Further aspects of weak shock theory applied to the solar chromosphere

The low chromosphere now seems definitely to require mechanical heating, and dissipation of initially acoustic waves by shocking is one of the most promising possibilities. Results of recent calculations indicate that the weak shock theory may be applicable here, but discrepancies exist among various applications of this theory, and the explanations offered to date are not completely satisfactory. It is shown here that the different approximations used by different authors to evaluate the mechanical flux integral play an important role in producing these discrepancies, in addition to the already well known effects of the density scale heights and the wave periods. Arguments are presented favoring Ulmschneider's method for evaluation of this flux integral.     

Interdependent development? Problems of aggregation and implementation in the Brandt report

This paper argues that the Brandt Report's central concept of ‘mutuality’ is too imprecise and too impotent to serve as a useful guide to practical action on behalf of the Third World's poor. It is suggested that these shortcomings result from three, related, flaws in the Report's construction—a conceptual flaw, a modelling flaw, and a political flaw. To the extent that these failings are reproduced, too, in the wider geographical paradigm of interdependent development, geographers might draw a useful lesson from a critique of the Brandt Report.     

Influence of aquifer properties on phytoremediation effectiveness

Recent research has shown that planting deep-rooted trees, such as poplar, can take up and degrade important ground water pollutants such as trichloroethylene (TCE) as they transpire water from the capillary fringe of shallow contaminated aquifers. The effect of hydrogeologic factors on the minimum plantation area needed to prevent downgradient migration of contaminated ground water is not well known. Accordingly, the objective of this research was to identify the hydrogeologic parameters that control phytoremediation effectiveness. We used a numerical ground water flow model to evaluate the effect that natural variations in hydrogeologic parameters and growing season duration have on the minimum plantation area required for capture. We found that the plantation area that was needed to completely capture a ground water contamination plume was directly proportional to aquifer horizontal hydraulic conductivity, saturated thickness, and ground water gradient. The plantation area needed for capture increased nonlinearly with increasing plume width, aquifer anisotropy, and decreasing growing season duration. The plantation area needed for capture was generally insensitive to aquifer-specific yield and storativity. Steady-state simulations can be used to predict the plantation area needed for capture in many applications. A particularly important finding of this work is that evapotranspiration fluxes through plantations appropriately sized to contain the plume substantially exceeded the ground water flux through the plume itself.     

Feature based image processing methods applied to bathymetric measurements from airborne remote sensing in fluvial environments

Bathymetric maps produced from remotely sensed imagery are increasingly common. However, when this method is applied to fluvial environments, changing scenes and illumination variations severely hinder the application of well established empirical calibration methods used to obtain predictive depth–colour relationships. In this paper, illumination variations are corrected with feature based image processing, which is used to identify areas in an image with a near‐zero water depth. This information can then be included in the depth–colour calibration process, which results in an improved prediction quality. The end product is an automated bathymetric mapping method capable of a 4 m² spatial resolution with a precision of ±15 cm, which allows for a more widespread application of bathymetric mapping. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Microbial ecology of the stratified water column of the Black Sea as revealed by a comprehensive biomarker study

The stratified water column of the Black Sea is partitioned into oxic, suboxic, and euxinic zones, each characterized by different biogeochemical processes and by distinct microbial communities. In 2003, we collected particulate matter by large volume in situ filtration at the highest resolution to date for lipid biomarker analysis and bacterioplankton for enumeration of major prokaryotic groups. Abundances of several prokaryotic groups were estimated using CARD-FISH probes specific for Bacteria, Archaea (Crenarchaeota and Euryarchaeota), epsilonproteobacteria (mainly sulfide oxidizers) and sulfate reducing bacteria. We also measured a wide range of bacterial and archaeal lipid biomarkers. Depth distributions of diagnostic biomarkers are matched with zonation of microbial processes, including aerobic bacterial oxidation of methane, oxidation of ammonium by bacteria and archaea, metal reduction, and sulfide oxidation at the chemocline, and bacterial sulfate reduction and anaerobic oxidation of methane by archaea in the anoxic zone. Cell densities for archaea and sulfate reducing bacteria are estimated based on water column biomarker concentrations and compared with CARD-FISH results.     

Using Strong Solar Coronal Emission Lines as Coronal Flux Proxies

We investigate the possibility that strong EUV lines observed with the Goddard Solar EUV Rocket Telescope and Spectrograph (SERTS) provide good proxies for estimating the total coronal flux over shorter wavelength ranges. We use coordinated SERTS and Yohkoh observations to obtain both polynomial and power-law fits relating the broad-band soft X-ray fluxes to the intensities of Fexvi 335 Ú and 361 Ú, Fexv 284 Ú and 417 Ú, and Mgix 368 Ú measured with SERTS. We found that the power-law fits best cover the full range of solar conditions from quiet Sun through active region, though not surprisingly the cooler Mgix 368 Ú line proves to be a poor proxy. The quadratic polynomial fits yield fair agreement over a large range for all but the Mgix line. However, the linear fits fail conspicuously when extrapolated into the quiet-Sun regime. The implications of this work for the Heii 304 Ú line formation problem are also briefly considered.