A review of the physics and ecological implications of the thermal bar circulation

Following recent applications of numerical modelling and remote sensing to the thermal bar phenomenon, this paper seeks to review the current state of knowledge on the effect of its circulation on lacustrine plankton ecosystems. After summarising the literature on thermal bar hydrodynamics, a thorough review is made of all plankton observations taken in the presence of a thermal bar. Two distinct plankton growth regimes are found, one with production favoured throughout the inshore region and another with a maximum in plankton biomass near the position of the thermal bar. Possible explanations for the observed distributions are then discussed, with reference to numerical modelling studies, and the scope for future study of this interdisciplinary topic is outlined.     

Testing a model for predicting the timing and location of shallow landslide initiation in soil‐mantled landscapes

The growing availability of digital topographic data and the increased reliability of precipitation forecasts invite modelling efforts to predict the timing and location of shallow landslides in hilly and mountainous areas in order to reduce risk to an ever‐expanding human population. Here, we exploit a rare data set to develop and test such a model. In a 1·7 km² catchment a near‐annual aerial photographic coverage records just three single storm events over a 45 year period that produced multiple landslides. Such data enable us to test model performance by running the entire rainfall time series and determine whether just those three storms are correctly detected. To do this, we link a dynamic and spatially distributed shallow subsurface runoff model (similar to TOPMODEL) to an in?nite slope model to predict the spatial distribution of shallow landsliding. The spatial distribution of soil depth, a strong control on local landsliding, is predicted from a process‐based model. Because of its common availability, daily rainfall data were used to drive the model. Topographic data were derived from digitized 1 : 24 000 US Geological Survey contour maps. Analysis of the landslides shows that 97 occurred in 1955, 37 in 1982 and ?ve in 1998, although the heaviest rainfall was in 1982. Furthermore, intensity–duration analysis of available daily and hourly rainfall from the closest raingauges does not discriminate those three storms from others that did not generate failures. We explore the question of whether a mechanistic modelling approach is better able to identify landslide‐producing storms. Landslide and soil production parameters were ?xed from studies elsewhere. Four hydrologic parameters characterizing the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the soil and underlying bedrock and its decline with depth were ?rst calibrated on the 1955 landslide record. Success was characterized as the most number of actual landslides predicted with the least amount of total area predicted to be unstable. Because landslide area was consistently overpredicted, a threshold catchment area of predicted slope instability was used to de?ne whether a rainstorm was a signi?cant landslide producer. Many combinations of the four hydrological parameters performed equally well for the 1955 event, but only one combination successfully identi?ed the 1982 storm as the only landslide‐producing storm during the period 1980–86. Application of this parameter combination to the entire 45 year record successfully identi?ed the three events, but also predicted that two other landslide‐producing events should have occurred. This performance is signi?cantly better than the empirical intensity–duration threshold approach, but requires considerable calibration effort. Overprediction of instability, both for storms that produced landslides and for non‐producing storms, appears to arise from at least four causes: (1) coarse rainfall data time scale and inability to document short rainfall bursts and predict pressure wave response; (2) absence of local rainfall data; (3) legacy effect of previous landslides; and (4) inaccurate topographic and soil property data. Greater resolution of spatial and rainfall data, as well as topographic data, coupled with systematic documentation of landslides to create time series to test models, should lead to signi?cant improvements in shallow landslides forecasting. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

无验潮模式下的GPS水下地形测量技术

传统的水下地形测量模式定型于利用GPS测定水底点的平面位置,利用测深仪测定水底点的深度,附之以瞬时潮位资料,获得点位的高程。这种模式在上述条件具备的情况下,可取得完满的结果。但当验潮条件不具备时,该模式将不能获得测点的高程。为了弥补这一缺陷,简化工作流程,提高水下地形测量的精度,本文提出了一种无验潮模式下的水下地形测量思想,该思想不用专门测定潮位,而直接利用GPS的RTK测量技术,辅之以姿态测量和补偿,从而获得高精度的水底点高程。该方法被验证是正确的,希望进一步推广应用。     

