Seasonal Dynamics of Microbial Processes in Bottom Sediments of the Sevastopol Coastal Area

Oceanology - A seasonal study of microbial methane oxidation (MO) and sulfate reduction (SR) processes in bottom sediments was carried out at five stations in the estuarian Sevastopol coastal area,...     

Methane in the Sevastopol coastal area, Black Sea

Concentrations of dissolved methane in seawater and bottom sediments, as well as of methane emanating from gas seeps were measured at 18 stations including several small bays in the Sevastopol coastal area (Black Sea) during 2007–2008. Methane concentrations in surface waters ranged from 10 to 2,970 nmol l^?1, and correlated well with values recorded for sediments. Methane concentrations in the water column were influenced by water depth, as well as by air and water temperatures. In the spring and summer of 2008, in situ CH₄ saturation relative to air was in the range of 970–71,900%. Maximum saturation was in summer. CH₄ fluxes to the atmosphere from the Sevastopol coastal area were estimated to vary from 190 to 1,550 μmol m^?2 day^?1. Gas bubbles escaping from the seepages contained about 57 vol% methane. Radiocarbon dating of the methane revealed an age not exceeding 150 years, implying a biogenic origin.     

On the Use of Calibration Explosions at the Former Semipalatinsk Test Site for Compiling a Travel-time Model of the Crust and Upper Mantle

—?Two chemical calibration explosions, conducted at the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in 1998 with charges of 25 tons and 100 tons TNT, have been used for developing travel-time curves and generalized one-dimensional velocity models of the crust and upper mantle of the platform region of Kazakhstan. The explosions were recorded by a number of digital seismic stations, located in Kazakhstan at distances ranging from 0 to 720?km. The travel-time tables developed in this paper cover the phases P, Pn, Pg, S, Sn, Lg in a range of 0–740?km and the velocity models apply to the crust down to 44?km depth and to the mantle down to 120?km. A comparison of the compiled travel-time tables with existing travel-time tables of CSE and IASPEI91 is presented.     

Modeling of climate tendencies in Arctic seas based on atmospheric forcing EOF decomposition

Ocean Dynamics - The article analyzes the results of the EOF decomposition of climatic data and assesses the role of its components in the formation of climatic ice tendencies of recent decades....     

Magnetorheological model of lithogenetic structures in the pelagic region of the Pacific Ocean: Rheology of the Tucker-Khramov zone

Based on fundamental laws of physicochemical mechanics of disperse structures, a magnetorheological model of lithogenetic structures in open (far from land) regions of the Pacific Ocean is constructed. Special attention is given to the magnetization mechanism of bottom sediments below the water-seafloor interface. This process is most active in the so-called Tucker-Khramov zone, where strength properties of a suspension are either unobservable or weak. A quantitative model describing both the filtering (smoothing) of a geomagnetic signal and its time lag in the rheological Tucker-Khramov zone is proposed for sedimentary rocks of various water contents. In the lower part of the zone, the sediment is a thixotropic solidifying structure in which the spatial orientation of magnetic dipoles is fixed due to an increase in the strength properties of the soil.     

Petromagnetic parameters of bottom sediments as indicators of the climatic and environmental changes in the central zone of the Sea of Okhotsk during the last 350 kyr

Bottom sediments from the central zone of the Sea of Okhotsk were preliminarily dated. The petromagnetic parameters of two groups of samples formed at cold and warm climatic stages were studied. Warm oxygen isotopic stages and substages were characterized by the coexistence of pseudo-single-domain allogenic magnetite and predominant magnetite and greigite (pyrrhotite) grains subject to biologic control. At cold stages, sediments containing a mixture of pseudo-single-domain and multidomain terrigenous magnetite particles accumulated. The petromagnetic curves agree with the normalized standard oxygen isotopic curve over the last 350 kyr of the column section.     

Long-Term Dynamics of the Concentrations of Organochlorine Compounds and Mercury in the Bottom Sediments of the Chernorechenskoe Reservoir

Water Resources - The accumulation of organochlorine compounds (OCs) and mercury in the bottom sediments of the Chernorechenskoe Reservoir since the mid-1960s to 2008 has been studied....     

Middle to late Pleistocene record of explosive volcanic eruptions in marine sediments offshore Kamchatka (Meiji Rise,NW Pacific)

This paper presents the first detailed study of a late Pleistocene marine tephra sequence from the NW Pacific, downwind from the Kamchatka volcanic arc. Sediment core SO201-2-40, located on the Meiji Rise ~400 km offshore the peninsula, includes 25 tephras deposited within the last 215 ka. Volcanic glass from the tephras was characterized using single-shard electron microprobe analysis and laser ablation inductively coupled mass spectrometry. The age of tephras was derived from a new age model based on paleomagnetic and paleoclimate studies. Geochemical correlation of distal tephras to Kamchatkan pyroclastic deposits allowed the identification of tephras from the Karymsky, Gorely, Opala and Shiveluch eruptive centers. Three of these tephras were also correlated to other marine and terrestrial sites and hence are identified as the best markers for the north-west Pacific region. These are an early Holocene tephra from the Karymsky caldera (~8.7 ka) and two tephras falling into the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 glacial time: an MIS 6.4 tephra from Shiveluch (~141 ka) and the MIS 6.5 Rauchua tephra (~175 ka) from Karymsky. The data presented in this study can be used in paleovolcanological and paleoceanographic reconstructions.     

Rating Water Quality in Sevastopol Bay by the Fluxes of Pollutant Deposition in Bottom Sediments

Sevastopol Bay is used as an example for the development of criteria for rating anthropogenic impact by elimination fluxes from the water area of post-Chernobyl (⁹⁰Sr, ¹³⁷Cs, ^239,240Pu) and natural (²¹⁰Pо) radionuclides, as well as mercury and organochlorine compounds. The differentiation of the bay water area into zones with different biogeochemical conditions and the balance approach to interpreting field observation data were used to assess the conditioning capacity of Sevastopol Bay ecosystem for conservative radioactive and chemical substances by elimination fluxes of pollutants into aqueous depot, which is the open part of the Black Sea and into the geological depot, i.e., its bottom sediment stratum.