Mussels document loss of bioavailable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and the return to baseline conditions for oiled shorelines in Prince William Sound, Alaska

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) were measured in mussels (Mytilus trossulus) collected between 1990 and 2002 from 11 sites on the shores of Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska, that were heavily oiled by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS). This study, utilizing the methods of the NOAA Status and Trends Mussel Watch Program, found that concentrations of PAH released from spill remnants have decreased dramatically with time and by 2002 were at or near the range of total PAH (TPAH) of 3-355 ng/g dry weight obtained for mussels from unoiled reference sites in PWS. Time-series TPAH data indicate a mean TPAH half-life in mussel tissues of 2.4 years with a range from 1.4 to 5.3, yielding an annual mean loss of bioaccumulated TPAH of 25%. The petroleum-derived TPAH fraction in mussel tissues has decreased with time, reflecting the decreasing release of EVOS residues in shoreline sediments. These results show that PAH from EVOS residues that remain buried in shoreline sediments after the early 1990s are in a form and at locations that have a low accessibility to mussels living in the intertidal zone.     

The composition and distribution of saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons in nearshore sediments, river sediments, and coastal peat of the Alaskan Beaufort Sea: Implications for detecting anthropogenic hydrocarbon inputs

A 3-year program, to determine spatial and temporal trends in sediment concentrations of hydrocarbons and metals from oil and gas exploration and development activities, was conducted in the US Beaufort Sea. Concentrations of saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons in sediments from the Beaufort Sea were elevated in comparison to non-polluted shelf-sediments from other regions of the US coast. Potential natural sources for hydrocarbons that were examined included riverine sediments and coastal peat. Significant quantities of fossil hydrocarbons characterize the surface sediments from the entire region. Sediment inputs from river discharges appear to account for this observation. The use of source-diagnostic ratios has allowed the differentiation of various sources in an area with high naturally-occurring hydrocarbon concentrations where effects due to oil and gas exploration and development activities may be obscured.     

Limiting the soil degradational impacts of wildfire in pine and eucalyptus forests in Portugal: A comparison of alternative post-fire management practices

In newly burnt and unburnt pine and eucalyptus forest in Portugal, overland flow and soil losses were monitored to assess the impacts of the following post-fire treatments: application of different quantities of logging litter; rip-ploughing compared with minimum tillage prior to planting eucalyptus seedlings; and clearance of pine needles and vegetation. Eucalyptus logging litter reduced soil losses by up to 95 per cent. The impact of pine logging litter was equivocal, but removal of pine needles increased soil losses elevenfold. Implications for soil longevity, soil quality and land management strategy are discussed.     

Influence of prey abundance and abiotic factors on the long-term home-range and movement dynamics of spotted grunter Pomadasys commersonnii in an intermittently open estuary

Long-term home-range and movement dynamics of spotted grunter Pomadasys commersonnii and the distribution of their dominant prey, the sandprawn Callichirus kraussi, were investigated in the intermittently open East Kleinemonde Estuary, South Africa. In addition, the effects of fish length, diel cycle, season and other abiotic factors on home range and area use were examined. Nine adult spotted grunter (326–489?mm total length) were tagged with acoustic transmitters, and their movements were studied by manual tracking on six consecutive days and nights during each of five tracking sessions from March to November 2004. In addition, movement patterns were recorded by stationary data-logging receivers. Kernel home ranges (95% utilised distribution) varied in size (mean: 76 797?m²?, range: 26 296–165 321?m²), but were all located in the lower one-third of the 3.6 km-long estuary. There was no effect of season, the diel cycle or fish length on the home-range estimates. However, the distribution of prey corresponded with the home-range distribution of tagged fish. Although sandprawn distribution was highly variable within and among transects and depth classes, sandprawns were most abundant in the lower region of the estuary, which corresponded to the home-range distribution of spotted grunter. Spatial distribution of prey appears to be a dominant factor influencing home-range parameters of this species within an intermittently open estuary.     

