Tivertonia, Costaturnulus, Kochiproductus and Trigonotreta, appears to correlate well with the Tupe Formation fauna. The lower assemblage, with Streptorhynchus, Etherilosia, Costaturnulus, Trigonotreta and a punctate spiriferid, as well as indeterminate productids, probably of Early Asselian age. The youngest assemblage includes a species ofRhynchopora that is close to Rhynchopora australasica from the latest Asselian-early Tastubian of Western Australia. The marine biostratigraphical data from Argentina has enabled a much greater understanding of the earliest Permian marine faunas to be achieved - a story that is apparently absent from the other cold and cool temperate regions of Gondwana.     

London MIST 2004

The annual one-day meeting of the MIST (Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar–Terrestrial) community was held in November 2004 at Burlington House, with contributions on data and ideas ranging from Cassini to Cluster, with stops at many experiments in between.     

Sediment Distribution Around Glacially Abraded Bedrock Landforms (Whalebacks) at Lago Tranquilo, Chile

Whalebacks are convex landforms created by the smoothing of bedrock by glacial processes. Their formation is attributed to glacial abrasion either by bodies of subglacial sediment sliding over bedrock or by individual clasts contained within ice. This paper reports field measurements of sediment depth around two whaleback landforms in order to investigate the relationship between glacigenic deposits and whaleback formation. The study site, at Lago Tranquilo in Chilean Patagonia, is situated within the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ice limits. The two whalebacks are separated by intervening depressions in which sediment depths are generally 0.2 to 0.3 m. Two facies occur on and around the whalebacks. These facies are: (1) angular gravel found only on the surface of the whalebacks, interpreted as bedrock fracturing in response to unloading of the rock following pressure release after ice recession, and (2) sandy boulder‐gravel in the sediment‐filled depressions between the two whalebacks, interpreted as an ice‐marginal deposit, with a mixture of sediment types including basal glacial and glaciofluvial sediment. Since the whalebacks have heavily abraded and striated surfaces but are surrounded by only a patchy and discontinuous layer of sediment, the implication is that surface abrasion of the whalebacks was achieved primarily by clasts entrained in basal ice, not by subglacial till sliding.     

Uncertainty in adaptive capacity

The capacity to adapt is a critical element of the process of adaptation: it is the vector of resources that represent the asset base from which adaptation actions can be made. Adaptive capacity can in theory be identified and measured at various scales, from the individual to the nation. The assessment of uncertainty within such measures comes from the contested knowledge domain and theories surrounding the nature of the determinants of adaptive capacity and the human action of adaptation. While generic adaptive capacity at the national level, for example, is often postulated as being dependent on health, governance and political rights, and literacy, and economic well-being, the determinants of these variables at national levels are not widely understood. We outline the nature of this uncertainty for the major elements of adaptive capacity and illustrate these issues with the example of a social vulnerability index for countries in Africa. To cite this article: W.N. Adger, K. Vincent, C. R. Geoscience 337 (2005).     

Effective livelihood adaptation to climate change disturbance: Scale dimensions of practice in Mozambique

Natural resource-dependent societies in developing countries are facing increased pressures linked to global climate change. While social-ecological systems evolve to accommodate variability, there is growing evidence that changes in drought, storm and flood extremes are increasing exposure of currently vulnerable populations. In many countries in Africa, these pressures are compounded by disruption to institutions and variability in livelihoods and income. The interactions of both rapid and slow onset livelihood disturbance contribute to enduring poverty and slow processes of rural livelihood renewal across a complex landscape. We explore cross-scale dynamics in coping and adaptation response, drawing on qualitative data from a case study in Mozambique. The research characterises the engagements across multiple institutional scales and the types of agents involved, providing insight into emergent conditions for adaptation to climate change in rural economies. The analysis explores local responses to climate shocks, food security and poverty reduction, through informal institutions, forms of livelihood diversification and collective land-use systems that allow reciprocity, flexibility and the ability to buffer shocks. However, the analysis shows that agricultural initiatives have helped to facilitate effective livelihood renewal, through the reorganisation of social institutions and opportunities for communication, innovation and micro-credit. Although there are challenges to mainstreaming adaptation at different scales, this research shows why it is critical to assess how policies can protect conditions for emergence of livelihood transformation.     

Climate change and human activities: a case study in Xinjiang, China

We examined both long-term climate variability and anthropogenic contributions to current climate change for Xinjiang province of northwest China. Xinjiang encompasses several mountain ranges and inter-mountain basins and is comprised of a northern semiarid region and a more arid southern region. Climate over the last three centuries was reconstructed from tree rings and temperature series were calculated for the past 50 years using weather station data. Three major conclusions from these analyses are: (1) Although temperature varied considerably in Xinjiang over the last 200 years, it was non-directional until the last 50 years when a substantial warming trend occurred; (2) The semiarid North Xinjiang was representative of the northern hemisphere climate, while the more arid South Xinjiang resembled the southern hemisphere climate, meanwhile, (3) The entire Xinjiang province captured the global-scale climate signal. We also compared human contributions to global change between North and South Xinjiang, including land cover/land use, population, and greenhouse gas production. For both regions, urban areas acted as heat islands; and large areas of grassland and forest were converted to barren land, especially in North Xinjiang. Additionally, North Xinjiang also showed larger increase in population and greenhouse gas emissions mainly associated with animal production than those in South Xinjiang. Although Xinjiang province is a geographically coupled mountain–basin system, the two regions have distinct climate patterns and anthropogenic activities related to land cover conversion and greenhouse gas production.     

