Sediment storage and release from Himalayan piggyback basins and implications for downstream river morphology and evolution

Piggyback basins developed at the mountain fronts of collisional orogens can act as important, and transient, sediment stores along major river systems. It is not clear, however, how the storage and release of sediment in piggyback basins affects the sediment flux and evolution of downstream river reaches. Here, we investigate the timing and volumes of sediment storage and release in the Dehra Dun, a piggyback basin developed along the Himalayan mountain front in northwestern India. Based on OSL dating, we show evidence for three major phases of aggradation in the dun, bracketed at ca. 41–33 ka, 34–21 ka and 23–10 ka, each accompanied by progradation of sediment fans into the dun. Each of these phases was followed by backfilling and (apparently) rapid fan‐head incision, leading to abandonment of the depositional unit and a basinward shift of the active depocentre. Excavation of dun sediment after the second and third phases of aggradation produced time‐averaged sediment discharges that were ca. 1–2% of the modern suspended‐sediment discharges of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers that traverse the margins of the dun; this sediment was derived from catchment areas that together comprise 1.5% of the drainage area of these rivers. Comparison of the timing of dun storage and release with upstream and downstream records of incision and aggradation in the Ganga show that sediment storage in the dun generally coincides with periods of widespread hinterland aggradation but that late stages of dun aggradation, and especially times of dun sediment excavation, coincide with major periods of sediment export to the Ganga Basin. The dun thus acts to amplify temporal variations in hinterland sediment supply or transport capacity. This conceptual model appears to explain morphological features of other major river systems along the Himalayan front, including the Gandak and Kosi Rivers, and may be important for understanding sediment flux variations in other collisional mountain belts.     

Nonlinear model to study filamentation instability of circularly polarized dispersive Alfvén waves in solar wind plasmas

This paper examines the small-scale solar wind turbulence driven in view of the Alfvén waves subjected to ponderomotive nonlinearity. Filamentation instability is known to take place for the case of dispersive Alfvén wave (DAW) propagating parallel to the ambient magnetic field. The ponderomotive force associated with DAW is responsible for wave localization and these webs of filaments become more intense and irregular as one proceeds along the spatial domain. The ponderomotive force associated with pump changes with pump parameters giving rise to different evolution patterns. This paper studies in detail the nonlinear evolution of filamentation instability introduced by dispersive Alfven waves (DAWs) which becomes dispersive on account of the finite frequency of DAW i.e., pump frequency is comparable to the ion cyclotron frequency. We have explicitly obtained the perturbation dynamics and then examined the impact of pump magnitude on the driven magnetic turbulence using numerical simulation. The results show steepening at small scales with increasing pump amplitude. The compressibility associated with acoustic fluctuations may explain the variation in spectral scaling of solar wind turbulence as observed by Alexandrova et al. (Astrophys. J. 674:1157, 2008).     

Impact of Boundary-Layer Parameterisation Schemes on the Prediction of the Asian Summer Monsoon

The impact of two boundary-layer parameterisation schemes on the prediction of Indian monsoon systems by a global spectral model has been investigated. The turbulent kinetic energy closure scheme shows a positive impact on the prediction of some important synoptic features, including the genesis of monsoon lows, the tracking of monsoon depressions, and precipitation.     

Emission of methane and nitrous oxides from agricultural soils and related global warming potentials of Murshidabad District,West Bengal

Agricultural activities emit substantial amounts of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxides (N2O), the two important greenhouse gases (GHG) with high global warming potentials (GWP). So far, many studies have already been carried out at national and state level, but lack micro‐level (district or block‐level) inventory in India. The present study sheds light on the flux of CH4 and N2O (from all possible sources) from agricultural soil of various blocks in the Murshidabad district, based on the inventory prepared, using the IPCC methodology, with adjusted emission factors and coefficients appropriate for the local level. The economy of the Murshidabad district almost completely rests on agriculture as more than 80 per cent of the population is directly or indirectly dependent on it for their livelihood. Paddy is the dominating crop, cultivated on more than 60 per cent of the gross cropped area. The present work is based on the review of various literature and reports collected from respective state government offices and websites. Results show that CH4 and N2O emission from the agricultural fields are 126.405 Gg and 0.652 Gg respectively for the year 2011?12 with a large scale spatial variation (block‐level) within the district.     

Evaluation of the saltation process of bed materials by video imaging under altered bed roughness

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of particle saltation and movement over the beds of fixed roughness from flume experiments. A series of experiments are carried out to study the saltation of individual sand particles of different sizes over rough beds under different flow conditions. A 3‐D acoustic Doppler velocimeter is used to record the fluid velocity components; subsequently, under different flow conditions, the images of released sand particles are recorded using high‐speed video imaging technique. Systematic analysis is made with regard to the forces acting on the grains and the variation of their magnitudes along the saltation trajectories of the grains. Relations between the saltation parameters, flow intensity and bed roughness are developed. The distributions of the angle of orientations during a single saltation follows almost a Gaussian distribution. The shape of the Gaussian distribution depends on the particle size and bed roughness. Particle collisions with rough beds and the resulting coefficients of restitution are also discussed. A theoretical framework is developed to compute the mean particle velocity considering the spin in the energy balance equation. Results of the detailed analysis using the imaging technique are much better than in previously reported studies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Drought hazard assessment using geoinformatics over parts of Chotanagpur plateau region, Jharkhand, India

Recurrent drought events in the Palamu district of Jharkhand state and the magnitude of drought losses primarily toward agricultural production in this dominantly monocropped region indicate the continuing susceptibility of the society to drought. This paper presents a method for spatial, geoinformatics-based assessment of agricultural, meteorological, and hydrological drought hazard in Palamu district. It was hypothesized that the key climatic, biophysical and social factors that define agricultural drought hazard were soils, geomorphology, drainage density, land use, and relief, whereas for meteorological drought hazard, it is rainfall, coefficient of variation of rainfall and for hydrological drought hazard, it is lithology, depth to water table, aquifer yield, and surface water bodies. The framework for the derivation of an agricultural, meteorological, and hydrological drought hazard map was created through the development of a numerical weighting scheme to evaluate the drought potential of the classes within each factor. A cumulative map created through spatial join of all the three types of drought provided a drought hazard scenario in totality. The area with different severity of drought hazards under cumulative drought hazards scenario (viz. very low (8.9?%), low (24.2?%), moderate (29.2?%), high (20.13), and very high (17.3?%)) revealed high drought proneness of the area and the usefulness of geoinformatics in better spatial prognosis of drought hazards.