In this study, the 14N:15N ratio of suspended particulate material collected from the Tamar river estuary, south-west England, is described. Three populations of particles, distinguishable by their 15N content, were observed. This investigation has shown that populations of estuarine particles are generated by biological transformations in situ and that the 15N content of estuarine particles does not merely reflect hydrodynamic mixing of the freshwater and seawater source particulate material. 相似文献
The geologic positions and geochemical and isotope parameters of the Ordovician-early Silurian and Early-Middle Devonian continuous volcanic series of the Minusa basin and its mountainous framing are compared. Both series are composed mostly of moderately alkaline rocks with variations in SiO2 contents from 45 to 77 wt.%. The Ordovician-early Silurian series differs from the Early-Middle Devonian one in lower contents of TiO2 (< 1.7 wt.%) and Fe2O3tot and higher contents of Al2O3 in all rock varieties and in the more fractionated REE patterns of trachybasalts. The compositions of both series reflect two simultaneous mechanisms of magma evolution. The main process was fractional crystallization leading to the formation of rocks from trachybasalts to trachyrhyodacites. The accessory mechanism was the contamination of fractionated melts by crustal material, anatectic melting of crust, and mixing of deep-seated magmas with crustal melts. These processes had specifics at each stage and were controlled by the composition of the sources of parental melts. Their geochemical and isotopic parameters (high alkalinity, high contents of lithophile elements, negative anomalies of Nb, Ta, and Ti, and enrichment in radiogenic Sr) point to the interaction of mantle plumes with the lithospheric mantle that was metasomatically transformed during the preceding Vendian-early Cambrian subduction processes. 相似文献
A fluorescent sand-tracer experiment was performed at Comporta Beach (Portugal) with the aim of acquiring longshore sediment transport data on a reflective beach, the optimization of field and laboratory tracer procedures and the improvement of the conceptual model used to support tracer data interpretation.
The field experiment was performed on a mesotidal reflective beach face in low energetic conditions (significant wave height between 0.4 and 0.5 m). Two different colour tracers (orange and blue) were injected at low tide and sampled in the two subsequent low tides using a high resolution 3D grid extending 450 m alongshore and 30 m cross-shore. Marked sand was detected using an automatic digital image processing system developed in the scope of the present experiment.
Results for the two colour tracers show a remarkable coherence, with high recovery rates attesting data validity. Sand tracer displayed a high advection velocity, but with distinct vertical distribution patterns in the two tides: in the first tide there was a clear decrease in tracer advection velocity with depth while in the second tide, the tracer exhibited an almost uniform vertical velocity distribution. This differing behaviour suggests that, in the first tide, the tracer had not reached equilibrium within the transport system, pointing to a considerable time lag between injection and complete mixing. This issue has important implications for the interpretation of tracer data, indicating that short term tracer experiments tend to overestimate transport rates. In this work, therefore, longshore estimates were based on tracer results obtained during the second tide.
The estimated total longshore transport rate at Comporta Beach was 2 × 10− 3 m3/s, more than four times larger than predicted using standard empirical longshore formulas. This discrepancy, which results from the unusually large active moving layer observed during the experiment, confirms the idea that most common longshore transport equations under-estimate total sediment transport in plunging/surging waves. 相似文献
