Local level rainfall and temperature variability in drought-prone districts of rural Sidama,central rift valley region of Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to examine local level spatiotemporal rainfall and temperature variability in drought-prone districts of rural Sidama, Central Rift Valley region of Ethiopia. The study used 129 gridded monthly rainfall and temperature data of 32 years (1983–2014). The gridded rainfall and temperature records were encoded into GIS software and evaluated through different statistical and geospatial techniques. Mann-Kendal rank test and F distribution tests were used to test temporal and spatial statistical significance, respectively, of the data. The analysis revealed that Belg and Kiremt are the main rainfall seasons, constituting 81% of the annual rainfall. Although annual, Kiremt, and Belg rainfall amounts appear to have decreased over time, the decreasing trend is statistically significant only for Belg rainfall records. On the other hand, rainfall standard anomaly results indicated seven droughts of different magnitudes: one extreme, two severe, and four moderate. The study also revealed increasing temperature trends over the years under consideration that are statistically significant. The findings of this study on rainfall contradict other findings obtained around the study area. Thus, climate change adaptations need to focus on location-specific climate data analysis so that the intended adaptive interventions can be successful.     

The importance of oxygen isotope provenance in relation to solute content of bulk meltwaters at Imersuaq Glacier,West Greenland

Stable oxygen isotope analysis and measurement of several dissolved cations and anions of bulk meltwater samples have provided information about the hydrochemical environment of the glacial hydrological system at Imersuaq Glacier, an outlet tongue from the Greenland ice‐sheet, West Greenland. The samples were collected at frequent intervals during the period 20–28 July 2000 in a small (<20 L s^?1) englacial meltwater outlet at the glacier margin. The results document the following findings: (i) a marked diurnal variation of δ¹⁸O is related to the composition of oxygen isotope provenances, mainly near‐marginal local superimposed ice and basal up‐sheared ice further up‐glacier; (ii) a relationship is seen between all base cations (Na⁺, K⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺), SO₄^2? and δ¹⁸O, indicating that solute acquisition is provided by solid–solution contact with the up‐sheared ice—as the relationship with Cl^? is weak the influence of seasalt‐derived solutes is small in the area; (iii) when the melt rate is high, two diurnal maxima of δ¹⁸O values and solute concentrations are measured, and it is suggested that a snow meltwater component is responsible for the second maximum of δ¹⁸O—a short residence time leads to a delayed decrease in ion concentrations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Late Quaternary contourites and glaciomarine sedimentation in the Fram Strait

Two sites in the eastern Fram Strait, the Vestnesa Ridge and the Yermak Plateau, have been surveyed and sampled providing a depositional record over the last glacial‐interglacial cycle. The Fram Strait is the only deep‐water connection from the Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic and contains a marine sediment record of both high latitude thermohaline flow and ice sheet interaction. On the Vestnesa Ridge, the western Svalbard margin, a sediment drift was identified in 1226 m of water. Gravity and multicores from the crest of the drift recovered turbidites and contourites. ¹⁴C dating indicates an age range of 8287 to 26 900 years BP (Early Holocene to Late Weichselian). The Yermak Plateau is characterized by slope sediments in 961 m of water. Gravity and multicores recovered contourites and hemipelagites. ¹⁴C ages were between 8615 and 46 437 years BP (Early Holocene to mid‐Weichselian). Downcore dinoflagellate cyst analyses from both sites provide a record of changing surface water conditions since the mid‐Weichselian, suggesting variable sea ice extent, productivity and polynyas present even during the Last Glacial Maximum. Four layers of ice‐rafted debris were also identified and correlated within the cores. These events occurred ca at 9, 24 to 25, 26 to 27 and 43 ka, asynchronous with Heinrich layers in the wider north‐east Atlantic and here interpreted as reflecting instability in the Svalbard/Barents Ice sheet and the northward advection of warm Atlantic water during the Late Weichselian. The activity of the ancestral West Spitsbergen Current is interpreted using mean sortable silt records from the cores. On the Vestnesa Ridge drift the modern mass accumulation rate, calculated using excess ²¹⁰Pb, is 0·076 g cm^?2 year^?1. On the Yermak Plateau slope the modern mass accumulation rate is 0·053 g cm^?2 year^?1.     

Pervasive wetland flooding in the glacial drift prairie of North Dakota (USA)

This article describes a unique flood hazard, produced by the dramatic expansion of wetlands in Nelson County, located within the North American Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota, USA. There has been an unprecedented increase in the number, average size, and permanence of prairie wetlands, and a significant increase in the size of a closed lake (Stump Lake) due to a decade-long wet spell that began in 1993 following a prolonged drying trend. Base-line land cover information from the 1992 USGS National Land Cover Characterization dataset, and a Landsat TM scene acquired 9 July 2001 are used to assess the growth of the closed lake and wetland pond surface areas, and to analyze the type and area of various land cover classes inundated between 1992 and 2001. The open water profile in Nelson County changed from one marked by relatively comparable coverage of closed lake and wetland pond areas in 1992, to one in which wetland open water accounted for the vast majority of total open water in 2001. The bulk of the wetland pond area expansion occurred by displacing existing wetland vegetation and agricultural cropland. Producers responded to the flood hazard by filing Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) claims and enrolling cropland in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a federal land retirement program. Land taken out of agricultural production has had an enormous impact upon the agricultural sector that forms the economic base of the rural economy. In 2001 the land taken out of production due to CRP enrollment and preventive planting claims represented nearly 42% of Nelson County’s 205.2 K ha base agricultural land. The patterns obtained from this detailed study of Nelson County are likely to be the representative of the more publicized flood disaster occurring within the Devils Lake Basin of North Dakota.     

