Sedimentary and drainage evolution of the Condamine Valley Transition Zone (eastern Australia)

The basal succession of the Condamine Valley, which overlays the boundary between the Surat and Clarence-Moreton basins (eastern Australia), contains a clay-rich horizon ‘the Transition Zone’ that marks a pronounced unconformity between the Jurassic Walloon Coal Measures and the Quaternary Condamine Alluvium. This paper provides insights into the tectonic and drainage evolution of the Condamine Valley through integrated analysis of U–Pb ages of detrital zircon from three samples (494 concordant analyses), stable oxygen isotope analysis on eight authigenic clay samples, X-ray fluorescence of primary and trace elements, and hyperspectral mineral analysis from two drill cores (Lone Pine 17 and Daandine 164). The Transition Zone is interpreted to consist of both weathered Jurassic sediments and Cenozoic clay deposits. Two sequential cycles of erosion, deposition and pedogenesis, related to geomorphological and climatic conditions are recognised. Distinctive oxygen isotope signatures of the two weathering fronts demonstrated an initial Early Cretaceous phase (δ¹⁸O?=?11.9–15.7‰ VSMOW) associated with laterisation and possible uplift, followed by Paleogene (δ¹⁸O?=?16.4–17.3‰ VSMOW) silcretisation of reworked Jurassic sediments. Detrital zircon geochronology yielded Jurassic maximum constraints for the age of deposition of three samples that are indistinguishable within error, the oldest of which (163?±?8?Ma from the lateritic profile) corresponds to the age of the underlying Walloon Coal Measures. The two overlaying samples from a silcrete profile and granular alluvium yielded overlapping yet younger ages of 150?±?6?Ma and 156?±?9?Ma, respectively. Vitrinite reflectance used as a proxy for the thermal condition of the coal strata enabled an estimated 2–3?km of burial and subsequent (likely Early Cretaceous) uplift. Geochemical insights from the Condamine Valley correspond to broad-scale climatic and tectonic conditions, suggesting that ‘transition zone equivalents’ and corresponding groundwater dynamics may occur in similar sedimentary settings throughout eastern Australia.     

海盆沉积“源-汇”系统分析:南海北部珠江海谷-西北次海盆第四纪深水浊积扇

运用近年来采集的高分辨率地震资料和多波束测深数据,在珠江海谷及西北次海盆深海平原区发现大规模发育的第四纪重力流沉积体系,该沉积体系沿珠江海谷以北西-南南东方向贯穿整个北部陆坡,进入西北次海盆后呈扇形展开,形成珠江海谷-西北次海盆大型深水浊积扇系统。据沉积体系空间展布特征差异,将珠江海谷划分为北、中、南三段,北段为过路侵蚀和水道下切,中段以水道充填和天然堤沉积为主,南段以水道-天然堤和朵叶体沉积共存为特征,揭示出北部陆坡珠江海谷是珠江口外陆缘物质输送海盆深海平原的主要通道;海盆区总体以朵叶体发育为特色,呈扇形展布。深水扇系统可分为三期次沉积体,其区域结构记录了重力流沉积物从侵蚀、卸载到南海海盆作为限制性盆地接收陆源沉积物的全过程,为“源-渠-汇”的研究构建了一个完美的范例。本文以珠江海谷-西北次海盆第四纪深水浊积扇沉积体系为例,完整地揭示了水道-扇体的组构和特征,清晰呈现了陆坡-海盆砂体展布的规律,可为建立南海北部新近纪早期深水扇形成模式提供参考,有助于指导南海深水油气勘探工作。     

Mapping and assessing crop diversity in the irrigated Fergana Valley,Uzbekistan

Crop diversity (e.g. the number of agricultural crop types and the level of evenness in area distribution) in the agricultural systems of arid Central Asia has recently been increased mainly to achieve food security of the rural population, however, not throughout the irrigation system. Site-specific factors that promote or hamper crop diversification after the dissolvent of the Soviet Union have hardly been assessed yet. While tapping the potential of remote sensing, the objective was to map and explain spatial patterns of current crop diversity by the example of the irrigated agricultural landscapes of the Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan. Multi-temporal Landsat and RapidEye satellite data formed the basis for creating annual and multi-annual crop maps for 2010–2012 while using supervised classifications. Applying the Simpson index of diversity (SID) to circular buffers with radii of 1.5 and 5 km elucidated the spatial distribution of crop diversity at both the local and landscape spatial scales. A variable importance analysis, rooted in the conditional forest algorithm, investigated potential environmental and socio-economic drivers of the spatial patterns of crop diversity. Overall accuracy of the annual crop maps ranged from 0.84 to 0.86 whilst the SID varied between 0.1 and 0.85. The findings confirmed the existence of areas under monocultures as well as of crop diverse patches. Higher crop diversity occurred in the more distal parts of the irrigation system and sparsely settled areas, especially due to orchards. In contrast, in water-secure and densely settled areas, cotton-wheat rotations dominated due to the state interventions in crop cultivation. Distances to irrigation infrastructure, settlements and the road network influenced crop diversity the most. Spatial explicit information on crop diversity per se has the potential to support policymaking and spatial planning towards crop diversification. Driver analysis as exemplified at the study region in Uzbekistan can help reaching the declared policy to increase crop diversity throughout the country and even beyond.     

