Vegetation and environmental conditions in the Doñana Natural Park coastal area (SW Iberia) at the beginning of the last glacial cycle

Detailed reconstructions of the vegetation of Iberia during the last glacial inception are rare due to the limited number of terrestrial sites recording this period. Active retreat of El Asperillo cliff, located on the Atlantic coast of southwestern Iberia, has exposed a fossil organic level dating back to one of the early stades of the last glacial cycle. Pollen and macrofossil analyses from this site show that the Doñana area was covered mainly by steppic vegetation; temperate trees survived the coldest periods, albeit in reduced numbers. Mediterranean taxa are extremely reduced, in contrast with other dry areas of southern Iberia over this time span. This vegetation suggests cold and arid climatic conditions, in accordance with paleoclimatic reconstructions based on several Atlantic marine cores.     

Spatial analysis of the impact of shrimp culture on the coastal wetlands on the Northern coast of Sinaloa, Mexico

In the Mexican coasts, as in many tropical and subtropical coastal areas, shrimp culture grew exponentially over the last three decades. This process has produced an intense debate on the economic benefits but also about the extent and intensity of the impact of this activity on the coastal ecosystems, particularly the effects of pond construction on mangrove areas and other coastal wetlands. For the Northern coast of Sinaloa (Northwest Mexico), a region where shrimp culture is actively practiced and reproduces most of the shrimp controlled production model in Mexico, a land cover change-detection analysis, with Landsat images, outputs that 75% of the shrimp farming in this region has been built on saltmarshes while less than 1% was constructed on mangrove areas. Through the estimation of landscape metrics for different scenarios (with and without shrimp culture infrastructure), we find that in addition to direct removal of saltmarshes, shrimp aquaculture has significantly modified the spatial patterns of coastal wetlands, retreating wetland borders and fragmenting their patches. These last impacts are mainly related with the development of the linear infrastructure associated with shrimp culture (drainage channels and roads), rather than the construction of the ponds. Present findings and other from similar studies done in Northwest Mexico; allow us to estimate that 60% of shrimp farming in Mexico impacted directly on saltmarshes, contrasting with the 3% of shrimp farms built on mangroves.     

Soil erosion rates in rangelands of northeastern Patagonia: A dendrogeomorphological analysis using exposed shrub roots

Soil erosion is an important process of land degradation in many rangelands and a significant driver of desertification in the world's drylands. Dendrogeomorphology is an alternative to traditional methods for determining soil erosion rate. Specifically, the vertical distance between the upper portion of exposed roots and the actual soil surface can be used as a bioindicator of erosion since plant establishment. In this study, we determined (i) the soil erosion rate from exposed roots of the dwarf shrub Margyricarpus pinnatus [Lam.] Kuntze in two ecological sites in the northeastern rangelands of Patagonia and (ii) the relationship between shrub age and upper root diameter. We selected two ecological sites, a pediment-like plateau and a flank pediment, where the dominant soils were Xeric Haplocalcids and Xeric Calciargids, respectively. The soil erosion rates in the pediment-like plateau and in the flank pediment were 2.4 and 3.1 mm yr^− 1, respectively. Data clearly indicate a high rate of soil erosion during the mean 8-year life span of the dwarf shrubs in degraded patches, which represent ~ 10% of surface cover in the study area. Simple linear regression analysis yielded a highly significant predictive model for age estimation of M. pinnatus plants using the upper root diameter as a predictor variable. The measurement of ground lowering against datable exposed roots represents a simple method for the determination of soil erosion rates. In combination with other soil surface features, it was used to infer the episodic nature of soil erosion. This approach could be particularly useful for monitoring the effects of land management practices on recent soil erosion and for the establishment of records in regions where historical data regarding this process are scarce or absent.     

Tectonics of an extinct ridge-transform intersection,Drake Passage (Antarctica)

New swath bathymetric, multichannel seismic and magnetic data reveal the complexity of the intersection between the extinct West Scotia Ridge (WSR) and the Shackleton Fracture Zone (SFZ), a first-order NW-SE trending high-relief ridge cutting across the Drake Passage. The SFZ is composed of shallow, ridge segments and depressions, largely parallel to the fracture zone with an `en echelon' pattern in plan view. These features are bounded by tectonic lineaments, interpreted as faults. The axial valley of the spreading center intersects the fracture zone in a complex area of deformation, where N120° E lineaments and E–W faults anastomose on both sides of the intersection. The fracture zone developed within an extensional regime, which facilitated the formation of oceanic transverse ridges parallel to the fracture zone and depressions attributed to pull-apart basins, bounded by normal and strike-slip faults.On the multichannel seismic (MCS) profiles, the igneous crust is well stratified, with numerous discontinuous high-amplitude reflectors and many irregular diffractions at the top, and a thicker layer below. The latter has sparse and weak reflectors, although it locally contains strong, dipping reflections. A bright, slightly undulating reflector observed below the spreading center axial valley at about 0.75 s (twt) depth in the igneous crust is interpreted as an indication of the relict axial magma chamber. Deep, high-amplitude subhorizontal and slightly dipping reflections are observed between 1.8 and 3.2 s (twt) below sea floor, but are preferentially located at about 2.8–3.0 s (twt) depth. Where these reflections are more continuous they may represent the Mohorovicic seismic discontinuity. More locally, short (2–3 km long), very high-amplitude reflections observed at 3.6 and 4.3 s (twt) depth below sea floor are attributed to an interlayered upper mantle transition zone. The MCS profiles also show a pattern of regularly spaced, steep-inclined reflectors, which cut across layers 2 and 3 of the oceanic crust. These reflectors are attributed to deformation under a transpressional regime that developed along the SFZ, shortly after spreading ceased at the WSR. Magnetic anomalies 5 to 5 E may be confidently identified on the flanks of the WSR. Our spreading model assumes slow rates (ca. 10–20 mm/yr), with slight asymmetries favoring the southeastern flank between 5C and 5, and the northwestern flank between 5 and extinction. The spreading rate asymmetry means that accretion was slower during formation of the steeper, shallower, southeastern flank than of the northwestern flank.     

