Zircon and whole-rock Nd-Pb isotopic provenance of Middle and Upper Ordovician siliciclastic rocks, Argentine Precordillera

Graptolite‐bearing Middle and Upper Ordovician siliciclastic facies of the Argentine Precordillera fold‐thrust belt record the disintegration of a long‐lived Cambro‐Mid Ordovician carbonate platform into a series of tectonically partitioned basins. A combination of stratigraphic, petrographic, U‐Pb detrital zircon, and Nd‐Pb whole‐rock isotopic data provide evidence for a variety of clastic sediment sources. Four Upper Ordovician quartzo‐lithic sandstones collected in the eastern and central Precordillera yield complex U‐Pb zircon age spectra dominated by 1·05–1·10 Ga zircons, secondary populations of 1·22, 1·30, and 1·46 Ga, rare 2·2 and 1·8 Ga zircons, and a minor population (<2%) of concordant zircons in the 600–700 Ma range. Archaean‐age grains comprise <1% of all zircons analysed from these rocks. In contrast, a feldspathic arenite from the Middle Ordovician Estancia San Isidro Formation of the central Precordillera has two well‐defined peaks at 1·41 and 1·43 Ga, with no grains in the 600–1200 Ma range and none older than 1·70 Ga. The zircon age spectrum in this unit is similar to that of a Middle Cambrian quartz arenite from the La Laja Formation, suggesting that local basement rocks were a regional source of ca 1·4 Ga detrital zircons in the Precordillera Terrane from the Cambrian onwards. The lack of grains younger than 600 Ma in Upper Ordovician units reinforces petrographic data indicating that Ordovician volcanic arc sources did not supply significant material directly to these sedimentary basins. Nd isotopic data (n = 32) for Middle and Upper Ordovician graptolitic shales from six localities define a poorly mixed signal [ɛ_Nd(450 Ma) = −9·6 to −4·5] that becomes more regionally homogenized in Upper Ordovician rocks (−6·2 ± 1·0; T_DM = 1·51 ± 0·15 Ga; n = 17), a trend reinforced by the U‐Pb detrital zircon data. It is concluded that proximal, recycled orogenic sources dominated the siliciclastic sediment supply for these basins, consistent with rapid unroofing of the Precordillera Terrane platform succession and basement starting in Mid Ordovician time. Common Pb data for Middle and Upper Ordovician shales from the western and eastern Precordillera (n = 15) provide evidence for a minor (<30%) component that was likely derived from a high‐μ (U/Pb) terrane.     

WATER ALLOCATION IN A CHANGING CLIMATE: INSTITUTIONS AND ADAPTATION

Global warming may profoundly affect temporal and spatial distributions of surface water availability. While climate modelers cannot yet predict regional hydrologic changes with confidence, it is appropriate to begin examining the likely effects of water allocation institutions on society's adaptability to prospective climate change. Such institutions include basic systems of water law, specific statutes, systems of administration and enforcement, and social norms regarding acceptable water-use practices. Both climate and the changing nature of demands on the resource have affected the development and evolution of water allocation institutions in the United States. Water laws and administrative arrangements, for example, have adapted to changing circumstances, but the process of adaptation can be costly and subject to conflict. Analysis of past and ongoing institutional change is used to identify factors that may have a bearing on the costliness of adaptation to the uncertain impacts of global warming on water availability and water demands. Several elements are identified that should be incorporated in the design of future water policies to reduce the potential for disputes and resource degradation that might otherwise result if climate change alters regional hydrology.     

Relationship of diagenetic chlorite rims to depositional facies in Lower Cretaceous reservoir sandstones of the Scotian Basin

The relationship between diagenetic chlorite rims and depositional facies in deltaic strata of the Lower Cretaceous Missisauga Formation was investigated using a combination of electron microprobe, bulk geochemistry and X‐ray diffraction data. The succession studied comprises several stacked parasequences. The delta progradational facies association includes: (i) fluvial or distributary channel sandstones (some with tidal influence); (ii) thick‐bedded delta‐front graded beds of sandstone interpreted as resulting from fluvial hyperpycnal flow during floods and storms; and (iii) more distal muddier delta‐front and prodeltaic facies. The transgressive facies association includes lag conglomerate, siderite‐cemented muddy sandstone and mudstone, and bioclastic sandy limestone. Chlorite rims are absent in the fluvial facies and best developed in thick sandstones lacking mudstone baffles. Good quality chlorite rims are well correlated with Ti in bulk geochemistry. Ti is a proxy for Fe availability, principally from the breakdown of abundant detrital ilmenite (FeTiO₃). Under conditions of sea floor diagenesis, the abrupt decrease in sedimentation rate at transgressive surfaces caused progressive shallowing of the sulphate‐depletion level and of the overlying Eh‐controlled diagenetic zones, resulting in conditions suitable for diagenetic formation of berthierine to migrate upwards through the packet of reservoir sandstones. This early diagenetic berthierine suppressed silica cementation and later recrystallized to chlorite. Thick euhedral outer chlorite rims were precipitated from formation water in sandstone lacking muddy baffles on this chlorite substrate and inhibited late carbonate cementation. This study thus shows that the preservation of porosity by chlorite rims is a two‐stage process. Rapidly deposited delta‐front turbidite facies create early diagenetic conditions that eventually lead to the formation of chlorite rims, but the best quality chlorite rims are restricted to sandstones with high permeability during burial diagenesis.     

