Estrogen in a karstic aquifer     

Wicks C  Kelley C  Peterson E 《Ground water》2004,42(3):384-389

Adverse impacts on the health of some fish populations, such as skewed sex distributions, have been noted in surface waters and in laboratory experiments with relatively low concentrations (above 25 ng/L) of natural estrogen (17 beta-estradiol--E2). Sources of E2 to surface and ground waters can include avian, human, and mammalian waste products. The Ozark Plateau Aquifer (OPA) is a karstic basin that receives a significant portion of its water through losing reaches of rivers. Thus, there is a direct connection between surface water and ground water. The OPA was targeted for an E2 study to assess the potential for adverse health effects to aquatic organisms living in the system. Eight springs, which drain the aquifer, were sampled quarterly. The concentrations of E2 in the OPA ranged from 13 to 80 ng/L. For any one sampling event, the concentrations of E2 at the spring waters were statistically similar; however, the concentrations of E2 at all springs varied throughout the year. At Maramec Spring, one of the larger springs, the E2 concentration, was correlated with discharge. Based on the correlation between discharge and E2 concentration, aquatic organisms living in the plateau or in its discharged waters, including the threatened southern cavefish T. subterraneus, are exposed to concentration of E2 above 25 ng/L approximately 60% of the time. This implies that organisms living in karst basins throughout the OPA are likely exposed to E2 concentrations that may adversely impact their reproductive success for a significant portion of each year.  相似文献   

Physicochemical characterization of the microhabitat of the epibionts associated with Alvinella pompejana, a hydrothermal vent annelid     

Carol A. Di Meo-Savoie  S.Craig Cary 《Geochimica et cosmochimica acta》2004,68(9):2055-2066

Alvinella pompejana is a polychaetous annelid that inhabits narrow tubes along the walls of high-temperature hydrothermal vent chimneys. The worm hosts a rich community of epibiotic bacteria that coats its dorsal surface. Although the worm tube microhabitat is a challenging environment to sample, characterizing the thermal and geochemical regime is important for understanding the ecology of the worm and its bacteria, as the worm spends most of its time inside the tube. We characterized the physicochemical conditions of diffuse hydrothermal flow inside inhabited worm tubes using in situ analysis and wet chemical analysis of discrete water samples. Thermistor probes deployed inside worm tubes measured temperatures ranging from 28.6°C to 84.0°C, while temperatures at tube orifices ranged from 7.5°C to 40.0°C. In situ electrochemical analysis of tube fluids revealed undetectable oxygen (<5 μM) and surprisingly low levels of free H₂S (<0.2 μM), with most of the sulfide existing as aqueous FeS molecular clusters. Acid-volatile sulfide measured on discrete samples of tube fluids ranged from 62.9 to 359.3 μM, while free sulfide (H₂S) ranged from undetectable (<0.2 μM) to 46.5 μM. The pH ranged from 5.33 to 6.40, and sulfate ranged from 22.5 mM to 27.5 mM. Nitrate ranged from 13.9 to 20.0 μM, whereas ammonium ranged from 2.5 to 9.7 μM. Total Fe ranged from 72.1 to 730.2 μM. Mn, Zn, Ni, V, P, and Cu were present in micromolar amounts; Pb, Cd, Co, and Ag were present in nanomolar levels. The worm tube fluids contained between 72% to 91% of Mg concentrations typically found in deep seawater. Plots of Mg concentrations vs. other fluid components showed that the tube fluid is geochemically altered from theoretical mixing values. Values of SO₄²⁻ were enriched inside the worm tube fluids, whereas NO₃⁻, Sr, Mn, Fe, Zn, and acid-volatile sulfide were depleted. The geochemistry of the tube microhabitat likely influences the structure of resident microbial communities.  相似文献   

Impacts of land use and fire on the loss and degradation of lowland forest in 1983–2000 in East Kutai District, East Kalimantan, Indonesia     

Rona A. Dennis  Carol P. Colfer 《Singapore journal of tropical geography》2006,27(1):30-48