河北省粮食生产发展趋势及其地区差异

河北省2002年粮食作物播种面积为6484.4千hm2,其中小麦占37.8%,玉米39.7%;粮食、棉花、油料的种植比例为15.9:1.0:1.6。北部四地市粮食播面占全省的23.3%,南部七地市76.7%。2002年粮食总产2435.8万t,为1949年的5.2倍;粮食单产3756kg/hm2,为1949年的5.8倍;人均粮食362kg,为1949年的2.4倍。北部地区粮食总产占全省的17.2%,南部地区82.8%。据回归分析与双向差分建模分析,2010年粮食总产可达3087.5万t,粮食单产4478kg/hm2,人均粮食460kg。据灰关联分析,影响粮食总产的主要因子有:粮食单产、农副产品收购价格总指数(1978年=100)、农业机械总动力、农村用电量、农田化肥施用量与有效灌溉面积等。根据笔者预测,若2010年农业机械总动力达8989万kw,农村用电量240.8亿kwh,农田化肥施用量356.1万t,有效灌面4549.2千hm2,则其粮食单产可达4664kg/hm2;若2010年仍保持2000年小麦播面所占比例(0.387),玉米播面所占比例达0.439,则其单产可达4387kg/hm2。     

The use of inclined hemisphere projections for analyzing failure mechanisms in discontinuous rocks

This paper demonstrates the advantages of using inclined stereographic projections in kinematic analysis of rock blocks in discontinuous rock masses. Some examples of limiting cases are presented. The application of inclined projections is illustrated by its use in a mine slope in Brazil. It is clear from the discussion of these examples that inclined hemisphere projections provide better results than horizontal projections. It is also demonstrated that horizontal projections can lead to incorrect results in limiting cases.     

Use of Geomorphological Information in Indirect Landslide Susceptibility Assessment

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the importance of geomorphological expert knowledge in the generation of landslide susceptibility maps, using GIS supported indirect bivariate statistical analysis. For a test area in the Alpago region in Italy a dataset was generated at scale 1:5,000. Detailed geomorphological maps were generated, with legends at different levels of complexity. Other factor maps, that were considered relevant for the assessment of landslide susceptibility, were also collected, such as lithology, structural geology, surficial materials, slope classes, land use, distance from streams, roads and houses. The weights of evidence method was used to generate statistically derived weights for all classes of the factor maps. On the basis of these weights, the most relevant maps were selected for the combination into landslide susceptibility maps. Six different combinations of factor maps were evaluated, with varying geomorphological input. Success rates were used to classify the weight maps into three qualitative landslide susceptibility classes. The resulting six maps were compared with a direct susceptibility map, which was made by direct assignment of susceptibility classes in the field. The analysis indicated that the use of detailed geomorphological information in the bivariate statistical analysis raised the overall accuracy of the final susceptibility map considerably. However, even with the use of a detailed geomorphological factor map, the difference with the separately prepared direct susceptibility map is still significant, due to the generalisations that are inherent to the bivariate statistical analysis technique.     

Effect of the chemical composition of the crust on the metamorphic evolution of orogenic wedges

Petrological data provide a good record of the thermal structure of deeply eroded orogens, and, in principle, might be used to relate the metamorphic structure of an orogen to its deformational history. In this paper, we present two‐dimensional thermal modelling of various subduction models taking into account varying wedge geometry as well as variation of density and topography with metamorphic reactions. The models clearly show that rock type accreted in the wedge has important effects on the thermal regime of orogenic wedges. The thermal regime is dominated by radiogenic heat production. Material having high radioactive heat production, like the granodioritic upper crust, produces high temperature metamorphism (amphibolitic conditions). Material with low radioactive heat production results in low temperature metamorphism of greenschist or blueschist types depending on the thickness of the wedge. Application of this model to seemingly unrelated areas of the Central Alps (Lepontine Dome, Grisons) and Eastern Alps (Tauern Window) explains the coexistence and succession of distinct Barrovian and blueschist facies metamorphic conditions as the result of a single, continuous tectonic process in which the main difference is the composition of the incoming material in the orogenic wedge. Accretion of the European upper continental crust in the Lepontine and Tauern Domes produces Barrovian type metamorphism while accretion of oceanic sediments results in blueschist facies metamorphism in the Valaisan domain.     