The early twentieth century Arctic high — fact or fiction?

Reconstructions of monthly mean sea-level grid-point pressure from station pressure data over the Arctic region using an objective technique have revealed two serious errors in the gridded data. First, all gridded data (from the U.S. Historical Weather Map series) for the Arctic Ocean area away from the North Atlantic sector appears to be between 4 and 6 mb too high before about 1931. The semi-permanent Arctic high produced in the early historical map series was the result of a lack of basic station data, and the belief amongst many North American meteorologists of the 1920s and 1930s of the existence of a polar or glacial anticyclone. The second error affects only north-western North America for the years 1899–1909. Here pressure is again too high compared with reconstructed data. The cause of this error is not immediately apparent, but is probably the result of an erroneous correction to sea level for stations in the region. Both errors seriously affect the homogeneity of the gridded Arctic series. The objective scheme used to reveal the errors, can also be used to derive correction factors for the gridded data prior to 1931.     

Strömungsdynamische Untersuchungen im Zürich- und im Luganersee Ein Vergleich von Feldmessungen mit Resultaten theoretischer Modelle

Density distribution and temperature and current data which were measured in Lake of Zürich and Lake of Lugano in two summer field programs are scrutinized and interpreted by means of hydrodynamic models. Barotropic surface seiches and baroclinic internal seiches are studied using a one-and two-layer model and measured data permit identification of the respective resonant periods. Wind induced barotropic and baroclinic circulation dynamics is also studied by means of three-dimensional finite difference models of the hydrodynamic viscous equations on the rotating earth. In general the predictions of these models agree favorably with observed data.     

Troposphere gradients from the ECMWF in VLBI analysis

Modeling path delays in the neutral atmosphere for the analysis of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observations has been improved significantly in recent years by the use of elevation-dependent mapping functions based on data from numerical weather models. In this paper, we present a fast way of extracting both, hydrostatic and wet, linear horizontal gradients for the troposphere from data of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) model, as it is realized at the Vienna University of Technology on a routine basis for all stations of the International GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) Service (IGS) and International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS) stations. This approach only uses information about the refractivity gradients at the site vertical, but no information from the line-of-sight. VLBI analysis of the CONT02 and CONT05 campaigns, as well as all IVS-R1 and IVS-R4 sessions in the first half of 2006, shows that fixing these a priori gradients improves the repeatability for 74% (40 out of 54) of the VLBI baseline lengths compared to fixing zero or constant a priori gradients, and improves the repeatability for the majority of baselines compared to estimating 24-h offsets for the gradients. Only if 6-h offsets are estimated, the baseline length repeatabilities significantly improve, no matter which a priori gradients are used.     

Modeling thermal deformation of VLBI antennas with a new temperature model

Temperature variations at very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) sites cause thermal deformations of the VLBI antennas and corresponding displacements of the VLBI reference points. The thermal deformation effects typically contain seasonal and daily signatures. The amplitudes of the annual vertical motion of the antenna reference point can reach several millimeters, depending on the design of the antenna structure, on the material, and on the environmental effects such as global station position, station height and climatology effects. Simple methods to correct this effect use the difference of the environmental temperature with respect to a defined reference temperature, the antenna dimensions, the elevation of the antenna, the material of antenna structure. Applying these simple models for thermal deformation in the VLBI data analysis improves the baseline length repeatability by 3.5%. A comparison of these simple models with local thermal deformation measurements at the antennas in Onsala and Wettzell show that the local measurements and the modeled corrections agree well when the temperature of the antenna structure is used, but agree less good when the surrounding air temperatures are used. To overcome this problem we present a method to model temperature penetration into the antenna structures, that allows to model thermal deformation effects that agree with the observed vertical deformation of the Onsala and Wettzell radio telescopes with a root mean square deviation of 0.07 and 0.13 mm, respectively. Possible implementations in the VLBI analysis are presented, and the definition of an adequate reference temperature is discussed.