伊犁河谷2001-2014年地表温度时空分异特征

地表温度是地表能量平衡、区域和全球尺度地表物理过程的一个重要因子。为了辨析中国西北干旱区“天山湿岛”——伊犁河谷的地表温度时空分异,采用趋势分析法和空间数据统计法,探讨了2001-2014年不同土地利用/覆盖类型下地表温度时空变化规律,分析地表温度的时空分异特征及原因。结果表明：（1） MODIS LST产品的精度（平均R²=0.90）能够满足伊犁河谷地表温度时空变化分析的要求;（2）空间上,地表温度呈现出中部高四周低的变化趋势,高温区面积约占总面积的41%,低温区面积约占总面积的23%;时间上,伊犁河谷平均地表温度的年际波动较大,以2013年、2006年、2007年和2008年尤为突出;地表温度的年内变化呈现出单峰型分布,地表温度高值集中在3-8月,最高值出现在7月;（3）不同土地利用/覆盖类型下年均地表温度分布的总体特征为建设用地最高,稀疏草地、旱地等次之,冰川/积雪最低;（4）伊犁河谷地表温度变化趋势呈严重减少、基本不变和轻微增加区域面积分别占5%、37%和26%,以基本不变和轻微增加为主。伊犁河谷地表温度时空变化不仅受大尺度气候变化影响,还受土地类型差异影响,两者共同构成了不同地理区域及景观的温场格局,绿色植被对地表温度时空分布具有重要的调节作用。     

夏季黄河流域降水气候特征及其与大气环流的关系

本文基于1958—2015年夏季黄河流域55个观测站降水量和NCEP/NCAR再分析1高度场等资料,使用MannKendall突变检验、合成分析和Monte Carlo检验等气候统计方法,分析了黄河流域58年夏季降水量的气候变化特征,以及导致其变化的大气环流成因。58年期间,黄河流域夏季降水量总体呈减少趋势,尤其在河套北部有显著性减少趋势,其主要原因是欧亚中高纬度等压面升高、西风带减弱所致;1975年和1996年是黄河流域夏季降水的两个明显年代际气候变化转折点,在1958—1975年期间,黄河流域夏季降水量年际变化大,异常偏多和偏少年出现频次较高,期间欧亚中高纬度及其以南包括黄河流域地区高度场偏低,主要受高空低压系统和较强冷空气影响;在1976—1995年期间,黄河流域大部降水偏多,其主要环流成因为乌拉尔山阻塞高压发展、贝加尔湖到东北亚一带受负高度距平控制高空槽加深,同时,来自南方的暖湿气流输送增强;到1996—2015年最近20年间,乌拉尔山北部环流高度场偏低、里海至贝加尔湖再到东北亚一带高度场一致偏高,黄河流域一带西风带强度和冷空气势力均较弱,流域受高压影响导致大部区域降水偏少。不同时期黄河各流域段降水量与中高纬度阻塞高压以及与西北太平洋副热带高压的相关关系分析进一步说明了上述结论。     

恒河深海扇东北区域晚第四纪气候和海平面变化对沉积作用的控制

通过对恒河深海扇沟道间均质细粒沉积物的氧同位素地层划分,本文讨论了晚更新世以来冰川—气候旋回和海平面变化对印度洋北部大陆坡地带各种活跃的沉积因素（陆源和碳酸盐物质的沉积通量、浊流活动的强度和频度、粘土矿物分布、碳酸盐浓度和钙质生物壳的溶解度）的控制作用和因素间的相互关联。     

Sedimentary processes and facies of the waterlaid Anvil Spring Canyon alluvial fan, Death Valley, California

The Anvil Spring Canyon fan of the Panamint Range piedmont in central Death Valley was built entirely by water-flow processes, as revealed by an analysis of widespread 2- to 12-m-high stratigraphic cuts spanning the 9·7 km radial length of this 2·5–5·0° sloping fan. Two facies deposited from fan sheetfloods dominate the fan from apex to toe. The main one (60–95% of cuts) consists of sandy, granular, fine to medium pebble gravel that regularly and sharply alternates with cobbly coarse to very coarse pebble gravel in planar couplets 5–25 cm thick oriented parallel to the fan surface. The other facies (0–25% of cuts) comprises 10- to 60-cm-thick, wedge-planar and wedge-trough beds of pebbly sand and sandy pebble gravel in backsets sloping 3–28°. Both facies are interpreted as resulting from rare, sediment-charged flash floods from the catchment, and were deposited by supercritical standing waves of expanding sheetfloods on the fan. Standing waves were repeatedly initiated, enlarged, migrated, and then terminated either by gradually rejoining the flood or by more violent breakage and washout. The frequent autocyclic growth and destruction of standing waves during an individual sheetflood resulted in the deposition of multiple coarse and fine couplet and backset sequences 50–250 cm thick across the active depositional lobe of the fan. Erosional intensity during washout of the standing wave determined whether early-phase backset-bed deposits or washout-phase sheetflood couplet deposits were selectively preserved in a given cycle. Two minor facies are also found in the Anvil fan. Pebble–cobble gravel lags (0–20% of cuts) are present above erosional scours into the sheetflood couplet and backset deposits. They consist of coarse gravel concentrated through fine-fraction winnowing of the host sheetflood facies by sediment-deficient water flows. This reworking occurred during recessional flood stage or from non-catastrophic discharge during the long intervals between major flash floods. This facies is common at the surface, giving rise to a ‘braided-stream’ appearance. However, it is stratigraphically limited, present as thin, continuous to discontinuous beds or lenses that bound 50- to 250-cm-thick sheetflood sequences. The other minor facies of the Anvil fan consists of clast-supported and imbricated, thickly stratified, pebbly, cobbly, boulder gravel present in narrow, radially aligned ribbons nested within sheetflood deposits. This facies is interpreted as representing deposition in the incised channel of the fan, a subenvironment characterized by greater flow competence resulting from maintained depth from channel-wall confinement, and by more frequent water flows and winnowing events caused by its direct connection with the catchment feeder channel.     