Can flat-ramp-flat fault geometry be inferred from fold shape?: A comparison of kinematic and mechanical folds

The inference of fault geometry from suprajacent fold shape relies on consistent and verified forward models of fault-cored folds, e.g. suites of models with differing fault boundary conditions demonstrate the range of possible folding. Results of kinematic (fault-parallel flow) and mechanical (boundary element method) models are compared to ascertain differences in the way the two methods simulate flexure associated with slip along flat-ramp-flat geometry. These differences are assessed by systematically altering fault parameters in each model and observing subsequent changes in the suprajacent fold shapes. Differences between the kinematic and mechanical fault-fold relationships highlight the differences between the methods. Additionally, a laboratory fold is simulated to determine which method might best predict fault parameters from fold shape. Although kinematic folds do not fully capture the three-dimensional nature of geologic folds, mechanical models have non-unique fold-fault relationships. Predicting fault geometry from fold shape is best accomplished by a combination of the two methods.     

A mathematical model of concentrate solids content for the wet drum magnetic separator

Low concentrate density from wet drum magnetic separators in dense medium circuits can cause operating difficulties due to inability to obtain the required circulating medium density and, indirectly, high medium solids losses. The literature is almost silent on the processes controlling concentrate density. However, the common name for the region through which concentrate is discharged—the squeeze pan gap—implies that some extrusion process is thought to be at work. There is no model of magnetics recovery in a wet drum magnetic separator, which includes as inputs all significant machine and operating variables.A series of trials, in both factorial experiments and in single variable experiments, was done using a purpose built rig which featured a small industrial scale (700 mm lip length, 900 mm diameter) wet drum magnetic separator. A substantial data set of 191 trials was generated in this work. The results of the factorial experiments were used to identify the variables having a significant effect on magnetics recovery.It is proposed, based both on the experimental observations of the present work and on observations reported in the literature, that the process controlling magnetic separator concentrate density is one of drainage. Such a process should be able to be defined by an initial moisture, a drainage rate and a drainage time, the latter being defined by the volumetric flowrate and the volume within the drainage zone. The magnetics can be characterised by an experimentally derived ultimate drainage moisture. A model based on these concepts and containing adjustable parameters was developed. This model was then fitted to a randomly chosen 80% of the data, and validated by application to the remaining 20%. The model is shown to be a good fit to data over concentrate solids content values from 40% solids to 80% solids and for both magnetite and ferrosilicon feeds.     

Generalized Coarse Graining Procedures for Flow in Porous Media

This paper focuses on heterogeneous soil conductivities and on the impact their resolution has on a solution of the piezometric head equation: owing to spatial variations of the conductivity, the flow properties at larger scales differ from those found for experiments performed at smaller scales. The method of coarse graining is proposed in order to upscale the piezometric head equation on arbitrary intermediate scales. At intermediate scales large scale fluctuations of the conductivities are resolved, whereas small scale fluctuations are smoothed by a partialy spatial filtering procedure. The filtering procedure is performed in Fourier space with the aid of a low-frequency cut-off function. We derive the partially upscaled head equations. In these equations, the impact of the small scale variability is modeled by scale dependent effective conductivities which are determined by additional differential equations. Explicit results for the scale dependent conductivity values are presented in lowest order perturbation theory. The perturbation theory contributions are summed up with using a renormalisation group analysis yielding explicit results for the effective conductivity in isotropic media. Therefore, the results are also valid for highly heterogeneous media. The results are compared with numerical simulations performed by Dykaar and Kitanidis (1992). The method of coarse graining combined by a renormalisation group analysis offers a tool to derive exact and explicit expressions for resolution dependent conductivity values. It is, e.g., relevant for the interpretation of measurement data on different scales and for reduction of grid-block resolution in numerical modeling. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.