Deforestation and forest degradation are proceeding rapidly in the lowland forests of Indonesian Borneo. Time series analysis of satellite imagery provides an ideal means of quantifying landscape change and identifying the pathways which lead to the changes. This study investigates the forest and land cover changes by classifying Landsat MSS (Multispectral Scanner), TM (Thematic Mapper) and ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus) images over three time periods (1983–90, 1990–98, and 1998–2000), creating land cover maps for each year and change trajectories for each year-pair. The study area chosen covers an area of 2160 km² of undulating topography and alluvial plains in the East Kutai District of East Kalimantan Province, which in the 1980s was covered mostly with lowland dipterocarp forest; today the landscape is a patchwork dominated by oil palm and timber plantations and degraded forest. We relate land cover change data to land use allocation and to fire impacts based on fire hotspot distribution and fire damage information. The multidate land cover change trajectories provide an insight into the forest loss and degradation pathways over the 17-year period spanning the first entry of commercial logging concessionaires, followed by a government-sponsored transmigration scheme, government-licensed timber and oil palm plantations and, finally, the devastating fires of 1998. The results show a mean deforestation rate of 42 km² or 6 per cent per year for 1983–2000, rising to 10 per cent per year for 1990–98; by 2000, 70 per cent of forest initially damaged by fire and drought during the 1982–83 El Niño event was classified as non-forest. Although our study area is perhaps a worst-case scenario in terms of land use planning outcomes, the lessons from this research are directly applicable to scenario prediction for informed forest and land use planning and monitoring.  相似文献   

Landscape predictors of stream dissolved organic matter concentration and physicochemistry in a Lake Superior river watershed     

Paul C. Frost  James H. Larson  Carol A. Johnston  Katie C. Young  Patricia A. Maurice  Gary A. Lamberti  Scott D. Bridgham 《Aquatic Sciences - Research Across Boundaries》2006,68(1):40-51

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Egg production of the copepodAcartia tonsa in Florida Bay during summer. 1. The roles of food environment and diet     

G. S. Kleppel  Carol A. Burkart  Carmelo Tomas 《Estuaries and Coasts》1998,21(2):328-339

The diet and egg production rate ofAcartia tonsa were measured during the thermally stable period between June and October 1995 at four locations in inner and outer Florida Bay. We sought to characterize the role ofA. tonsa in the bay’s pelagic food web, which has been changing since 1987, when the dominant submerged vegetation began shifting from benthic seagrasses to planktonic algae. At Rankin Lake, a shallow basin on the north side of the inner bay, where extensive seagrass mortality and persistent cyanobacteria blooms have occurred, microplankton biomass was relatively high and dominated by heterotrophic protists and dinoflagellates. Nanoplankton at Rankin, Lake, while numerically abundant, usually contributed only a small portion of the biomass. The ingestion rate ofA. tonsa in Florida Bay varied independently of food concentration (i.e., total microplankton biomass), but rates were higher (mean±SD =3.88 ± 0.73 μg C copepod^?1 d^?1) on the north side of the bay than on the south side (0.78 ±0.11 μg C copepod^?1 d^?1). Microzooplankton and dinoflagellates were important dietary constituents, especially in the vicinity of Rankin Lake. Egg production in this region (mean ± SD = 14.2 ± 7.7 eggs female^?1 d^?1) was considerably high than the baywide mean (5.8±0.81 eggs female^?1d^?1), and principal components analysis revealed associations between egg production and both dietary microzooplankton and dinoflagellate biomass. However, although grazing rates were relatively high in the inner bay,A. tonsa removed only 1–6% of the primary production from the water column during the summer and its egg production rates were low relative to typical rates for the species.  相似文献   

A parallel, implicit, cell‐centered method for two‐phase flow with a preconditioned Newton–Krylov solver     

Clint N. Dawson  Héctor Klíe  Mary F. Wheeler  Carol S. Woodward 《Computational Geosciences》1997,1(3-4):215-249

