The redox state of cerium in basaltic magmas: an experimental study of iron-cerium interactions in silicate melts

Ce(IV)-Ce(III) and Fe(III)-Fe(II) redox equilibria in Ca-Mg-Al-silicate melts have been individually measured with respect to the base composition, melt temperature, imposed oxygen fugacity, and multivalent element concentration (up to about 1.5 wt%). The mutual interaction of these two redox couples has been studied in analogous glasses which simultaneously contained iron and cerium. Analyses of Fe(III) concentrations in iron-cerium glasses by electron paramagnetic resonance and optical absorption spectroscopy indicate that Ce(IV) is stoichiometrically reduced by Fe(II) in the melt to produce Fe(III) and Ce(III) and that Ce(III)-O-Fe(III) complexes are formed in the melt. Consequently, it is concluded that cerium exists only as Ce(III) in basaltic magmas; cerium anomalies cannot be ascribed to the stabilization of Ce(IV) in magmas.     

Spatial and seasonal variability of polygonal tundra water balance: Lena River Delta, northern Siberia (Russia)

The summer water balance of a typical Siberian polygonal tundra catchment is investigated in order to identify the spatial and temporal dynamics of its main hydrological processes. The results show that, besides precipitation and evapotranspiration, lateral flow considerably influences the site-specific hydrological conditions. The prominent microtopography of the polygonal tundra strongly controls lateral flow and storage behaviour of the investigated catchment. Intact rims of low-centred polygons build hydrological barriers, which release storage water later in summer than polygons with degraded rims and troughs above degraded ice wedges. The barrier function of rims is strongly controlled by soil thaw, which opens new subsurface flow paths and increases subsurface hydrological connectivity. Therefore, soil thaw dynamics determine the magnitude and timing of subsurface outflow and the redistribution of storage within the catchment. Hydraulic conductivities in the elevated polygonal rims sharply decrease with the transition from organic to mineral layers. This interface causes a rapid shallow subsurface drainage of rainwater towards the depressed polygon centres and troughs. The re-release of storage water from the centres through deeper and less conductive layers helps maintain a high water table in the surface drainage network of troughs throughout the summer.     

Geological control of shallow gas and pockmarks in the Norwegian Channel; high resolution shallow subbottom profiling of small scale features

High resolution bathymetric and fine-scale parametric subbottom profiling along a line to the SW of Stavanger, Norway near the NE flank of the Norwegian Channel, show pockmarks clustered over neotectonic shallow fold structures in Quaternary sediments. Detailed profiles of the pockmarks indicate that they are collapsed gas seeps, rather than being collapse structures that followed doming and breaching with a more dramatic gas burst. The gentle folding and weak structures along the margin of a Mesozoic through Cenozoic sedimentary basin are probably due to differential uplift generating light compressional strain.     

Model based analysis of lateral and vertical soil carbon fluxes induced by soil redistribution processes in a small agricultural catchment

Soil redistribution on arable land significantly affects lateral and vertical soil carbon (C) fluxes (caused by C formation and mineralization) and soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. Whether this serves as a (C) sink or source to the atmosphere is a controversial issue. In this study, the SPEROS‐C model was modified to analyse erosion induced lateral and vertical soil C fluxes and their effects upon SOC stocks in a small agricultural catchment (4·2 ha). The model was applied for the period between 1950 and 2007 covering 30 years of conventional tillage (1950–1979) followed by 28 years of conservation tillage (1980–2007). In general, modelled and measured SOC stocks are in good agreement for three observed soil layers. The overall balance (1950–2007) of erosion induced lateral and vertical C fluxes results in a C loss of ?4·4 g C m^–2 a^–1 at our test site. Land management has a significant impact on the erosion induced C fluxes, leading to a predominance of lateral C export under conventional and of vertical C exchange between soil and atmosphere under conservation agriculture. Overall, the application of the soil conservation practices, with enhanced C inputs by cover crops and decreased erosion, significantly reduced the modelled erosion induced C loss of the test site. Increasing C inputs alone, without a reduction of erosion rates, did not result in a reduction of erosion induced C losses. Moreover, our results show that the potential erosion induced C loss is very sensitive to the representation of erosion rates (long‐term steady state versus event driven). A first estimate suggests that C losses are very sensitive to magnitude and frequency of erosion events. If long‐term averages are dominated by large magnitude events modelled erosion induced C losses in the catchment were significantly reduced. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Space Package: Tight Integration between Space and Semantics

Interpretation of spatial features often requires combined reasoning over geometry and semantics. We introduce the Space package, an open source SWI‐Prolog extension that provides spatial indexing capabilities. Together with the existing semantic web reasoning capabilities of SWI‐Prolog, this allows efficient integration of spatial and semantic queries and provides an infrastructure for declarative programming with space and semantics. There are few systems that provide indexing and reasoning facilities for both spatial and semantic data. A common solution is to combine separate semantic reasoning and geospatial services. Such loose coupling has the disadvantage that each service cannot make use of the statistics of the other. This makes optimization of such a service‐oriented architecture hard. The SWI‐Prolog Space and Semantic web packages provide a native Prolog interface to both spatial and semantic indexing and reasoning, which makes it easy to write combined query optimizers. Another advantage of the Space package is that it allows declarative logic programming, which means in practice that you say what you want to compute instead of how to compute it. The actual indexing machinery is encapsulated inside Prolog predicates. In this article we describe the interface of the Space package, compare its functionality to alternative software libraries, and show how to work with it using three example applications. These example illustrations include reasoning over movement patterns, dynamically loading geospatial linked data off the semantic web, and setting up a simple KML server.