CHANNEL EROSION DAMAGES AND PROTECTION MEASURES IN SOUTHEAST ARIZONA

1INTRODUCTIONThesouthwesternregionoftheUnitedStates,includingSoutheastArizona,ischaracterizedbyasemiaridclimatewithhotsummers,mildwinters,andephemeralstreamsdrainingsparselyvegetatedareas.ChannelmorphologyoftheephemeralstreamsinSoutheastArizonaisinfluencedbybothlateralandverticalchannelchangesoccurringduringmajorfloods.Lateralchannelchangesoccurinthreewaysbankerosion,meandermigration,andchannelavulsion.Verticalchannelchangesinclude,beddegradationoraggradation,andmayoccurseparatelyorinco…     

Metamorphic P–T evolution of the Gotsu blueschists from the Suo metamorphic belt in SW Japan: Implications for tectonic correlation with the Heilongjiang Complex,NE China

Mineralogy and Petrology - In the Gotsu area of the c. 200 Ma high-P/T Suo metamorphic belt in the Inner Zone of southwest Japan, blueschists occur as lenses or layers within pelitic...     

Karez irrigation in Pakistan

Karez is an indigenous method of irrigation in which groundwater is tapped by a tunnel. After running for some distance the tunnel comes out in the open and the water is conducted to the command area. Karez irrigation is practised in 22 countries from China to Chile including Pakistan. In Pakistan it is confined to the province of Balochistan which has a tribal society.Karez is an old and stable irrigation system of Pakistan. It is a community enterprise managed by tribal tradition and run by social control. Spacing of the karez, their types, life, length, discharge, land development and allocation, water distribution and management are important aspects of karez irrigation which have been discussed in this paper. Differences in karez maintenance and management produced by differences in tradition and customs of various tribes inhabiting Balochistan are brought out. Furthermore recent changes in Karez irrigation caused by changes in the socio-economic conditions are also analysed.     

New jump trajectory determination method using low-cost MEMS sensor fusion and augmented observations for GPS/INS integration

Objective information on athletic maneuvers for performance evaluation has become highly desired in sports such as skiing, snowboarding, and mountain biking. Body-mounted devices, incorporating low-cost microelectromechanical, inertial navigation units, and global positioning system (GPS) receivers, to calculate sport-specific key performance variables (KPVs) and provide real-time feedback, are now commercially available. However, algorithms implemented for such purposes still lack accuracy and power efficiency. A new GPS/INS (inertial navigation system) integration algorithm is proposed to determine the trajectory of an athlete executing jumps while skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking etc. KPVs, such as jump horizontal distance, vertical height, and drop, are calculated from the trajectory. A new sensor error compensation scheme is developed using sensor fusion and linear Kalman filters (LKF). The LKF parameters are varied to address the fluctuating dynamics of the athlete during a jump. The extended Kalman filter used for GPS/INS integration has an observation vector augmented with sensor error measurements derived from sensor fusion. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through experimental field tests. For the determination of jump horizontal distance, height, and drop, the proposed algorithm has errors of 14.3 cm (5.5 %), 1.6 cm (38 %), and 6.7 cm (9.4 %), respectively. Errors in KPVs for a set of jumps were first determined with respect to the true KPVs, and then the errors for all the jumps were averaged to calculate the absolute and percentage errors. The accuracy achieved is deemed to fulfill the expectations of both recreational and professional athletes.     

Coronas and high-P veins in metagabbros of the Kohistan island arc, northern Pakistan: evidence for crustal thickening during cooling

Abstract The E-W-trending Kohistan terrane in the NW Himalaya is a sandwich of a magmatic arc between the collided Karakoram (Asian) and Indian plates. The southern part of the Kohistan arc is principally made up of amphibolites derived from volcanic and plutonic rocks of Early Cretaceous age. Gabbroic relics in the amphibolites display calc-alkaline character, and their mineralogy is similar to low-P plutonic rocks reported from modern and ancient island arcs. The largest of these relics, occurring along the southern margin of the amphibolite belt near Khwaza Khela, is subcircular in outline and is about 1 km across. It consists of cumulate gabbros and related rocks displaying a record of cooling and crustal thickening. Primary olivine and anorthite reacted to produce coronas consisting of two pyroxenes +Mg-Fe²⁺-Al spinel ± tschermakitic hornblende at about 800° C, 5.5–7.5 kbar. This thermotectonic event is of regional extent and may be related to the overthrusting of the Karakoram plate onto the Kohistan arc some 85 Ma ago, or even earlier. Later the gabbros were locally traversed by veins containing high-P assemblages: garnet, kyanite, zoisite, paragonite, oligoclase, calcite, scapolite and quartz ° Chlorite ° Corundum ± diopside. Formed in the range 510–600° C, and 10–12 kbar, these suggest further thickening and cooling of the crust before its uplift during the Tertiary. This paper presents microprobe data on the minerals, and discusses the tectonic implications of the coronitic and vein assemblages in the gabbros.