Spatial heterogeneity of epibenthos on artificial reefs: fouling communities in the early stages of colonization on an East Australian shipwreck

Artificial reefs are spatially complex habitats and serve as good model systems to study patterns of community succession and the response of epibiota to environmental clines over small spatial scales. Here, we quantified spatial heterogeneity in community composition and diversity of fouling communities across a number of environmental gradients that included water depth, surface orientation of habitats, exposure to currents, and shelter. Assemblage structure was quantified by spatially replicated photo transects on a recently scuttled large navy ship off the East Australian coast, lying in 27 m of water. A rich assemblage of epifauna had colonized the wreck within a year, dominated by barnacles, sponges and bryozoans. Community structure varied significantly over small spatial scales of meters to tens of meters. Depth, surface orientation and exposure were the major environmental drivers. Assemblages were substantially less diverse and abundant on the deepest (23 m near the seafloor) part of the hull with residual antifouling paint, on sheltered surfaces inside the wreck, and on the sediment‐laden horizontal surfaces. Overall, the wrecks’ habitat complexity corresponds with small‐scale heterogeneity in the fouling communities. This study supports the notion that wrecks enhance local diversity and biomass within the habitat mosaic of their location, and habitat complexity may be an important mechanism for this, as demonstrated by the large spatial variability in the assemblages documented here.     

Revising macroseismic data in Switzerland: The December 20, 1720 earthquake in the region of Lake Constance

Upgrading the Earthquake Catalog of Switzerland (ECOS) included revising the earthquake of 1720. This change has major importance for history and seismology.Although that quake has been the subject of several publications, none was based on critical methods. This re-evaluation of the event is built upon a new and more reliable database established after investigating archives and libraries. Using data from such historical sources, we assigned new site intensities, adopting the criteria established by the European macroseismic scale EMS 98 (Grünthal, 1998).We discovered that the event had been assigned an overestimated intensity, due to interpretation errors in former earthquake catalogs and compilations. We recommend reducing the intensity from I₀= VIII to I₀= VI (EMS 98). The moment magnitude is given as M_W= 4.6. Since the event had been considered the largest for its respective area, downgrading it now will influence the seismic hazard assessment for this region.     

A synoptic program for large solar telescopes: Cyclic variation of turbulent magnetic fields

Upcoming large solar telescopes will offer the possibility of unprecedented high resolution observations. However, during periods of non‐ideal seeing such measurements are impossible and alternative programs should be considered to best use the available observing time. We present a synoptic program, currently carried out at the Istituto Ricerche Solari Locarno (IRSOL), to monitor turbulent magnetic fields employing the differential Hanle effect in atomic and molecular lines. This program can be easily adapted for the use at large telescopes exploring new science goals, nowadays impossible to achieve with smaller telescopes. The current, interesting scientific results prove that such programs are worthwhile to be continued and expanded in the future. We calculate the approximately achievable spatial resolution at a large telescope like ATST for polarimetric measurements with a noise level below 5 × 10^‐5 and a temporal resolution which is sufficient to explore variations on the granular scale. We show that it would be important to optimize the system for maximal photon throughput and to install a high‐speed camera system to be able to study turbulent magnetic fields with unprecedented accuracy (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Estimation of precipitation fields from 1-minute rain gauge time series – comparison of spatial and spatio-temporal interpolation methods

Accurate estimations of spatio-temporal fields at unsampled locations are important in a number of applications. Often, spatio-temporal fields are advected, which means the change in field values over time at a particular point in space stems to a large extent from motion of a more or less constant spatial field. For such dynamic fields, interpolation methods including information on the motion behaviour of the field are promising extensions of solely spatial (snapshot) and symmetric spatio-temporal methods. In this paper, the performance of different deterministic and geostatistical interpolation methods is compared for precipitation estimation from 1-minute time series of spatially distributed rain gauges. The focus is on spatio-temporal methods that include information on the motion behaviour of the rainfield, estimated from weather radar using optical flow. The different interpolation methods are introduced and evaluated using rain gauge measurements of a 15-day period and cross-validation. The results show that including information on the motion behaviour significantly improves interpolation quality in terms of RMSE.     

Responses of microorganisms and enzymes to soil contamination with metazachlor

A greenhouse pot experiment was conducted at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, with the aim of describing the influence of metazachlor on counts and biodiversity of soil microorganisms, soil enzymatic activity, physicochemical properties of soil and yield of spring oilseed rape. The first experimental factor was soil contamination with increasing rates of metazachlor: 0 (soil without the herbicide), 0.333 (recommended by the manufacturer), 6.666, 13.332, 26.665, 53.328, 106.656 and 213.312 mg kg^?1 dm of soil, while the second factor comprised two dates of determination: 30 and 60 days after starting the experiment. The tested herbicide had an adverse effect on reproduction of all analyzed microorganisms: oligotrophic bacteria and their endospore forms, Azotobacter spp. bacteria, organotrophic bacteria, actinomycetes and fungi. The values of the colony development and eco-physiological diversity indices decreased under the influence of excessive doses of the herbicide. Also, significant fluctuation in the enzymatic activity of soil was observed in response to the higher doses of metazachlor and depending on the date of determinations. The herbicide had an invariably negative influence on the activity of soil enzymes, causing the inhibition of dehydrogenases, catalase, urease, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase, arylsulfatase and β-glucosidase. The physicochemical status of soil depended significantly on the degree of soil contamination with the herbicide, same as the yield of spring oilseed rape.     