Analysis of the surface temperature and wind forecast errors of the NCAR-AirDat operational CONUS 4-km WRF forecasting system

Investigating the characteristics of model-forecast errors using various statistical and object-oriented methods is necessary for providing useful guidance to end-users and model developers as well. To this end, the random and systematic errors (i.e., biases) of the 2-m temperature and 10-m wind predictions of the NCAR-AirDat weather research and forecasting (WRF)-based real-time four-dimensional data assimilation (RTFDDA) and forecasting system are analyzed. This system has been running operationally over a contiguous United States (CONUS) domain at a 4-km grid spacing with four forecast cycles daily from June 2009 to September 2010. In the result an exceptionally useful forecast dataset was generated and used for studying the error properties of the model forecasts, in terms of both a longer time period and a broader coverage of geographic regions than previously studied. Spatiotemporal characteristics of the errors are investigated based on the 24-h forecasts between June 2009 and April 2010, and the 72-h forecasts between May and September 2010. It was found that the biases of both wind and temperature forecasts vary greatly seasonally and diurnally, with dependency on the forecast length, station elevation, geographical location, and meteorological conditions. The temperature showed systematic cold biases during the daytime at all station elevations and warm biases during the nighttime above 1,000 m above sea level (ASL), while below 600 m ASL cold biases occurred during the nighttime. The forecasts of surface wind speed exhibited strong positive biases during the nighttime, while the negative biases were observed in the spring and summer afternoons. The surface wind speed was mostly over-predicted except for the stations located between 1,000 and 2,100 m ASL, for which negative biases were identified for most forecast cycles. The highest wind-speed errors were found over the high terrain and near sea-level stations. The wind-direction errors were relatively large at the high-terrain elevation in the Rocky and Appalachian mountain ranges and the western coastal areas and the error structure exhibited notable diurnal variability.     

The Vulnerability of the Australian Beef Industry to Impacts of the Cattle Tick (Boophilus microplus) under Climate Change

An integrated assessment is presented of the potential impacts of the cattle tick (Boophilus microplus Canestrini) on the Australian beefindustry under climate change. The project was carried out as a case study to test an impact assessment approach that was designed to integrate biological, production and socio-economic impacts on managed and natural systems. A climate-driven, tick population model was run for European, zebu and crossbred cattle breeds having different levels of resistance to cattle ticks. A geographical information system (GIS) was used to organise spatial data on climate scenarios and industry statistics and to undertake regional analyses.A comparison was made of the two available approaches to conducting impact assessments, namely a bottom-up approach using sensitivity analysis and a top-down approach using climate change scenarios from a global circulation model (GCM) (CSIRO, 1996). The output, in terms of the abundance of tick populations and reductions in cattle productivity for each breed showed significant expansions in potential geographical impacts. In the absence of any adaptation measures, the results indicated changes in the losses in live weight gain of cattle tick ranging from 7780 tonnes per year by 2030 to 21637 tonnes per year by 2100, in comparison with estimates for current losses of 6594 tonnes per year.The principal adaptation options available to the beef industry are to switch to breeds that are more resistant to cattle ticks, or to increase the frequency of treatments with various tick control products. In this paper we focus on switching breeds as an adaptive measure when appropriate damage thresholds are triggered under the climate change scenarios. When adaptation measures were put in place, the losses ranged from 4962 tonnes in 2030 to 5619 tonnes in 2100 compared with 2636 tonnes at present if all producers adopted the optimal breed structure. Optimal breed structure was defined as one that would prevent tick numbers per animal exceeding 100 ticks per animal for European and 700 ticks per animal for crossbred breeds of cattle in any week of the year under a tick control strategy that was suitable for present climatic conditions. The lower threshold for European breeds reflects their vulnerability to explosive increases in numbers because of their low resistance to ticks. The results of the analyses using the GCM scenarios were used in an economic model to calculate costs of lost live-weight gain for 2030, 2070 and 2100. The greatest increases in costs were incurred in the southern parts of the current distribution in Queensland and potentially in northern New South Wales if the present quarantine barrier failed.Given the great uncertainty of the nature of possible regional changes in climate, analyses of the sensitivity of losses in live weight gain to changes in climatic variables were also undertaken. The analyses included a measure of likely impacts of cattle tick on the beef cattle industry, in the absence of adaptation measures, as a baseline measure of sensitivity. The likely impacts on crossbred cattle were insensitive to the climatic variables.When adaptive breed changes were allowed, the economic impacts on the industry were insensitive to the GCM scenarios. This suggests that, at least in this instance, reducing the uncertainties in climate change scenarios is not a priority if the adaptation strategies can be implemented in a cost-effective manner. Finally we made a qualitative assessment of the sustainability and robustness of alternative approaches to adaptation and assessed regional vulnerability to cattle tick under climate change. The conclusions were so strongly dependent on assumptions about the future of other global changes, in particular the ability to maintain quarantine barriers and to retain effective acaricides at comparable costs to the present, that we strongly recommend that risk assessments of climate change extend to all relevant variables in involved in global change where possible.     

东北黑土区保护性耕作的发展现状与成效研究

东北黑土区承担着国家粮食安全“稳压器”的重要责任。然而,由于长期超负荷开发利用导致黑土日益退化,黑土资源的永续利用受到严重制约。理论与实践证明,保护性耕作是保护黑土地、推动黑土耕地质量和耕作效益绿色增长的发展模式。综述了保护性耕作的基本内涵及其在东北黑土区的发展现状与技术概况,从保护性耕作在土壤保持、保墒效益、结构改善、固碳培肥和土壤生物多样性增加、节本增效等方面系统评估了东北黑土区实施保护性耕作后的生态与经济效益,提出黑土区实施保护性耕作存在的问题与未来发展方向,以促进黑土地保护与利用协调发展、推动保护性耕作高质量跨越式发展。