Tracking the paleogene India-Arabia plate boundary

The location of the India-Arabia plate boundary prior to the formation of the Sheba ridge in the Gulf of Aden is a matter of debate. A seismic dataset crossing the Owen Fracture Zone, the Owen Basin, and the Oman Margin was acquired to track the past locations of the India-Arabia plate boundary. We highlight the composite age of the Owen Basin basement, made of Paleocene oceanic crust drilled on its eastern part, and composed of pre-Maastrichtian continental and oceanic crust overlaid by ophiolites emplaced in Early Paleocene on its western side. A major fossil transform fault system crossing the Owen Basin juxtaposed these two slivers of lithosphere of different ages, and controlled the uplift of marginal ridges along the Oman Margin. This transform system deactivated ∼40 Myrs ago, coeval with the onset of ultra-slow spreading at the Carlsberg Ridge. The transform boundary then jumped to the edge of the present-day Owen Ridge during the Late Eocene-Oligocene period, before seafloor spreading began at the Sheba Ridge. This migration of the plate boundary involved the transfer of a part of the Indian oceanic lithosphere formed at the Carlsberg Ridge to Arabia. This Late Eocene-Oligocene tectonic episode at the India-Arabia plate boundary is synchronous with a global plate reorganization event corresponding to geological events at the Zagros and Himalaya belts. The Owen Ridge uplifted later, in Late Miocene times, and is unrelated to any major migration of the India-Arabia boundary.     

Seafloor magnetic lineation off the Otway/West Tasmania Basins: ridge jumps and the subsidence history of the southeast Australian margins

The seafloor off the Otway/West Tasmanian Basins has an east‐west magnetic lineation attributable to seafloor spreading and notionally identified with the set of seafloor spreading anomalies A8‐A20. Anomaly A20 (45 Ma) lies immediately south of a magnetic quiet zone that extends northward past the continent‐ocean boundary (COB). The Southeast Indian Ocean has a constant angular width between the formerly conjugate margins of Australia and Antarctica, consistent with spreading that started along the entire margin about 96 Ma.The proximity of A20 to the Australian COB in some spreading ridge segments is therefore postulated as due to jumps of the spreading ridge to Australia with concomitant transfer of the older oceanic part of the Australian Plate to the Antarctic Plate. Accordingly, the age of the oldest seafloor at the COB in seven original ridge segments is estimated to step from about 96 to 82, 79, and 75 Ma. Break‐up marks a change in the subsidence of the margin from rapid, during rifting by continental extension, to slow during thermal subsidence of the seafloor. Subsequent ridge jumps to the COB are expected to cause uplift or at least still‐stand of the adjacent continental margin. The subsidence history of the Otway/West Tasmanian margin, as indicated by oil exploration wells, is sympathetic with the timing of the postulated ridge jumps in the adjacent seafloor, as is that of the Great Australian Bight Basin with adjacent seafloor to the west, and of the Bass and Gippsland Basins with the Tasman Sea adjacent to the east. The growth of structure at 80 Ma in the outer Gippsland Basin corresponds with a jump to Australia of the Tasman Sea ridge at 82 and 75 Ma, and at 65 Ma in the Great Australian Bight and Otway Basins to a ridge jump to Australia of the adjacent seafloor. The growth of structure at 60 Ma in the Bass Basin and at 55 Ma in the Gippsland Basin corresponds with the abandonment of the Tasman Sea ridge at A24 (55 Ma) during a re‐organization of spreading in the southwest Pacific.     

Relative importance of climate,topography, and habitats for breeding wetland birds with different latitudinal distributions in the Czech Republic

Given species' vulnerability to climate change, land use change, and habitat loss, it is pertinent to examine how the distribution of a particular species is related to those factors. We assessed the use of climate, habitat, and topography data for modeling the distributions of 14 central European wetland birds, and compared the relative importance of these factors among bird groups with differing latitudinal distributions in Europe. We used the Third Atlas of Breeding Birds in the Czech Republic as a source of species distribution data. Variables were derived from Corine Land Cover, WorldClim, and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data. Hierarchical partitioning and multiple logistic models identified climatic, topographical, and habitat predictors as important determinants of distribution for each of the species under study. However, the relative contributions of particular variables differed among the species. Climatic, topographical, and habitat factor groups also differed in their importance to latitudinal species groups. Our results indicated that wetland birds with range margins close to the Czech Republic were potentially limited by two different factors: climate conditions impact the southerly distributed species and the availability of suitable habitat affects the northerly distributed species. The accuracy of the study models varied from fair to high (the area under curve values was 0.60–0.89) and revealed negative correlations with the relative occurrence area. In this study, we propose that any difference in model performance is more attributable to data characteristics than to a species' geographical characteristics.     

