Subsidence due to peat oxidation and impact on drainage infrastructures in a farmland catchment south of the Venice Lagoon

Large agricultural areas reclaimed in the past century, south of the Venice Lagoon, have experienced significant land subsidence due to oxidation of peat organic soils. This has exposed the region to flood hazard particularly during severe storms and has contributed to increase the marginal management cost of the infrastructures (ditches, levees, pumping stations) designed to operate the drainage system. Direct measurements and indirect evidence from the channel network suggest a land settlement between 1.5 and 2 m over the past 70 years. This paper provides an overview of the problem with important information on its most recent evolution.     

Water–rock interaction during the process of steam stimulation exploitation of viscous crude oil in Liaohe Shuguang Oil Field, Liaoning, China

In the process of steam stimulation exploitation of viscous crude oil, the injected water, at high temperature and under high pressure, reacts intensively with the host rock. This kind of water–rock interaction in Liaohe Shuguang Oil Field was studied on the basis of analysis of water composition changes, laboratory experiments, mineral saturation indices analysis, and mass balance calculation. Compared with the injected water, the changes of the composition of discharged water are mainly the distinct decrease of pH, Na⁺, SiO₂ and Cl⁻, as well as the increase of K⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, SO ₄ ²⁻ and HCO ₃ ⁻ . Laboratory experiments under field conditions showed: the dissolution sequence of minerals quantitatively is quartz>potassium feldspar>albite, and the main change of clay minerals is the conversion of kaolinite to analcime. Mass balance calculation indicated during the process of steam stimulation, large quantities of analcime are precipitated with the dissolution of large amounts of quartz, kaolinite, potassium feldspar, and CO₂. These results correlated very well with the experimental results. The calculated results of Liaohe Shuguang Oil Field showed that during the steam stimulation for viscous crude oil, the amounts of minerals dissolved (precipitated) are huge. To control the clogging of pore spaces of oil reservoirs, increased study of water–rock interaction is needed.     

Planning for source water protection in Ontario

Ontario began developing a drinking water source protection planning process in 2000, after a rural community's water supply was contaminated by pathogens from agricultural runoff. An expert committee report has recommended legislating a new source protection “sphere of jurisdiction” for municipalities; however, no specific new municipal tools or authorities have been proposed as yet. This paper reports findings from an evaluation of the extent to which existing institutional arrangements for land use planning and water management facilitate or constrain source protection by municipalities. A case study of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo suggests there is the potential to link land use planning more strongly to water management through creative use of existing tools, forgoing the need for major institutional changes.     

Modelling net erosion responses to enviroclimatic changes recorded upon multisecular timescales

Land use change has been recognized throughout the Earth as one of the most important factors influencing the occurrence of rainfall-driven geomorphological processes. However, relating the occurrence of historical soil erosion rates is difficult because of the lack of long-term research projects in river basins. Also, complex models are not adequate to reconstruct erosion rate changes because they require significant input data not always available on long timescales. Given the problems with assessing sediment yield using complex erosion models, the objective of this study is to explore a parsimonious scale-adapted erosion model (ADT) from the original Thornes and Douglas algorithms, which aims at reconstruction of annual net erosion (ANE) upon multisecular timescales. As a test site, the Calore River basin (3015 km² in southern Italy) provides a peculiar and unique opportunity for modelling erosion responses to climate and land cover changes, where input-data generation and interpretation results were also supported by documented hydrogeomorphological events that occurred before and after land deforestation. In this way, ANE_ADT-values were reconstructed for the period 1675–2004 by using precipitation indexes, complemented by recent instrumental records, and by using land cover statistics from documented agrarian sources. Pulses of natural sedimentation in the predeforestation period have been related to Vesuvius volcanic activity and changes in rainstorm frequency. After deforestation, the basin system became unstable with sudden fluctuations in the hydrogeomorphological regime contributing significantly to increased erosion and, in turn, sediment transport sequences via river drainage towards the Tyrrhenian coast.     