Late Pleistocene–Holocene environmental and climatic history of a freshwater paramo ecosystem in the northern Andes

This study presents the first multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic history for northern South America based on the palaeolimnological reconstruction of a pond located in a dry paramo at 3570 masl. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the study area was under glacial conditions, then during global events Heinrich Stadial 1 (HS1), Bølling–Allerød (BA), and the Younger Dryas (YD), the pond expanded, accumulation rates and proxies for erosion reached the highest values, indicative of humid conditions, with maxima in humidity during the BA and YD. Dry conditions and pond desiccation occurred in the Greenlandian–Northgrippian and by 6010 cal a bp the area was transformed into the mire of today. Comparisons with records from other sites in South America indicate that changes in humidity are most likely controlled by the Intertropical Convergence Zone, mainly during the glacial and postglacial, and by changes in the Pacific Ocean, more pronounced after the YD.     

Nonlinear magneto-acoustic waves in the solar atmosphere

The weakly nonlinear evolution of quasi-isentropic magnetoacoustic waves in the solar atmosphere is analyzed. The plasma is assumed to be initially homogeneous, in thermal equilibrium and with a straight and homogeneous magnetic field frozen in. Additionally, the plasma is assumed to be cooled by the standard cooling function in the range of 10⁴ K<T<10⁷ K and heated by a mechanism which is proportional to the density and temperature. The range of temperature where the plasma is isentropically unstable, the e-folding time for thermal instability and the corresponding time and length-scale for wave breaking are found.     

Micropalaeontological record of Holocene estuarine and marine stages in the Corgo do Porto rivulet (Mira River, SW Portugal)

The Corgo do Porto is a small tributary of the Mira River, outleting 3.5 km upstream of its mouth. The valley is flat-floored due to terrigenous siltation and forms an alluvial plain reclaimed for agriculture/aquaculture. These conditions were quite distinct in the recent past because of extensive marine flooding of this area during the high-rate positive eustatism that followed the Last Glacial Maximum. The Holocene sedimentary column registers changes imposed by several forcing factors, mainly the climate-driven sea-level rise. As part of a multidisciplinary study, the sedimentological and micropalaeontological (benthic foraminifera and calcareous nannofossils) contents of a core taken from this infill were analyzed, and five different stages were distinguished within its environmental evolution: Stage A (prior to 10,000 cal yrs BP) consists of muddy, matrix-supported sand with abundant pebbles, barren of microfossils, and free of carbonates and organic matter that represents a fluvial environment contemporaneous of a low sea level. Between 10,000 and circa 4000 cal yrs BP the sediment is made of homogeneous mud, with bioclasts and organic matter. However, the assemblages of foraminifera and calcareous nannoplankton allowed the identification of several environmental stages, defining a cycle of increasing–decreasing marine influence inside the valley: brackish and brackish-marine sedimentation (Stage B), full-marine sedimentation (Stage C) and a return to brackish-marine sedimentation (Stage D). The final part of the core is barren of microfossils (Stage E) and it represents the modern sedimentation in the area with an accreting alluvial plain. This Holocene sedimentary sequence reflects an evolutionary succession that closely agrees with the palaeoenvironmental model previously presented by the authors elsewhere for the south-western Portuguese coast, where a change in the rate of sea-level rise has been recorded at around 5500 cal yrs BP when a very effective sandy barrier formed and isolated restricted brackish to fresh-water lagoonal environments from the open sea.     

Propagating of sound and thermal waves in a reacting fluid

The propagation of linear sound and thermal waves in a reacting fluid, in which the heating and cooling processes can be represented by a heat-loss functionL(, T, is studied. A complex dispersion relation is found, from which the phase velocity and the scale length for damping (or amplification), of the above two-wave mode are calculated Wave amplification may occur in reacting locally stable fluids. Results are applied to a hydrogen plasma model assumed to be heated at a non-specified constant rate and cooled by recombination, excitation, and ionization by collisions, and free-free transitions. The phase velocity , the scale-length for damping , and the relevant relaxation times are calculated as functions of the dimensionless frequency , for temperatures ranging from those at which the hydrogen plasma is neutral to those at which it becomes completely ionized.