Post-Miocene stratigraphy and depositional environments of valley-fill sequences at the mouth of Tampa Bay, Florida

Post-Miocene sea-level low stands allowed rivers and karst processes to incise the exposed carbonate platform along the Gulf Coast of Florida. Few Miocene to mid-Pleistocene deposits survived erosion along the present coast except within incised valleys. Since their formation, these valleys have been filled and incised multiple times in response to sea-level changes. The thick sedimentary sequences underlying the mouth of Tampa Bay have been recorded as a range of depositional environments and multiple sea-level incursions and excursions during pre-Holocene time and subsequent to the accumulation of the Miocene carbonate sequences. Sediment analysis of cores collected from a north–south transect across the mouth of Tampa Bay has enabled the identification of lithofacies, ranging from well-sorted, quartz sand to dense, fossiliferous, phosphatic grainstone. These facies were deposited in freshwater, estuarine, and shallow, open marine environments. As a result of channel development and migration within the paleovalley, and cut-and-fill associated with individual transgressions and regressions, correlation of the lithofacies does not extend across the entire transect. Fining-upward sequences truncated by tidal ravinement surfaces that extend throughout the paleovalley can, however, be identified. Age determinations based on 14-C analysis, amino-acid racemization, and strontium isotope analysis dating of numerous samples yield ages of Miocene, Pliocene, early Pleistocene, and late Pleistocene, as well as Holocene for sequences that accumulated and were preserved in this valley-fill complex. Numerous inconsistencies in the stratigraphic organization of the age determinations indicate that there are bad dates, considerable reworking of shells that were dated, or both. For this reason as well as the lack of detailed correlation among the three relatively complete cores, it is not possible to place these strata in a sequence stratigraphic framework.     

末次盛冰期以来渤、黄、东海陆架底质分布演变过程模拟研究

渤、黄、东海陆架底质的形成分布与末次盛冰期之后的海侵密切相关。末次盛冰期结束、海侵开始以来 ,潮流是渤、黄、东海陆架上的永久性主导作用应力。为从长期沉积动力演变过程的角度 ,探讨渤、黄、东海陆架底质形成分布的有关成因问题 ,利用数值模拟手段 ,再现了末次盛冰期以来 6个时期渤、黄、东海陆架潮流作用下海底的冲淤格局及底质分布。结果表明 ,扬子浅滩南侧东海外陆架的砂质沉积基本上是自 - 80 m海面以来形成的。扬子浅滩形成于 -5 2 m海面之后 ,至 - 3 0 m海面时已有一定规模 ,全新世最大海侵之后 ,逐渐形成现在规模的扬子浅滩。南黄海中部泥自 - 5 2 m海面时就已开始形成 ,- 3 0 m海面时范围很大 ,侵入北黄海 ,全新世最大海侵以来 ,逐渐调整到现在的范围。渤海中央泥、北黄海西部泥、浙闽岸外泥、辽东半岛西侧与北侧的砂质沉积、西朝鲜湾与江华湾中的砂质沉积以及苏北浅滩是自全新世最大海侵以来逐渐形成的。海州湾中砂质沉积形成的盛期在公元 8世纪之后。济洲岛西南泥、南黄海东部泥很可能分别形成于 - 3 0 m海面、- 5 2 m海面以来。全新世渤、黄、东海陆架底质分布的演变过程大致分为 2个阶段 :全新世最大海侵之前为渤、黄、东海陆架底质分布宏观格局的形成阶段 ;全新世最大海侵至今为渤     

Late Holocene estuarine–inner shelf interactions; is there evidence of an estuarine retreat path for Tampa Bay, Florida?

The purpose of this study was to determine if and how a large, modern estuarine system, situated in the middle of an ancient carbonate platform, has affected its adjacent inner shelf both in the past during the last, post-glacial sea-level rise and during the present. An additional purpose was to determine if and how this inner shelf seaward of a major estuary differed from the inner shelves located just to the north and south but seaward of barrier-island shorelines. Through side-scan sonar mosaicking, bathymetric studies, and ground-truthing using surface grab samples as well as diver observations, two large submarine sand plains were mapped – one being the modern ebb-tidal delta and the other interpreted to be a relict ebb-tidal delta formed earlier in the Holocene. The most seaward portion of the inner shelf studied consists of a field of lobate, bathymetrically elevated, fine-sand accumulations, which were interpreted to be sediment-starved 3D dunes surrounded by small 2D dunes composed of coarse molluscan shell gravel. Additionally, exposed limestone hardbottoms supporting living benthic communities were found as well. This modern shelf sedimentary environment is situated on a large, buried shelf valley, which extends eastward beneath the modern Tampa Bay estuary. These observations plus the absence of an incised shelf valley having surficial bathymetric expression, and the absence of sand bodies normally associated with back-tracking estuarine systems indicate that there was no cross-shelf estuarine retreat path formed during the last rise in sea level. Instead, the modern Tampa Bay formed within a mid-platform, low-relief depression, which was flooded by rising marine waters late in the Holocene. With continued sea-level rise in the late Holocene, this early embayment was translated eastward or landward to its present position, whereby a larger ebb-tidal delta prograded out onto the inner shelf. Extensive linear sand ridges, common to the inner shelves to the north and south, did not form in this shelf province because it was a low-energy, open embayment lacking the wave climate and nearshore zone necessary to create such sand bodies. The distribution of bedforms on the inner shelf and the absence of seaward-oriented 2D dunes on the modern ebb-tidal delta indicate that the modern estuarine system has had little effect on its adjacent inner shelf.     