Aeolian granule ripple deposits, Namibia

Granule ripples are a common feature of most dunefields, yet they have seldom been recognized in ancient deposits. Although granule ripples are common in erosional settings, such as windward slopes of dunes, or scour surfaces in interdunes, they nevertheless migrate laterally and leave distinctive deposits that can be recognized in ancient rocks. These deposits have characteristics of ‘type B’sand sheet deposits, including: ‘poured-in’texture; curving ripple trough; tangential, coarse-grained foresets; irregular silty layers; well-sorted coarse and fine layers (either horizontal or within foresets); and fine layers in ripple troughs. Wind tunnel experiments suggest that under low-velocity wind conditions, granule ripples grow to a significant degree as parasites dependent on saltation of fine sand grains whose impact moves the larger grains of the granule ripple. Although the depositional surface of granule ripples is commonly coated with a layer of coarse grains, this is in most places only a few grains thick. Underlying deposits commonly have a poorly sorted, or ‘poured-in’texture. This texture results from an admixture of fine grains that fall among the spaces between the larger grains during deposition.     

GEOGRAPHIES OF RISK AND DIFFERENCE IN CROP GENETIC ENGINEERING

ABSTRACT. Genetic engineering is often depicted as a breakthrough solution to hunger and environmental problems in agriculture. Such claims encourage the further shift of public resources toward molecular sciences, globalized intellectual property rights, and relaxed biotechnology regulation. However, focusing on transgenic crops is a risky and inadequate response to socioeconomic and ecological challenges. The search for a universal, technological solution disregards the complex geographies of food production and trade. This article challenges claims that crop genetic engineering represents a new direction in agriculture, that transgenic crops have performed well, and that the regulatory approaches used in the United States or Europe are universally applicable. It outlines three geographies of difference that distinguish agriculture in the global North from farming in most of the global South. Those differences point to the need for more place‐specific, multifaceted, and farmer‐centered approaches to agricultural productivity and sustainability, approaches to which geographers have much to contribute.     

SPATIAL CONSTRAINTS ON WOMEN'S WORK IN TARIJA,BOLIVIA

ABSTRACT. This geography of women's work in the less‐developed world is set in Tarija, Bolivia, a small city that has been dramatically changed by economic crisis and structural‐adjustment programs. Explored is the spatial component of women's economic activities in a low‐income barrio following the imposition of structural‐adjustment programs in the 1980s and 1990s. Women who pursue employment away from home must rely on other women. In particular, households that include more than one woman who is capable of handling important daily chores are more likely to have a woman engaged in income‐generating activities away from the home and the neighborhood. Women at home make it possible for other women to extend their economic activity into the broader community. These findings are important because they draw attention to women's reliance on other women, how women use space, and how they are constrained by spatial factors as they negotiate their daily lives.     

Sediment production and transport in a proglacial stream: Hilda Glacier, Alberta, Canada

Hilda Glacier, a small cirque glacier in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, yields two principal types of sediment: ablation till, deficient in fine material and produced by rockfalls and avalanches falling on to the glacier surface, and basal lodgement till, rich in fines and formed mainly by subglacial erosion. Recent recession from its Neoglacial maximum has exposed large areas of basal till with thin veneers of ablation till which, when combined with present subglacial and supraglacial debris, provide abundant material for erosion and transport by the mcltwatcr stream. Sediment transport measurements over two summers (1977–1978) showed that bed load and suspended load occur in approximately equal proportions and that dissolved loads are minor. Local source variations, especially bank slumps, are a major cause of scatter in sediment rating curves. Suspended-sediment concentrations are greater early in the melt season due to availability of loose sediment produced by freezing and thawing. Other contributors to scatter in suspended-sediment rating curves include rain showers and diurnal hysteretic effects. Although the distinction between bed load and suspended load is never sharp, available data suggest that the sand/ gravel grain-size boundary (-1ø) approximates the suspendcd-load/bed-load division for characteristic Hilda flows transporting gravel. This approximation, combined with till grain-size analyses, suspended-sediment measurements, and spatial distributions of till types, leads to the following computations of fluvial sediment sources: for suspended load - 6% supraglacial, 47% subglacial, 47% channel banks; for bed load - 46% supraglacial, 27% each subglacial and channel banks. Supraglacial debris provides only about one-fourth of all fluvial sediment, but nearly half of the bed load.     