Alternating field characteristics of pseudo-single-domain (2–14 μm) and multidomain magnetite

We report normalized AF demagnetization curves of anhysteretic remanences (ARM's) produced by 1-, 10- and 40-Oe steady fields and of saturation isothermal remanence (IRM_s) in a suite of dispersed, unannealed magnetite powders with median sizes of 2, 4, 6, 10 and 14 μm (pseudo-single-domain or PSD size range) and 100 μm (multidomain or MD size). Interpreted in the light of the domain structure test first proposed by Lowrie and Fuller [12], the relative stability trend of curves for the 2 μm sample is of single-domain (SD) type, the 1-Oe ARM being most resistant to demagnetization followed by the 10-Oe and 40-Oe ARM's and IRM_s. For the 100-μm sample, the trend is exactly reversed and is of MD-type. In the 4–14 μm samples, hitherto undescribed transitional trends between SD-type and MD-type occur. At 6 μm, 1-Oe, 10-Oe and 40-Oe ARM's preserve an SD-type trend but for all AF's > 75 Oe, IRM_s is more resistant than any of these remanences. At 10 μm, this trend is unmistakable, and only at 14 μm do the 1-Oe, 10-Oe and 40-Oe ARM curves merge. We conclude (1) that the Lowrie-Fuller test distinguishes between small MD grains enhanced by PSD remanence and large MD grains lacking PSD remanence, rather than between SD and MD structures per se, and (2) that in the PSD transition region from 6 to 14 μm in magnetite, IRM_s changes over to MD-type relative stability around 6 μm, whereas 10-Oe and 40-Oe ARM's achieve an MD-type trend around 14 μm, in accord with the predicted field dependence of the PSD threshold size.Our theoretical interpretation assumes that the intrinsic (internal field) coercive force spectra of weak-field and strong-field remanences are identical but that the observed (external field) spectrum is shifted to lower fields as a result of the internal demagnetizing field — NJ_r of the remanence J_r. The effect is slight for weak-field J_r's but substantial for IRM_s. Since all coercivities, high as well as low, are shifted, the result of the Lowrie-Fuller test is determined simply by the shape of the intrinsic coercivity spectrum or the corresponding AF demagnetization curve. Depending on the model of self-demagnetization used, either subexponential or sublinear AF decay curves of weak-field remanence will automatically lead to an MD-type trend, whereas by either model the decay curves that characterize SD and PSD remanences (decaying slowly initially and then more rapidly) will always produce and SD-type trend.     

Influence of IHSS Standard and Reference Materials on Copper and Mercury Toxicity to Vibrio fischeri

The reduction in light emission of the marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri used in the standard Microtox^® bioassay was measured for the metals copper and mercury. The concentration at which the light emission was reduced by 50% (EC₅₀) was determined to be (3.43 ± 0.83) μmol/L for Cu²⁺ and (0.66 ± 0.01) μmol/L for Hg²⁺. The reduction of the toxicity of these metals by humic and fulvic acids were studied using IHSS Standard and Reference Materials. Copper toxicity was reduced 17...20% by the soil and peat fulvic acids and 9...20% by the aquatic fulvic acids. While there appeared to be little difference in the reduction of Cu toxicity by fulvic acids from soils, peats, or aquatic systems, Hg toxicity was reduced 3.6...7.3% by the soils and peats, while aquatic fulvic acids reduced Hg toxicity 14...16%. Soil fulvic acids appear to have significantly less capacity to reduce Hg toxicity than Cu toxicity. Humic acids had much higher reductions of Cu toxicity (44...124%) compared to the fulvic acids, with little difference between aquatic and soil or peat humic acids, 44...124% and 67...100%, respectively. However, humic and fulvic acids, regardless of origin, had approximately the same effect on Hg toxicity with 3.5...16% reduction by fulvic acids and 8...20% reduction by humic acids. Unlike the fulvic acids, no clear trend was observed relative to origin of the humic acids. There was no correlation between percent reduction of Cu or Hg toxicity by the organic compounds and copper binding capacity (CuBC), C/N ratio, or carboxyl content of the materials. Examination of natural organic matter (NOM) isolated by reverse osmosis techniques from three water sources had reductions of both Cu and Hg toxicity that were most similar to the Suwannee River and Nordic fulvic acids.     

Model generalization of two different drainage patterns by self-organizing maps

In this study, we develop a new method using self-organizing maps (SOMs) for the selection of hydrographic model generalization. The most suitable attributes of the stream objects are used as input variables to the SOM. The attributes were weighted using Pearson’s chi-square independence test. We used the Radical Law to determine how many features should be selected, and an incremental approach was developed to determine which clusters should be selected from the SOM. Two drainage patterns (dendritic and modified basic) were obtained from the National Hydrography Datasets of United States Geological Survey at 1:24,000-scale (high resolution) and used in order to derive stream networks at 1:100,000-scale (medium resolution). The 1:100,000-scale stream networks, derived in accordance with the proposed approach, are similar to those in the original maps in both quantity and visual aspects. Stream density and pattern were maintained in each subunit, and continuous and semantically correct networks were obtained.