Soil quality changes in land degradation as indicated by soil chemical, biochemical and microbiological properties in a karst area of southwest Guizhou, China

Not only the nutritional status and biological activity but also the soil ecological functioning or soil health has been impacted profoundly by land degradation in the karst area of southwest China where the karst ecosystems are generally considered as extremely vulnerable to land degradation under intensified land-use changes. The objectives of this study are to elucidate the changes in overall soil quality by a holistic approach of soil nutritional, biological activity, and soil health indicators in the karst area as impacted by intense cultivation and vegetation degradation. Topsoil samples were collected on selected eco-tesserae in a sequence of land degradation in a karst area of southwest Guizhou in 2004. The soil nutrient pools of organic carbon (C_org), extractable extracellular carbon (C_ext), total soil nitrogen (N_t), alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen (N_ah), total phosphorus (P_t), available phosphorus (P_a) were analyzed by wet soil chemistry. The soil biological properties were studied by means of measurements of microbial biomass carbon (both by fumigation–extraction, FE-C_mic, and by calculation from substrate-incubation respiration, SIR-C_mic) of respiration [respiration without addition of substrates, basal respiration (BR), and potential respiration (PR) with substrate-incubation] and of soil enzyme activities (invertase, urease, and alkaline phosphatase). Soil health status was assessed by simple indices of C_mic/C_org and BR/C_mic in conjunction with bacterial community structures determined by polymerase chain reaction and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. While the nutritional pool parameters, such as C_org and C_ext, described basically the changes in soil life-supporting capacity with cultivation interference and vegetation declined, those parameters of biological activity such as FE-C_mic, SIR, and SIR-C_mic as well as bacterial community structures measured by molecular method evidenced well the changes in soil functioning for ecosystem health with the land degradation.     

Inverse reconstructions of ecosystem flows in investigating regime shifts: impact of the choice of objective function

Inverse analysis is increasingly used in ecosystem modelling to objectively reconstruct a large number of unknown flows or interactions from a small number of observations. This type of analysis may be useful in relating observed regime shifts in ecosystem structure to underlying processes. Inversions of ecosystem flow networks currently use a constrained least-squares solution which at the same time minimizes the squared norm (the sum of squares) of the reconstructed flows. This minimum norm (MN) inversion is thought to be a parsimonious solution to the ecosystem flow inverse problem, but it may well not reflect how ecosystems are organised. It has been proposed instead that ecosystems evolve to maximize energy/mass flows or that they maximize the information content of the network weighted by ecosystem flows (ascendancy). We used simulated inverse experiments, where inverse analyses are applied to simulations of flow networks, to explore objective functions different than the MN generally used. We could not compute inverse solutions that maximize ascendancy because the objective function is unbounded. We could calculate inversions that maximize flows; however, these generally overestimated the simulated flows, even though the simulations were designed to maximize flows. It appears that the ecosystem flow inverse problem is too under-determined (too few data relative to the number of unknowns) to allow the use of these maximizing goal functions. We introduce a new minimization that simultaneously minimizes the squared flows and the squared differences between flows. This smoothing minimization makes the inverse flows as even as possible and it helps with some technical issues with MN inversions. The simulated inverse experiments indicated that this smoothed norm (SM) is the most robust in comparative analyses of contrasting ecosystem states, such as those that can be associated with regime shifts. Like the MN inversion, the SM inversion has no ecological basis. However, it is a conservative norm that is less likely to produce false differences between the dynamics of regimes.     

大连湾60多年来生态环境地质演化

依据对大连湾60多年来沉积柱的生态环境地质演化研究,发现其污染变化可以分为3个时期：①1933－1974年为洁净时段;②1974－1989年为污染较重时段;③1989－1997年为严重污染时段。若视第一时段的污染度为0,则第二时段的污染度为第一时段的8倍,第三时段的污染度为第一时段的25倍,可见污染度增加是非常迅速和严重的。其中Cd、Pb、As、S、Zn5种元素含量增加最快。1997年大连湾表面沉积物中Cd、Hg、Pb、As的含量分别为自然背景值的81．42倍、6．0倍、7．54倍、3．82倍,表明大连湾污染的严重性。研究发现自1950年以来大连湾生物多样性急剧下降,说明污染度增加已对生命健康造成严惩的影响。大连湾的臭水套已成为一个生物多样性异常低下的、超级污染的环境,是一颗巨大的隐性化学定时炸弹。     

环境与健康的评估问题和空间分析

评估环境污染对人民健康影响的研究需要结合空间,时间和统计分析,并吸引不同学科背景的研究人员合作研究,可是,在这个研究领域内,最重要的问题是研究结论的不可靠性程度很高,不同的研究方法会导致不同的结论,一个有系统的研究架构拥有不同的空间分析方法将会减少结论的可疑程度,有效的环保政策是需要可靠的研究成果,文中首先介绍在环境与健康的评估研究领域的四大重要问题,指出这项研究需要这项研究需要空间分析和地理信息系统方法,从而提出一个空间分析的研究框架和内裹的方法,通过路易斯安纳州的一个污染地点和肿瘤发病率关系研究实例,指出这项研究领域的各种问题和空间分析架构的重要性。     

