Kimberlite pipes from Chidliak, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada host surface-derived Paleozoic carbonate xenoliths containing conodonts. Conodonts are phosphatic marine microfossils that experience progressive, cumulative and irreversible colour changes upon heating that are experimentally calibrated as a conodont colour alteration index (CAI). CAI values permit us to estimate the temperatures to which conodont-bearing rocks have been heated. Conodonts have been recovered from 118 samples from 89 carbonate xenoliths collected from 12 of the pipes and CAI values within individual carbonate xenoliths show four types of CAI distributions: (1) CAI values that are uniform throughout the xenolith; (2) lower CAIs in core of a xenolith than the rim; (3) CAIs that increase from one side of the xenolith to the other; and, (4) in one xenolith, higher CAIs in the xenolith core than at the rim. We have used thermal models for post-emplacement conductive cooling of kimberlite pipes and synchronous heating of conodont-bearing xenoliths to establish the temperature–time history of individual xenoliths within the kimberlite bodies. Model results suggest that the time-spans for xenoliths to reach the peak temperatures recorded by CAIs varies from hours for the smallest xenoliths to 2 or 3 years for the largest xenoliths. The thermal modelling shows the first three CAI patterns to be consistent with in situ conductive heating of the xenoliths coupled to the cooling host kimberlite. The fourth pattern remains an anomaly.
During yellow sea green tide outbreak, the thalli of Ulva prolifera drifted more than 350 km on the sea surface from off shore of Jiangsu Province to Qingdao city, where they were exposed to complex changes of local environments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the response of the thalli to diurnal changes of environments on the sea surface, and a sea surface environment simulator (SSES) was designed to simulate the natural environment of floating U . prolifera mat. A control experiment is designed in the laboratory, which was processed under suitable conditions (20°C for temperature, 72 μmol photons/(m 2 ·s) for light intensity and 30 for salinity), and an in-situ research was conducted to study the photosynthetic responses of floating U . prolifera to diurnal changes of environments. The results show that the photosynthetic efficiency of the thalli decreased gradually with time, and decreased rapidly after 14:00 local time (LT). After exposed to the environment on the sea surface for 6 h, the photosynthetic activity of the thalli decreased significantly. Furthermore, physiological-level and molecular-level experiments revealed that non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), cyclic electron flow (CEF) and energy redistribution between PSI and PSII all played an important role in the strong photosynthetic plasticity of U . prolifera . NPQ is the most important photoprotective responses to environmental changes before 12:00 LT. The results also confirmed that the CEF and energy redistribution between PSI and PSII are the main synergistic eff ects for the thalli to adapt to the environmental changes when the process NPQ cannot work. And the result can further reveal the reason why U . prolifera can adapt to the living condition of long distance drift on the sea surface. The findings of this research could provide a theoretical basis for explaining outbreaks of the green tide and instructing the management of the problem. 相似文献