Trends in rainfall and temperature in the Peruvian Amazon–Andes basin over the last 40 years (1965–2007)

The hydroclimatology of the Peruvian Amazon–Andes basin (PAB) which surface corresponding to 7% of the Amazon basin is still poorly documented. We propose here an extended and original analysis of the temporal evolution of monthly rainfall, mean temperature (T_mean), maximum temperature (T_max) and minimum temperature (T_min) time series over two PABs (Huallaga and Ucayali) over the last 40 years. This analysis is based on a new and more complete database that includes 77 weather stations over the 1965–2007 period, and we focus our attention on both annual and seasonal meteorological time series. A positive significant trend in mean temperature of 0.09 °C per decade is detected over the region with similar values in the Andes and rainforest when considering average data. However, a high percentage of stations with significant T_mean positive trends are located over the Andes region. Finally, changes in the mean values occurred earlier in T_max (during the 1970s) than in T_min (during the 1980s). In the PAB, there is neither trend nor mean change in rainfall during the 1965–2007 period. However, annual, summer and autumn rainfall in the southern Andes presents an important interannual variability that is associated with the sea surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic Ocean while there are limited relationships between rainfall and El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. On the contrary, the interannual temperature variability is mainly related to ENSO events. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling production of migratory catfish larvae (Pimelodidae) on the basis of regional hydro‐ climatology features of the Madre de Dios Basin in southeastern Peru

A simple stochastic model is presented to describe the influence of the natural flow regime of the Madre de Dios River (southeastern Peru) on the presence and downstream transportation of catfish larvae (Siluriformes: Pimelodidae), an important migratory species in commercial fisheries in the Peruvian Amazon region. One year of daily river stage records were related to weekly larval catches to determine the association between floods and spawning events, and based on the hydro‐climatologic characteristics of Andean‐Amazon regions, available long‐term historical rainfall records were used to determine the inter‐annual variability of floods within the Madre de Dios Basin. Major larval drift occurred during the high water season, specifically in association with stages of over 5 m, which served as an indicator triggering spawning responses of these species, termed a ‘biologically significant event’ (BSE). Timing of these BSEs, estimated from the historical rainfall records, described a uniform distribution during the wet season, and their inter‐arrival times were exponentially distributed. These observations provided the basis of the stochastic model describing the likelihood of larvae releases from this headwater region to the lowland Amazon. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The persistence and role of basin structures on the 3D architecture of the Marañón Fold-Thrust Belt,Peru

The 3D architecture of fold-thrust belts commonly involves thin-skinned and thick-skinned deformation. Both thick- and thin-skinned deformation styles have been suggested to occur in the Marañón Fold-Thrust Belt (MFTB) in Peru, but the relative timing and strain partitioning associated with them are not well understood. We demonstrate that inherited basement structures along the Peruvian convergent margin reactivated during the evolution of the MFTB. We present results from field mapping, interpretation of remote sensing imagery, and cross section construction and restoration. The results show that the Chonta Fault, a median pre-folding basin normal fault, was inverted and acted as a mechanical buttress during initial east-vergent contraction of the fold-thrust belt. This fault separates the belt into two domains of distinctly different structural styles. During the Eocene, units to the west of the Chonta Fault deformed by folding, using the fault as a buttress, and subsequently propagated eastward by thin-skinned thrusting. This was followed in the Miocene by west-vergent, basement-involved deformation, which overprinted the earlier east-vergent, thin-skinned structures. The proposed tectonic model of the MFTB highlights the role of basement-fault reactivation during orogenesis and the involvement of deep structures in partitioning deformation styles.     

秘鲁南部Morrito铁矿矿体变化程度分析

Morrito铁矿严格受断裂构造控制,在空间上的厚度、品位有较大变化。利用统计学的方法,研究了矿脉厚度、品位的变化系数,对矿体的资源/储量估算及开采都有重要意义。对矿体厚度及品位变化系数的分析认为,矿体形态变化程度属"简单";矿体有用组分分布属"均匀";矿体倾向变化大于走向变化,并表现为不明显的方向性变化。     

秘鲁国金属矿成矿带

秘鲁国金属成矿带划分依据为秘鲁境内的主要断层系统、有利成矿作用的岩性及矿化年代、已发现226个矿床(点)的地质特征和空间分布,共划分为24个成矿带。本文对每个成矿带的名称、分布、控矿地层、构造、岩浆岩及成矿时间逐一进行论述,并列出成矿带里典型矿床名称、资源量及品位情况。     

首钢秘鲁马尔科纳铁矿区磁异常的数据处理

首钢秘鲁马尔科纳铁矿位于南半球低纬度地区,地磁场对磁性体的磁化以水平磁化为主,磁性体产生的ΔT异常与中国的△T异常特征差别很大,国内常用的化极方法在此类地区的应用文献少见,使用不当很难取得良好效果,虽然化赤方法在低纬度地区能取得较好的结果,但针对化赤异常的解释技术却相对较少.通过常规化极与化赤方法对秘鲁马尔科纳胡斯塔铜...     

秘鲁MARIELA铁矿床的矿床特征与磁异常的分形解释

MARIELA磁铁矿矿床位于秘鲁南部成矿带上。矿体主要赋存于侏罗纪闪长岩体中,富矿体呈透镜状、脉状产出,而品位较低的矿石为浸染状和细脉状。矿石主要由阳起石(透辉石)-磁铁矿和磷灰石-磁铁矿组成,磁铁矿中V含量较高。该矿床具有玢岩型铁矿的特征,为岩浆期后热液交代充填成矿。运用多重分形理论建立模型,将地面磁异常分为低值异常与中值异常2级,它们分别作为一级找矿靶区和二级找矿靶区,较好地解释了已知矿体与磁异常的吻合关系,为下一步找矿提供了依据。