Cause of dominance by sheetflood vs. debris-flow processes on two adjoining alluvial fans, Death Valley, California

Two large, adjoining alluvial fans of the Panamint Range piedmont, Death Valley, California, are composed of different facies assemblages deposited by contrasting sedimentary processes. The Anvil Spring fan was built solely by water-flow processes (incised-channel floods and sheetfloods), whereas the neighbouring Warm Spring fan has been constructed principally by debris flows. The boundary between these fans delineates a sharp provincial piedmont contact between sheetflood-dominated fans to the south and debris-flow-dominated fans to the north. Factors such as climate, catchment area, fan area, catchment relief, aspect, vegetation types and density, and neotectonic setting are essentially identical for these two fans. The key difference between them is that their catchments are underlain by dissimilar bedrock types, which weather to yield distinctive sediment suites. Weathering of the granite and andesite of the Anvil fan catchment produces significant volumes of medium to very coarse sand, granules, pebbles, cobbles and boulders, but minimal silt and clay. In contrast, the shale, quartzite and dolomite that dominate bedrock in the Warm Spring catchment weather to yield a wide suite of sedimentary particles spanning from clay to boulders. The abundance of mud, and the unsorted character of the yielded sediment, cause precipitation-induced slope failures in the Warm Spring catchment to transform readily into debris flows. This propensity is due to the low permeability of the colluvial sediment, which causes added water to become trapped quickly and pore pressure to rise rapidly, promoting transformations to debris flows. In contrast, the limited volume of sediment finer than medium sand yielded from the Anvil fan catchment causes the colluvium to have high permeability. This factor prevents the transformation of wet colluvium to a debris flow during hydrologically triggered slope failures, instead maintaining sediment transport as entrained bed load or suspended load in a water flow.     

Did Lake Manly overflow at Ash Hill?

Near Ash Hill in the Mojave Desert, California, there is an impressive channel that is cut in bedrock. The channel is in a pass through which Lake Manly, the pluvial lake that occupied Death Valley, could have overflowed. Indeed, the channel has been attributed to such overflow. The pass, however, is 500 m above the highest shorelines of Lake Manly in Death Valley, and evidence from cores from dry lakes on either side of the pass does not support the overflow hypothesis. Despite its size, new field observations suggest that the channel was actually eroded by local runoff. Water from several tributaries collects into a single channel at this point, and the resulting discharge is apparently sufficient to cause retreat of a knickpoint from the downstream edge of the basalt flow into which the channel is cut. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Terraces Development and Their Implications for Valley Evolution of the Jinsha River Since Late Pleistocene near Longjie,Yunnan

The drainage evolution and valley development of the Jinsha River is an important issue constantly concerned by researchers in geology and geomorphology. Despite hundreds of years of research, there is a big dispute on the formation time and the evolution process of the fluvial valley. Fluvial terraces are very important geomorphic markers for studying the formation and evolution of the fluvial valley. Through field investigation combined with Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating, we confirmed that 5 fluvial terraces were formed, and then preserved, along the course of the Jinsha River near the Longjie, which are all strath terraces. Among them, T5 developed on the base rock, with an age of (78±12) ka; all T4~T1 developed on the lacustrine sediments, named Longjie Group by Chinese, with an age of (29±1.4) ka, (26±2.4) ka, (23±1.4) ka, (18±1.7) ka, respectively. Compared with the global and regional climate change history, the terraces are all the result of the river responding to the climate change. T5 formed at MIS 5/4, and T4~T1 formed at the period of regional climate fluctuation. The relationship of terraces and the Longjie Formation, combined with sedimentary characteristics analysis demonstrate that the Longjie Formation is landslide dammed lake sediment. The landslide and blocking events.seriously influenced the valley evolution, inhibiting the river incising, and making the valley evolution defer to the mode of “cut-landside-damming-fill-cut” in the period of Late Pleistocene. Synthesized studies of the terraces and the correlative sediments indicate that the formation of the Jinsha River valley may have begun in the late Early Pleistocene.