Three‐dimensional modelling of controlled‐source electromagnetic surveys using an edge finite‐element method with a direct solver

A fully three‐dimensional finite‐element algorithm has been developed for simulating controlled‐source electromagnetic surveys. To exploit the advantages of geometric flexibility, frequency‐domain Maxwell's equations of the secondary electric field were discretised using edge‐based finite elements while the primary field was calculated analytically for a horizontally layered‐earth model. The resulting system of equations for the secondary field was solved using a parallel version of direct solvers. The accuracy of the algorithm was successfully verified by comparisons with integral‐equations and iterative solutions, and the applicability to models containing large conductivity contrasts was verified against published data. The advantages of geometry‐conforming meshes have been demonstrated by comparing different mesh systems to simulate an inclined sheet model. A comparison of the performance between direct and iterative solvers demonstrated the superior efficiency of direct solvers, particularly for multisource problems.     

Monitoring of suspended sediment variation using Landsat and MODIS in the Saemangeum coastal area of Korea

Suspended sediment concentration (SS) is an important indicator of marine environmental changes due to natural causes such as tides, tidal currents, and river discharges, as well as human activities such as construction in coastal regions. In the Saemangeum area on the west coast of Korea, construction of a huge tidal dyke for land reclamation has strongly influenced the coastal environment. This study used remotely sensed data to analyze the SS changes in coastal waters caused by the dyke construction. Landsat and MODIS satellite images were used for the spatial analysis of finer patterns and for the detailed temporal analysis, respectively. Forty Landsat scenes and 105 monthly composite MODIS images observed during 1985-2010 were employed, and four field campaigns (from 2005 to 2006) were performed to verify the image-derived SS. The results of the satellite data analyses showed that the seawater was clear before the dyke construction, with SS values lower than 20 g/m(3). These values increased continuously as the dyke construction progressed. The maximum SS values appeared just before completion of the fourth dyke. Values decreased to below 5 g/m(3) after dyke construction. These changes indicated tidal current modification. Some eddies and plumes were observed in the images generated from Landsat data. Landsat and MODIS can reveal that coastal water turbidity was greatly reduced after completion of the construction.     

Integration of surface geophysical methods for fracture detection in crystalline bedrocks of southwestern Nigeria

The application of electrical imaging and very low frequency (VLF) electromagnetics was investigated for the purpose of delineating basement fracture zones, and to show how incorporating a priori information in numerical modelling would facilitate the location of fractured zones within a basement rock more precisely. To this end, direct current (DC) dipole–dipole resistivity and VLF modelling and inversion experiments were carried out to evaluate the efficacy of the methods in detecting low-resistivity fracture zones in a typical crystalline basement rock that is favourable for groundwater accumulation. Most wells drilled in such an environment usually have low yields. Results of the numerical experiment generally indicate that fractures covered by moderate overburden, and having considerable depth, extent, and thickness compared to the depth of fracture burial, produce good responses resulting in high-resolution resistivity images. Lower resolution resistivity images were obtained as the thickness of the overburden increased. Also, the model investigations indicate that width of the fracture zone plays a major role in controlling image resolution. Conclusions from the synthetic modelling were confirmed by resistivity and VLF data gathered across a suspected fault in a hard rock terrain of southwestern Nigeria. The results from the field data are in general agreement with the numerical modelling experiments.Integración de métodos geofísicos superficiales para la detección de fracturas en macizos rocosos cristalinos del suroeste de Nigeria.     

Implications of ocean color in the upper water thermal structure at NINO3.4 region: a sensitivity study for optical algorithms and ocean color variabilities

Chlorophyll a (Chl-a) has been the most commonly used biomass metric in biological oceanographic processes. Although limited to two-dimensional surfaces, remote-sensing tools have been successfully providing the most recent state of marine phytoplankton biomass to better understand bottom-up processes initiating daily marine material cycles. In this exercise, ocean color products with various time-scales, derived from Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS), were used to investigate how their bio-optical properties affect the upper-ocean thermal structure in a global ocean modeling framework. This study used a ¼-degree Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model forced by hourly atmospheric fluxes from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis at National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Three numerical experiments were prepared by combining two ocean color products – downwelling diffuse attenuation coefficients (K_dPAR) and chlorophyll a (Chl-a) – and two shortwave radiant flux algorithms. These three runs are: (1) KparCLM, based on a 13-year long-term climatological K_dPAR derived from SeaWiFS; (2) ChlaCLM, based on a 13-year long-term Chl-a derived from SeaWiFS; and (3) ChlaID, which uses the inter-annual time-series of monthly-mean SeaWiFS Chl-a product. The KparCLM experiment uses a Jerlov-like two-band scheme; whereas, both ChlaCLM and ChlaID use a two-band scheme that considers inherent (absorption (a) and backscattering (b_b) coefficients) and apparent optical properties (downwelling attenuation coefficient (K_d) and solar zenith angle (θ, varying 0–60°)). It is found that algorithmic differences in optical parameterizations have a bigger impact on the simulated temperatures in the upper-100 m of the eastern equatorial Pacific, NINO3.4 region, than other parts of the ocean. Overall, the K_dPAR-based approach estimated relatively low surface temperatures compared to those estimated from the chlorophyll-based method. In specific, this cold bias, pronounced in the upper 20–30 m, is speculated to be due to optical characteristics of the algorithm and K_dPAR products, or due to nonlinear hydrodynamical processes involving displacement of mixed-layer depth. Comparisons between each experiment against Global Ocean Data Assimilation System (GODAS; Behringer and Xue 2004) analyses find that KparCLM-based simulations have lower mean differences and variabilities with higher cross-correlation coefficients compared to ChlaCLM- and ChlaID-based experiments.     

