The channel between Gran Canaria and Tenerife: constructive processes and destructive events during the evolution of volcanic islands

Seismic, sidescan sonar, bathymetric multibeam and ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) data obtained in the submarine channel between the volcanic islands of Gran Canaria and Tenerife allow to identify constructive features and destructive events during the evolution of both islands. The most prominent constructive features are the submarine island flanks being the acoustic basement of the seismic images. The build-up of Tenerife started following the submarine stage of Gran Canaria because the submarine island flank of Tenerife onlaps the steeper flank of Gran Canaria. The overlying sediments in the channel between Gran Canaria and Tenerife are chaotic, consisting of slumps, debris flow deposits, syn-ignimbrite turbidites, ash layers, and other volcaniclastic rocks generated by eruptions, erosion, and flank collapse of the volcanoes. Volcanic cones on the submarine island flanks reflect ongoing submarine volcanic activity. The construction of the islands is interrupted by large destructive events, especially by flank collapses resulting in giant landslides. Several Miocene flank collapses (e.g., the formation of the Horgazales basin) were identified by combining seismic and drilling data whereas young giant landslides (e.g., the Güimar debris avalanche) are documented by sidescan, bathymetric and drilling data. Sediments are also transported through numerous submarine canyons from the islands into the volcaniclastic apron. Seismic profiles across the channel do not show a major offset of reflectors. The existence of a repeatedly postulated major NE-SW-trending fault zone between Gran Canaria and Tenerife is thus in doubt. The sporadic earthquake activity in this area may be related to the regional stress field or the submarine volcanic activity in this area. Seismic reflectors cannot be correlated through the channel between the sedimentary basins north and south of Gran Canaria because the channel acts as sediment barrier. The sedimentary basins to the north and south evolved differently following the submarine growth of Gran Canaria and Tenerife in the Miocene.     

Paleontological records indicate the occurrence of open woodlands in a dry inland climate at the present-day Arctic coast in western Beringia during the Last Interglacial

Permafrost records, accessible at outcrops along the coast of Oyogos Yar at the Dmitry Laptev Strait, NE-Siberia, provide unique insights into the environmental history of Western Beringia during the Last Interglacial. The remains of terrestrial and freshwater organisms, including plants, coleopterans, chironomids, cladocerans, ostracods and molluscs, have been preserved in the frozen deposits of a shallow paleo-lake and indicate a boreal climate at the present-day arctic mainland coast during the Last Interglacial. Terrestrial beetle and plant remains suggest the former existence of open forest-tundra with larch (Larix dahurica), tree alder (Alnus incana), birch and alder shrubs (Duschekia fruticosa, Betula fruticosa, Betula divaricata, Betula nana), interspersed with patches of steppe and meadows. Consequently, the tree line was shifted to at least 270 km north of its current position. Aquatic organisms, such as chironomids, cladocerans, ostracods, molluscs and hydrophytes, indicate the formation of a shallow lake as the result of thermokarst processes. Steppe plants and beetles suggest low net precipitation. Littoral pioneer plants and chironomids indicate intense lake level fluctuations due to high evaporation. Many of the organisms are thermophilous, indicating a mean air temperature of the warmest month that was greater than 13 °C, which is above the minimum requirements for tree growth. These temperatures are in contrast to the modern values of less than 4 °C in the study area. The terrestrial and freshwater organism remains were found at a coastal exposure that was only 3.5 m above sea level and in a position where they should have been under sea during the Last Interglacial when the global sea level was 6–10 m higher than the current levels. The results suggest that during the last warm stage, the site was inland, and its modern coastal situation is the result of tectonic subsidence.     

The 2011 submarine volcanic eruption in El Hierro (Canary Islands)

Forty years after the Teneguía Volcano (La Palma, 1971), a submarine eruption took place off the town of La Restinga, south of El Hierro, the smallest and youngest island of the Canarian Archipelago. Precursors allowed an early detection of the event and its approximate location, suggesting it was submarine. Uncertainties derived from insufficient scientific information available to the authorities during the eruption, leading to disproportionate civil protection measures, which had an impact on the island's economy—based primarily on tourism—while residents experienced extra fear and distress.     

Nuclear and incommensurate magnetic structure of NaFeGe2O6 between 5?K and 298?K and new data on multiferroic NaFeSi2O6

The compound NaFeGe₂O₆ was grown synthetically as polycrystalline powder and as large single crystals suitable for X-ray and neutron-diffraction experiments to clarify the low temperature evolution of secondary structural parameters and to determine the low temperature magnetic spins structure. NaFeGe₂O₆ is isotypic to the clinopyroxene-type compound aegirine and adopts the typical HT-C2/c clinopyroxene structure down to 2.5?K. The Na-bearing M2 polyhedra were identified to show the largest volume expansion between 2.5?K and room temperature, while the GeO₄ tetrahedra behave as stiff units. Magnetic susceptibility measurements show a broad maximum around 33?K, which marks the onset of low-dimensional magnetic ordering. Below 12?K NaFeGe₂O₆ transforms to an incommensurately modulated magnetic spin state, with k?=?[0.323, 1.0, 0.080] and a helical order of spins within the M1-chains of FeO₆ octahedra. This is determined by neutron-diffraction experiments on a single crystal. Comparison of NaFeGe₂O₆ with NaFeSi₂O₆ is given and it is shown that the magnetic ordering in the latter compound, aegirine, also is complex and is best described by two different spin states, a commensurate one with C2??/c?? symmetry and an incommensurate one, best being described by a spin density wave, oriented within the (1 0 1) plane.     

Exponential time integrators for stochastic partial differential equations in 3D reservoir simulation

The transport of chemically reactive solutes (e.g. surfactants, CO₂ or dissolved minerals) is of fundamental importance to a wide range of applications in oil and gas reservoirs such as enhanced oil recovery and mineral scale formation. In this work, we investigate exponential time integrators, in conjunction with an upwind weighted finite volume discretisation in space, for the efficient and accurate simulation of advection–dispersion processes including non-linear chemical reactions in highly heterogeneous 3D oil reservoirs. We model sub-grid fluctuations in transport velocities and uncertainty in the reaction term by writing the advection–dispersion–reaction equation as a stochastic partial differential equation with multiplicative noise. The exponential integrators are based on the variation of constants solution and solve the linear system exactly. While this is at the expense of computing the exponential of the stiff matrix representing the finite volume discretisation, the use of real Léja point or the Krylov subspace technique to approximate the exponential makes these methods competitive compared to standard finite difference-based time integrators. For the deterministic system, we investigate two exponential time integrators, the second-order accurate exponential Euler midpoint (EEM) scheme and exponential time differencing of order one (ETD1). All our numerical examples demonstrate that our methods can compete in terms of efficiency and accuracy compared with standard first-order semi-implicit time integrators when solving (stochastic) partial differential equations that model mixing and chemical reactions in 3D heterogeneous porous media. Our results suggest that exponential time integrators such as the ETD1 and EEM schemes could be applied to typical 3D reservoir models comprising tens to hundreds of thousands unknowns.