成都市生态环境地球化学特点

成都平原多目标地球化学调查表明,成都市区土壤Hg、Ag、Pb、Cu、Zn、Sb、P、S、Se、C、Sr、Mo、Na2O等13种元素和河流水系沉积物P、Hg、S、Zn、Pb、Cu、Mo等有机质、N、Cd、Cr等11种高含量元素,土壤中主要污染元素Hg、Pb、Zn、Cu的含量,在浅层样中较高,其污染状况市区内及工厂区比城郊严重,府河,南河的污染比沙河严重,但其污泥可以综合利用,研究表明,东部龙泉山区深层样丰富的农业有益元素为水果生长提供了有利条件。     

测震仪器健康状态数据交换平台的设计与实现

介绍了测震仪器健康状态数据交换软件平台的设计与实现.在软件开发过程中,主要使用了TCP/IP Socket编程、并发程序设计和JMS消息机制等关键技术,实现了与多种地震数据采集器的并发式网络通信以及健康状态数据的接收和交换.开源的消息中间件ActiveMQ作为统一交换平台,为仪器健康状态的交换共享提供了统一的数据接口,便于实现系统与新业务的无缝集成,提高了系统的弹性和可扩展性.利用本系统的框架模式开发的测震台站远程监视系统在河北测震台网得到了成功的应用,其功能和性能均达到了设计预期效果.     

Health risk assessment for typical and abandoned chromium-contaminated sites

Chromium pollution were investigated by sampling the abandoned chromium contaminated sites in Chongqing. Its health risk was assessed following the procedures made by USEPA. The results showed that the most seriously polluted land was found at the former production area （G4） with average Cr（VI） concentration of 3369.2 mg kg-1 on the surface soil. The assessment indicated that there was high risk of non-carcinogens for children. The assessed risk of the first layer of office area （G1） for children, chromium slag transition （G2）, drainage pipeline chromium slag transition （G3） and production area （G4） for both children and adults were not acceptable （〉1.00× 106）. It was strongly suggested that the accessible measures of remediation should be taken for a portion of contaminated sites before the reuse of abandoned lands.     

Evolution of accelerographs, data processing, strong motion arrays and amplitude and spatial resolution in recording strong earthquake motion

This paper presents a review of the advances in strong motion recording since the early 1930s, based mostly on the experiences in the United States. A particular emphasis is placed on the amplitude and spatial resolution of recording, which both must be ‘adequate’ to capture the nature of strong earthquake ground motion and response of structures. The first strong motion accelerographs had optical recording system, dynamic range of about 50 dB and useful life longer than 30 years. Digital strong motion accelerographs started to become available in the late 1970s. Their dynamic range has been increasing progressively, and at present is about 135 dB. Most models have had useful life shorter than 5–10 years. One benefit from a high dynamic range is early trigger and anticipated ability to compute permanent displacements. Another benefit is higher sensitivity and hence a possibility to record smaller amplitude motions (aftershocks, smaller local earthquakes and distant large earthquakes), which would augment significantly the strong motion databases. The present trend of upgrading existing and adding new stations with high dynamic range accelerographs has lead to deployment of relatively small number of new stations (the new high dynamic range digital instruments are 2–3 times more expensive than the old analog instruments or new digital instruments with dynamic range of 60 dB or less). Consequently, the spatial resolution of recording, both of ground motion and structural response, has increased only slowly during the past 20 years, by at most a factor of two. A major (and necessary) future increase in the spatial resolution of recording will require orders of magnitude larger funding, for purchase of new instruments, their maintenance, and for data retrieval, processing, management and dissemination. This will become possible only with an order of magnitude cheaper and ‘maintenance-free’ strong motion accelerographs. In view of the rapid growth of computer technology this does not seem to be (and should not be) out of our reach.     

1D System identification of a 54‐story steel frame building by seismic interferometry

A 54‐story steel, perimeter‐frame building in downtown Los Angeles, California, is identified by a wave method using records of the Northridge earthquake of 1994 (M_L = 6.4, R = 32 km). The building is represented as a layered shear beam and a torsional shaft, characterized by the corresponding velocities of vertically propagating waves through the structure. The previously introduced waveform inversion algorithm is applied, which fits in the least squares sense pulses in low‐pass filtered impulse response functions computed at different stories. This paper demonstrates that layered shear beam and torsional shaft models are valid for this building, within bands that include the first five modes of vibration for each of the North–South (NS), East–West (EW), and torsional responses (0–1.7 Hz for NS and EW, and 0–3.5 Hz for the torsional response). The observed pulse travel time from ground floor to penthouse level is τ ≈1.5 s for NS and EW and τ ≈ 0.9 s for the torsional responses. The identified equivalent uniform shear beam wave velocities are β_eq ≈ 140 m/s for NS and EW responses, and 260 m/s for torsion, and the apparent Q ≈ 25 for the NS and torsional, and ≈14 for the EW response. Across the layers, the wave velocity varied 90–170 m/s for the NS, 80–180 m/s for the EW, and 170–350 m/s for the torsional responses. The identification method is intended for use in structural health monitoring. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种测震仪器数据流接入框架的设计与应用

为了满足对测震仪器的辅助性数据进行综合利用和交换共享的需要,通过分析地震数据采集器传输数据流的方式和特点,利用软件工程思想和面向对象的软件复用技术,建立了一种轻量级、可复用的应用框架,为面向测震仪器的数据接入程序设计提供了一种分布式、高性能、异步流水的体系结构。对框架的实现细节进行了详细阐述,并将框架成功应用于测震台站运行状态监视系统中,测试结果证明了框架的科学性、合理性和实用性,为框架的推广应用提供了典型示范。