Groundwater recharge through an alluvial fan in the Atacama Desert,northern Chile: mechanisms,magnitudes and causes

The Chacarilla fan in the Atacama Desert is one of several formed in the Late Miocene at the foot of the Pre‐Andean Cordillera overlying the large, complex, Pampa Tamarugal aquifer contained in the continental clastic sediments of the fore‐arc basin. The Pampa Tamarugal aquifer is a strategic source of water for northern Chile but there is continuing doubt over the resource magnitude and recharge. During January 2000 a 1 in 4 year storm in the Andes delivered a 34 million m³ flash flood to the fan apex where c. 70% percolated to the underlying aquifers. Groundwater recharge through the fan is calculated to be a minimum of 200 l/s or 6% of the long‐term catchment rainfall. These figures are supported by hydrochemical data that suggest that recharge may be 9% of long‐term rainfall. Isotopic data suggest groundwater less than 50 years old is transmitted westward through the permeable sheetflood sediments of the fan overlying the main aquifer. Analysis of this and other events shows that the hydrological system is non‐linear with positive feedback. The magnitude of groundwater recharge is dependent on climatic variations, antecedent soil moisture storage and changes in channel characteristics. Long‐term declines in groundwater level may partly result from climatic fluctuations and the causes of such fluctuations are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exhumation during oblique transpression: The Feiran–Solaf region, Egypt

The Feiran–Solaf metamorphic complex of Sinai, Egypt, is one of the highest grade metamorphic complexes of a series of basement domes that crop out throughout the Arabian-Nubian Shield. In the Eastern Desert of Egypt these basement domes have been interpreted as metamorphic core complexes exhumed in extensional settings. For the Feiran–Solaf complex an interpretation of the exhumation mechanism is difficult to obtain with structural arguments as all of its margins are obliterated by post-tectonic granites. Here, metamorphic methods are used to investigate its tectonic history and show that the complex was characterized by a single metamorphic cycle experiencing peak metamorphism at ∼700–750 °C and 7–8 kbar and subsequent isothermal decompression to ∼4–5 kbar, followed by near isobaric cooling to 450 °C. Correlation of this metamorphic evolution with the deformation history shows that peak metamorphism occurred prior to the compressive deformation phase D ₂, while the compressive D ₂ and D ₃ deformation occurred during the near isothermal decompression phase of the P–T loop. We interpret the concurrence of decompression of the P–T path and compression by structural shortening as evidence for the Najd fault system exhuming the complex in an oblique transpressive regime. However, final exhumation from ∼15 km depth must have occurred due to an unrelated mechanism.     

Statistical control chart for regime identification in volcanic time series

In an important paper, Mulargia et al. (1987) address the importance of quantitative and objective identification of different regimes of a volcano. They develop a procedure based on the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) statistic. The K-S test is a general-purpose test that discriminates between two data sets as belonging to two different regimes based on their empirical distribution functions. The empirical distribution function is designed to describe the aggregate behavior of the volcanic activity, and it is constructed from the orders of the length of the collected repose times in each data set. In this article, we use the idea of statistical process control to distinguish between the variation inherent in the observed repose times and the extraordinary variation that signals a real change in the regimes. We construct a table of control limits, and we demonstrate the procedure of regime identification based on a simple control chart. It shows a point outside the control limits almost as soon as the process enters a new regime. The basis of the statistical process control mechanism is a simple Poisson process, which is state of the art. The proposed control charting procedure is an eruption by eruption procedure, which follows the original chronological order of the eruptions. This procedure is applied to the eruptive history of the Mount Etna volcano. The application shows schematically that the procedure presents a visual interpretation of the identified regimes and can be practically translated for tabular or manual use.     

Shock metamorphism on the moon

Shock metamorphism of the lunar samples is discussed. All types of lunar glasses formed by various-size collision-type impact are found as impact glass, ropy glass and agglutinates. The agglutinates bonded by crystal and glassy materials contain hydrogen and helium from the solar wind components. Lunar shocked minerals of plagioclase and silica show anomalous compositions and densities. There are typical two formation processes on planetary materials formed by shock events; that is (1) shocked quartz formed by silica-rich target rocks (esp. on evolved planets of the Earth and Mars), and (2) shocked silica with minor Al contents formed from plagioclase-rich primordial crusts of the Moon. The both shocked silica grows to coarse-grain normal crystals after high-temperature metamorphism which cannot distinguish the original main formation event of impact process.     

Stochastic models for the completeness of stratigraphic sections

Properties of stratigraphic completeness are determined here from a Brownian motion model of sediment accumulation. This avoids flaws inherent in application of a discrete-time random walk to the time span, rather than thickness, of sediment layers. Both discrete and continuous models show that the concept of stratigraphic completeness is meaningful only when the time scale is specified. From the discrete model, not surprisingly, completeness improves with increasing relative frequency and average thickness of depositional increments and the error of completeness estimation should decrease for longer sections. The continuous model shows that two dimensionless products determine the probability that a given time interval will be recorded by some preserved sediment. The first is the ratio of the age of the interval to its time span; the second is the product of the square root of the time span and ratio of the mean to the standard deviation of accumulation rate. Expected completeness is the average of these probabilities for all successive intervals of the given time span. For long sections, completeness may be estimated from the second dimensionless product alone. The two dimensionless products are sufficient to predict the relationship of accumulation rate to time span, the distribution of bed thickness, and the weak association of completeness and section thickness.     