Coastal Impacts of the March 11th Tohoku, Japan Tsunami in the Galapagos Islands

On March 11, 2011 at 5:46:23 UTC (March 10 11:46:23 PM Galapagos Local Time), the M_w 9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake occurred near the Tohoku region off the east coast of Japan, spawning a Pacific-wide tsunami. Approximately 12,000 km away, the Galapagos Islands experienced moderate tsunami impacts, including flooding, structural damage, and strong currents. In this paper, we present observations and measurements of the tsunami effects in the Galapagos, focusing on the four largest islands in the archipelago; (from west to east) Isabela, Santiagio, Santa Cruz, and San Cristobal. Access to the tsunami affected areas was one of the largest challenges of the field survey. Aside from approximately ten sandy beaches open to tourists, all other shoreline locations are restricted to anyone without a research permit; open cooperation with the Galapagos National Park provided the survey team complete access to the Islands coastlines. Survey locations were guided by numerical simulations of the tsunami performed prior to the field work. This numerical guidance accurately predicted the regions of highest impact, as well as regions of relatively low impact. Tide-corrected maximum tsunami heights were generally in the range of 3–4 m with the highest runup of 6 m measured in a small pocket beach on Isla Isabela. Puerto Ayora, on Santa Cruz Island, the largest harbor in the Galapagos experienced significant flooding and damage to structures located at the shoreline. A current meter moored inside the harbor recorded relatively weak tsunami currents of less than 0.3 m/s (0.6 knot) during the event. Comparisons with detailed numerical simulations suggest that these low current speed observations are most likely the result of data averaging at 20-min intervals and that maximum instantaneous current speeds were considerably larger. Currents in the Canal de Itabaca, a natural waterway between Santa Cruz Island and a smaller island offshore, were strong enough to displace multiple 5.5-ton navigation buoys. Numerical simulations indicate that currents in the Canal de Itabaca exceeded 4 m/s (~8 knots), a very large flow speed for a navigational waterway.     

Sampling effort required to recover the main gradients in marine benthic species composition

Marine benthic surveys and monitoring programs may have several goals. When the aim of such studies is to reveal and describe gradients in species composition, the gain in ecological insight achieved by the study depends on how well the spatial variability of species’ occurrence and abundance within the study area is covered by the sampling design. The common practice in such programs is to collect four or five grab samples from each visited site to capture the site's species composition. The rationale for this practice is based on the aim of capturing a large proportion of species at a specific site (i.e. point). We argue that this practice has been established without taking Iterative approaches into account, such as decreasing the sampling effort at each site and instead increase the number of sites visited. The collection and processing of data from marine sediment ecosystems are time‐consuming and, thus, expensive. Therefore, finding the optimal trade‐off between the number of sites visited and the number of samples per site is important. We examined this trade‐off by exploring how reduction of sampling effort per site affects the stability and recovery of gradients in species composition of marine benthic macrofauna. Our full data set consisted of four grab samples from each of 28 sites from the inner part of the Oslofjord, SE Norway. Procrustes analysis and calculation of Kendall's rank correlation coefficients showed that the main gradient in species composition extracted by detrended correspondence analysis of data sets with reduced per‐site sampling effort closely resembled the main gradient extracted for the full data set. Our results therefore suggest that marine benthic surveys that aim to identify the main gradient structure of species composition and relate this structure to main environmental complex gradients are likely to benefit from reducing the sampling effort at each site and, instead, increasing the number of visited sites. We argue that coverage of both the variation in species composition and the environment in the study area will then be improved. Monitoring programs with other aims than to identify the main gradients in species composition may also benefit from the adoption of a many‐sites, one‐sample sampling strategy. This may be particularly true if additional sampled sites are based on a stratified sampling strategy that ensures that the spatial variability in the study area is accounted for.     