Rights or Containment? The politics of Aboriginal cultural heritage in Victoria

Aboriginal cultural heritage protection, and the legislative regimes that underpin it, constitute important mechanisms for Aboriginal people to assert their rights and responsibilities. This is especially so in Victoria, where legislation vests wide-ranging powers and control of cultural heritage with Aboriginal communities. However, the politics of cultural heritage, including its institutionalisation as a scientific body of knowledge within the state, can also result in a powerful limiting of Aboriginal rights and responsibilities. This paper examines the politics of cultural heritage through a case study of a small forest in north-west Victoria. Here, a dispute about logging has pivoted around differing conceptualisations of Aboriginal cultural heritage values and their management. Cultural heritage, in this case, is both a powerful tool for the assertion of Aboriginal rights and interests, but simultaneously a set of boundaries within which the state operates to limit and manage the challenge those assertions pose. The paper will argue that Aboriginal cultural heritage is a politically contested and shifting domain structured around Aboriginal law and politics, Australian statute and the legacy of colonial history.     

HUMBOLDT AND THE HABITABILITY OF CANADA'S GREAT NORTHWEST*

ABSTRACT. Alexander von Humboldt's influence in British North America during the nineteenth century was filtered mainly through British imperial applications of “Humboldtian” sciences, including geomagnetism and biogeography. The best‐known examples include Edward Sabine and John Henry Lefroy, Royal Artillery officers who, during the 1830s and 1840s, transformed British North American outposts and territories, including Rupert's Land, into Humboldtian sites and regions in Great Britain's imperial “magnetic crusade.” Important groundwork had already been laid by John Richardson, who applied data accrued during John Franklin's overland Arctic expeditions during the 1820s to systematize Humboldtian inquiries into the habitability of Canada's Great Northwest. Despite both the relative decline of Humboldtian sciences by midcentury and Humboldt's own reservations about the political ramifications of his science, his “cosmic” outlook circulated in Canada to refine territorial expansionists' scientistic arguments justifying annexation of Rupert's Land after the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company expired in 1869.     

Sources of Sediment in Lake Pepin on the Upper Mississippi River in Response to Holocene Climatic Changes

Sediments from Lake Pepin on the Mississippi River, southeastern Minnesota, are used as provenance tracers to assess variations in hydrology and sediment-transport during the middle Holocene. Three rivers contribute sediment to Lake Pepin, and each catchment is characterized by a distinctly different geologic terrain. The geochemical fingerprint for each drainage basin was determined from the elemental composition of heavy minerals in the silt-sized fraction of modern sediment samples. Down-core elemental abundances were compared with these fingerprints by use of a chemical-mass-balance model that apportions sediment to the source areas. We observed a decreased contribution from the Minnesota River during the interval ~6700–5500 ¹⁴C yr BP, which we attribute to decreased discharge of the Minnesota River, likely controlled by a combination of precipitation, snow melt, and groundwater input to the river. This hydrologic condition coincides with the mid-Holocene prairie period recorded by fossil pollen data. The occurrence of this feature in a proxy record for hydrologic variations supports the hypothesis that the mid-Holocene prairie period reflects drier conditions than before or after in midwestern North America.     

A geochronological approach to understanding the role of solar activity on Holocene glacier length variability in the Swiss Alps

We present a radiocarbon data set of 71 samples of wood and peat material that melted out or sheared out from underneath eight presentday mid‐latitude glaciers in the Central Swiss Alps. Results indicated that in the past several glaciers have been repeatedly less extensive than they were in the 1990s. The periods when glaciers had a smaller volume and shorter length persisted between 320 and 2500 years. This data set provides greater insight into glacier variability than previously possible, especially for the early and middle Holocene. The radiocarbon‐dated periods defined with less extensive glaciers coincide with periods of reduced radio‐production, pointing to a connection between solar activity and glacier melting processes. Measured long‐term series of glacier length variations show significant correlation with the total solar irradiance. Incoming solar irradiance and changing albedo can account for a direct forcing of the glacier mass balances. Long‐term investigations of atmospheric processes that are in interaction with changing solar activity are needed in order to understand the feedback mechanisms with glacier mass balances.     

小型水电站建设用地地质灾害评估技术研究——以湄尼多河小型水电站为例

现阶段,地质灾害评估技术人员在评估实践中,往往不注重各评估对象的差异性,采取同一评估模式,结果达不到评估的目的。在对小型水电站进行评估时,野外调查的重点,评估过程中所使用的方法以及危险性现状、预测及综合分区评估等与大型水电站、路线工程、矿山开采、民用建筑等工程有所不同。湄尼多河小型水电站工程位于云南省怒江州福贡县马吉乡境内,地质环境条件复杂,评估级别综合为二级。文章以该电站建设用地地质灾害危险性评估为例,对小型水电站建设用地地质灾害危险性评估的方法与理论进行探讨。