Dynamics of the mid-ocean ridge plate boundary: Recent observations and theory

The global mid-ocean ridge system is one of the most active plate boundaries on the earth and understanding the dynamic processes at this plate boundary is one of the most important problems in geodynamics. In this paper I present recent results of several aspects of mid-ocean ridge studies concerning the dynamics of oceanic lithosphere at these diverging plate boundaries. I show that the observed rift valley to no-rift valley transition (globally due to the increase of spreading rate or locally due to the crustal thickness variations and/or thermal anomalies) can be explained by the strong temperature dependence of the power law rheology of the oceanic lithosphere, and most importantly, by the difference in the rheological behavior of the oceanic crust from the underlying mantle. The effect of this weaker lower crust on ridge dynamics is mainly influenced by spreading rate and crustal thickness variations. The accumulated strain pattern from a recently developed lens model, based on recent seismic observations, was proposed as an appealing mechanism for the observed gabbro layering sequence in the Oman Ophiolite. It is now known that the mid-ocean ridges at all spreading rates are offset into individual spreading segments by both transform and nontransform discontinuities. The tectonics of ridge segmentation are also spreading-rate dependent: the slow-spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge is characterized by distinct bulls-eye shaped gravity lows, suggesting large along-axis variations in melt production and crustal thickness, whereas the fast-spreading East-Pacific Rise is associated with much smaller along-axis variations. These spreading-rate dependent changes have been attributed to a fundamental differences in ridge segmentation mechanisms and mantle upwelling at mid-ocean ridges: the mantle upwelling may be intrinsically plume-like (3-D) beneath a slow-spreading ridge but more sheet-like (2-D) beneath a fast-spreading ridge.     

Climate variability in the Spanish Pyrenees during the last 30,000 yr revealed by the El Portalet sequence

Palynological, sedimentological and stable isotopic analyses of carbonates and organic matter performed on the El Portalet sequence (1802 m a.s.l., 42°48′00?N, 0°23′52?W) reflect the paleoclimatic evolution and vegetation history in the central-western Spanish Pyrenees over the last 30,000 yr, and provide a high-resolution record for the late glacial period. Our results confirm previous observations that deglaciation occurred earlier in the Pyrenees than in northern European and Alpine sites and point to a glacial readvance from 22,500 to 18,000 cal yr BP, coinciding with the global last glacial maximum. The patterns shown by the new, high-resolution pollen data from this continental sequence, chronologically constrained by 13 AMS ¹⁴C dates, seem to correlate with the rapid climate changes recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial-interglacial transition. Abrupt events observed in northern latitudes (Heinrich events 3 to 1, Oldest and Older Dryas stades, Intra-Allerød Cold Period, and 8200 cal yr BP event) were also identified for the first time in a lacustrine sequence from the central-western Pyrenees as cold and arid periods. The coherent response of the vegetation and the lake system to abrupt climate changes implies an efficient translation of climate variability from the North Atlantic to mid latitudes.     

Stratigraphic evidence for multiple drainings of glacial Lake Missoula along the Clark Fork River, Montana, USA

Glacial Lake Missoula, a source of Channeled Scabland flood waters, inundated valleys of northwest Montana to altitudes of ∼ 1265 m and to depths of  >600 m, as evidenced by shorelines and silty lacustrine deposits. This study describes previously unrecognized catastrophic lake-drainage deposits that lie stratigraphically beneath the glacial-lake silts. The unconsolidated gravelly flood alluvium contains imbricated boulder-sized clasts, cross-stratified gravel with slip-face heights of 2-> 35 m, and 70- to 100-m-high gravel bars which all indicate a high-energy, high-volume alluvial environment. Gravel bars and high scablands were formed by catastrophic draining of one or possibly more early, high lake stands (1200-1265 m). Most glacial-lake silt, such as the Ninemile section, was deposited stratigraphically above the earlier deposits, represents a lower lake stand(s) (1050-1150 m), and was not deposited in lake(s) responsible for the highest discharge events. The glaciolacustrine silt-covered benches are incised by relict networks of valleys formed during the drainage of the last glacial lake. Significant erosion associated with the last lake draining was confined to the inner Clark Fork River canyon.