A three-phase model for evaluating the seismic resistance of soils reinforced by a network of symmetrically inclined piles

The stability analysis of a piled embankment under seismic loading is considered, with a special emphasis on the optimization of the reinforcement layout by splitting the initial group of vertical piles into two symmetrically inclined arrays of parallel inclusions. The bidirectionally-reinforced soil thus obtained is appropriately described, at the macroscopic scale, by a three-phase model, conceived as an extension of the two-phase model previously developed for unidirectionally-reinforced soils. The model is implemented in a finite element formulation and related numerical code, which is used for simulating the behavior of the piled embankment up to failure. The results of these simulations, which favourably compare with upper bound yield design calculations, clearly indicate that the seismic resistance of the embankment can be considerably increased from symmetrically inclining the piles, even without taking the potential benefits of their flexural resistance into account.     

The Dynamics of Mangroves in the Mekong Delta (Vietnam): From Degradation to Restoration

Doklady Earth Sciences - The results of the analysis of LANDSAT satellite images were used to reconstruct the change in the area of mangrove forests of the Mekong River Delta over a 30-year-long...     

Application of a Conceptual Ecological Model to Predict the Effects of Sand Mining around Chilsan Island Group in the West Coast of Korea

Chilsan Island Group, located on the west coast of South Korea, has been recognized as a critical breeding and nursery ground for endangered seabirds because food is abundant and human activity is low. Chilsan Island Group has been under protection as a Natural Monument (Article no. 389) since 1997, but attempts were made in 2004 to exploit the coastal sands around the islands. A conceptual ecological model (CEM) was employed with energy flow diagram (EFD) to predict the effects of sand mining on the islands’ ecosystem. The results showed that sand mining activities caused long-term damage to benthic ecosystems and threatened seabird communities by reducing fish populations throughout the food web. The changes in energy flow in the ecosystem due to sand mining operations predict that reduction in secondary production of benthic animal communities might reduce energy transfer to humans and seabirds by 30%. Different ranges of uncertainty provided by the Monte Carlo simulation lead to the conclusion that sand mining could bring about undesirable consequences. One concern is that such negative consequences would have a much more severe impact on seabirds than humans because seabirds cannot compete effectively against humans for the limited food sources. In this study, the complex interrelationships between ecosystem members were simplified and a CEM was established to clearly identify which elements would be affected. The CEM with EFD was found to be helpful in promoting communication between stakeholders, and it is expected to be widely used as a decisionmaking tool by public officials.     

Temporal variation in the vertical distribution of microphytobenthos in intertidal flats of the Nakdong River estuary,Korea

The vertical distribution of microphytobenthos (MPB) was investigated in intertidal flats of the Nakdong River estuary over different temporal periods. The MPB biomass were measured as chlorophyll a concentration in the sediment, and monitored at two different depth scales. From August 2006 to August 2007, monthly sampling was carried out at four sites to a depth of 10 cm. The vertical distribution exhibited an exponential decline with depth and the slope was closely related to sediment composition and MPB biomass in the surface sediment. The two slightly muddy sand (5–25% mud, <63 μm) sites presented similar trends of seasonal variation to a sediment depth of 10 cm, and no statistical difference was observed in their initial values and the slope of the exponential curves applied to each data set. The site with higher mud content also had higher surface biomass, and the fitted exponential curve had a larger slope than sites with more sand content. The seasonal variations of phaeo-pigments compared to chlorophyll a revealed higher grazing stress on the MPB in summer at the three slightly muddy sand sites, and low grazing stress all year around at the sand (<5% mud) site. In January, April and October 2007, and January 2008, diurnal sampling was conducted at hourly intervals at one slightly muddy sand site. The investigation in January 2007 which was conducted at 1 cm intervals to a depth of 10 cm sediment showed the migration mainly existed in the upper 1 cm. The other diurnal sampling was undertaken to a 1 cm depth at 0.5 mm intervals. An evident migratory rhythm was present, with migration up to the surface during daytime emersion and down into deeper sediment during night and high tide submersion. Migrating cells could reach sediments as deep as 6 or even 10 mm. When the visible thick biofilms formed, the migratory rhythm changed by keeping higher biomass at the surface even at night and during high tide submersion. Generally, the MPB surface biomass was an important factor in structuring the MPB vertical distribution. The vertical distribution to depths of 10 cm was closely related to the sediment composition over the long term, while the MPB migration influenced the vertical distribution over the short term in the top 1 cm of the sediment.