APPEARANCE PATTERN OF TOOTH GERMS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS IN MYLOPHARYNGODON PICEUS

The pharyngeal dental formula of Mylopharyngodon piceus is 4-5 as a rule, and the dentition isasymmetrical. It is difficult to identify each tooth in the larval dentition. In this paper the appearancepattem of tooth germ with developmental process in this fish is described in detail. The formationpattern of the left dentition is contrasted with that of the right one. In the developmental process,the left pharyngeal dentition lacks teeth at position An3. Thus the left dentition is D-type as designatedby Nakajima(1984), while the right one is A-type.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: Marine Resources of Kuwait: Their Role in the Development of Non-oil Resources . Fatimah H. Y. al -Abdul -Razzak Recollections of a Revolution: Geography as Spatial Science . Mark Billinge , Derek Gregory and Ron Martin Entre l'Eden et l'Utopie . Luc Bureau Developments in Political Geography . M. A. Busteed The Elements of Graphing Data . William S. Cleveland Rural Resource Management . Paul J. Cloke and Chris C. Park Third World Atlas . Ben Crow and Alan Thomas Exploitation, Conservation, Preservation: A Geographic Perspective on Natural Resource Use . Susan L. Cutter , Hilary Lambert Renwick, and William H. Renwick . Wine Regions of the Southern Hemisphere . Harm Jan de Blij Regional Development: Problems and Policies in Eastern and Western Europe . George Demko The Geographer at Work . Peter R. Gould Change in the Amazon Basin . John Hemming Geography Since the Second World War . R. J. Johnston and P. Claval Urbanization in China: Town and Countryside in a Developing Economy 1949–2000 A.D. , R. J. R. Kirkby Transport and Communications for Pacific Microstates: Issues in Organisation and Management . Christopher C. Kissling Fluvial Forms and Processes . David Knighton The Urban Millennium . Josef W. Konvitz Technological Transition in Cartography . Mark Stephen Monmonier Field Guide to Soils and the Environment: Applications of Soil Surveys . Gerald W. Olson Northern Australia: The Arenas of Life and Ecosystems on Half a Continent . Don Parkes A Killing Rain: The Global Threat of Acid Rain . Thomas Pawlick From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850–1931 . Donald J. Pisani Hybrid Maize Diffusion in Kenya . Franz -Michael Rundquist Warning and Response to the Mount St. Helens Eruption . Thomas F. Saarinen and James L. Sell Coastal Geomorphology in Australia . B. G. Thom Tropical Rain Forests of the Far East , 2nd ed . T. C. Whitmore The Dark Side of the Earth . Robert Muir Wood Categorical Data Analysis for Geographers and Environmental Scientists , Neil Wrigley     

Temporal and spatial rupture process of the great Kunlun Mountain Pass earthquake of November 14, 2001 from the GDSN long period waveform data

The temporal and spatial rupture process of the 14 November 2001 Kunlun Mountain Pass earthquake (KMPE) is obtained by inverting the high signal-to-noise-ratio P-waveform data of vertical components of 20 stations with epicentral distances less than 90°, which are of Global Digital Seismogragh Network (GDSN). The inverted results indicate that the KMPE consists of 3 sub-events. The rupture of the first sub-event initiated at the instrumental epicenter (35.97°N, 90.59°E) and then propagated both westwards and eastwards, extending 140 km westwards at the speed of 4.0 km/s and 80 km eastwards at the speed of 2.2 km/s, which appeared to be an asymmetrical bilateral rupture dominantly from east to west. This sub-event formed a 220-km-long fault. Fifty-two seconds after initiation of the first sub-event, at which time the first sub-event was not over but in its healing phase, the rupture of the second sub-event initiated 220 km west of the epicenter and propagated both westwards and eastwards, extending 50     

Melt inclusion analysis of the Unzen 1991–1995 dacite: implications for crystallization processes of dacite magma

Dacitic magma, a mixture of high-temperature (T) aphyric magma and low-T crystal-rich magma, was erupted during the 1991–1995 Mount Unzen eruptive cycle. Here, the crystallization processes of the low-T magma were examined on the basis of melt inclusion analysis and phase relationships. Variation in water content of the melt inclusions (5.1–7.2 wt% H₂O) reflected the degassing history of the low-T magma ascending from deeper levels (250 MPa) to a shallow magma chamber (140 MPa). The ascent rate of the low-T magma decreased markedly towards the emplacement level as crystal content increased. Cooling of magma as well as degassing-induced undercooling drove crystallization. With the decreasing ascent rate, degassing-induced undercooling decreased in importance, and cooling became more instrumental in crystallization, causing local and rapid crystallization along the margin of the magma body. Some crystals contain scores of melt inclusions, whereas there are some crystals without any inclusions. This heterogeneous distribution suggests the variation in the crystallization rate within the magma body; it also suggests that cooling was dominant cause for melt entrapment. Numerical calculations of the cooling magma body suggest that cooling caused rapid crystal growth and enhanced melt entrapment once the magma became a crystal-rich mush with evolved interstitial melt. The rhyolitic composition of melt inclusions is consistent with this model.Editorial responsibility: H Shinohara