Signatures of storms, oceanic floods and forearc tectonism in marine shelf strata of the Quinault Formation (Pliocene), Washington, USA

Marine shelf strata of the Quinault Formation reflect the influences of storm–flood processes and convergent margin tectonism on sedimentation and palaeocommunity distributions in an active forearc basin of Early Pliocene age, western Washington, USA. The sedimentologic, ichnologic and invertebrate megafaunal character of coastal sea cliff exposures in the Pratt Cliff–Duck Creek area, Quinault Indian Nation, reveal five different sedimentary facies – scoured, Rosselia, bioturbated, mixed and Acharax. These facies document the shifting interplay and intensities among storms, waves and river‐flood plumes during transgression in inner to mid‐shelf settings. Storm sedimentation on the inner shelf is recorded north of Pratt Cliff by amalgamated, proximal tempestites of the scoured facies, which grade up‐section to thick deposits of hummocky cross‐stratified sandstone, indicative of strong wave influences. These hummocky beds alternate, in metre‐scale packages, with banded mudstone and siltstone that have distinctive sedimentologic and ichnofaunal characteristics (Rosselia facies). In particular the mudstone and siltstone occur as 1–15 cm‐thick, rhythmic, parallel beds that are laterally continuous, internally homogeneous to faintly laminated, and thus similar in nature to fine‐grained, oceanic flood deposits reported from shelf settings offshore the modern Eel River, northern California. The Quinault flood deposits are dominated by the ubiquitous trace fossil Rosselia socialis, comprising vertical, mud‐packed, flaring burrows with a sand‐filled central shaft which has been inferred as the feeding‐dwelling structure of a vermiform invertebrate adapted to high sedimentation rates in inner‐shelf settings. Fairweather conditions in between the higher energy periods of storms, waves and floods are recorded north of Pratt Cliff by the mixed facies, which is interpreted as representing the sand and mud zone of the inner‐ to mid‐shelf transition. Quieter, deeper, mid‐shelf, fairweather settings are typified by the bioturbated facies south of Pratt Cliff, where lower sedimentation rates and lower physical energies produced extensively bioturbated deposits of sandy siltstone punctuated, in places, by isolated sandy beds of distal tempestites. Quinault strata also chronicle stratigraphic signatures of subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath western Washington during the Pliocene. For example, the imprint of geochemically unusual authigenic carbonates and a chemosynthetic palaeocommunity (Acharax facies) have been interpreted as a methane seep on the Quinault seafloor. Furthermore, a mobile rockground epifauna of pholadid bivalves became established on abundant, dark mudstone cobbles and pebbles sourced from the Hoh Assemblage, a Miocene accretionary prism that was actively deforming as well as interacting with Quinault forearc sediments during the Pliocene. Hoh mudstone clasts were supplied to the Quinault shelf via seafloor‐piercing diapirs and eroding mélange shear zones, exposures of which today occur in fault contact with Quinault strata along the coast from Taholah to the Raft River.     

Criteria for the recognition of acid-precipitated halite

Modern acid and neutral saline lakes in Western Australia are an excellent natural laboratory for testing how pH affects halite, and for developing criteria for distinguishing past acid saline waters from past neutral saline waters in the rock record. This study characterizes and compares physical, chemical and biological features in halite precipitated from acid (pH 1·7 to 4·2) and neutral (pH 6·8 to 7·3) saline lakes in southern Western Australia. Supplemental data include synthetic halite grown from acid and neutral saline solutions, as well as halite deposited in Permian acid lakes. Although physical processes of halite growth are not affected by pH, there are differences in the colour, accessory minerals, fluid inclusions and microfossils between acid and neutral halites. Acid lake halite commonly is yellow or orange in colour; neutral lake halites examined in this study are always snow white. Acid halites tend to contain abundant sulphate and iron oxide minerals, both as solid inclusions and as solids within fluid inclusions; neutral halites contain little, if any, sulphates and no iron oxides. Acid fluid inclusion freezing/melting behaviours include characteristics that differ from neutral fluid inclusion behaviours, such as lower eutectic temperatures, higher and wider temperature range of hydrohalite rims with a definable fuzzy border and more complex metastable phases. Acid halite contains 'hairy blobs', clusters of bacterial/archaeal/fungal remains and sulphate crystals, which are not found in halite from neutral lakes. This distinct assemblage of features characteristic of modern acid lake halites may serve as informal criteria for the recognition of past acid lake evaporites in the rock record.