A new parallel solution technique is developed for the fully implicit three‐dimensional two‐phase flow model. An expandedcell‐centered finite difference scheme which allows for a full permeability tensor is employed for the spatial discretization, and backwardEuler is used for the time discretization. The discrete systems are solved using a novel inexact Newton method that reuses the Krylov information generated by the GMRES linear iterative solver. Fast nonlinear convergence can be achieved by composing inexact Newton steps with quasi‐Newton steps restricted to the underlying Krylov subspace. Furthermore, robustness and efficiency are achieved with a line‐search backtracking globalization strategy for the nonlinear systems and a preconditioner for each coupled linear system to be solved. This inexact Newton method also makes use of forcing terms suggested by Eisenstat and Walker which prevent oversolving of the Jacobian systems. The preconditioner is a new two‐stage method which involves a decoupling strategy plus the separate solutions of both nonwetting‐phase pressure and saturation equations. Numerical results show that these nonlinear and linear solvers are very effective.  相似文献   

Definition of a Critical Confining Zone Using Surface Geophysical Methods     

Carol A. Eddy-Dilek  Brian B. Looney  Pieter Hoekstra  Norman Harthill  Mark Blohm  David R. Phillips 《Ground water》1997,35(3):451-462

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A Full-Scale Porous Reactive Wall for Prevention of Acid Mine Drainage   总被引：3，自引：0，他引：3  

Shawn G. Benner  David W. Blowes  Carol J. Ptacek 《Ground Water Monitoring & Remediation》1997,17(4):99-107

The generation and release of acidic drainage containing high concentrations of dissolved metals from decommissioned mine wastes is an environmental problem of international scale. A potential solution to many acid drainage problems is the installation of permeable reactive walls into aquifers affected by drainage water derived from mine waste materials. A permeable reactive wall installed into an aquifer impacted by low-quality mine drainage waters was installed in August 1995 at the Nickel Rim mine site near Sudbury, Ontario. The reactive mixture, containing organic matter, was designed to promote bacterially mediated sulfate reduction and subsequent metal sulfide precipitation. The reactive wall is installed to an average depth of 12 feet (3.6 m) and is 49 feet (15 m) long perpendicular to ground water flow. The wall thickness (flow path length) is 13 feet (4 m). Initial results, collected nine months after installation, indicate that sulfate reduction and metal sulfide precipitation is occurring. Comparing water entering the wall to treated water exiting the wall, sulfate concentrations decrease from 2400 to 4600 mg/L to 200 to 3600 mg/L; Fe concentrations decrease from 250 to 1300 mg/L to 1.0 to 40 mg/L; pH increases from 5.8 to 7.0; and alkalinity (as CaCO₃) increases from 0 to 50 mg/L to 600 to 2000 mg/L. The reactive wall has effectively removed the capacity of the ground water to generate acidity on discharge to the surface. Calculations based on comparison to previously run laboratory column experiments indicate that the reactive wall has potential to remain effective for at least 15 years.  相似文献   

Fabric development in brittle-to-ductile shear zones   总被引：3，自引：0，他引：3  

Carol Simpson 《Pure and Applied Geophysics》1986,124(1-2):269-288

Brittle-to-ductile shear zones from two separate geological settings are shown to have nucleated on zones of predominantly brittle deformation. The shear zones are not simply foliated cataclasites, since they contain abundant evidence of dynamic recrystallization of constituent minerals. A small quartz diorite lens in the Borrego Springs shear zone, southern California, contains centimeter-scale cataclasite zones that exhibit a gradual transition into foliated rock. Alteration of magnesiohornblende to actinolite, feldspar to white mica plus quartz, and biotite to chlorite, produced elongate minerals that define the foliation. During the later stages of deformation, intracrystalline slip and dynamic recrystallization of quartz and feldspar were important deformation mechanisms.The widespread occurrence of mineralized dilatant cracks predated the development of meter-to-decimeter-scale ductile shear zones in the Striped Rock granite, southern Virginia. Again, important deformation mechanisms in the final stages of deformation were intracrystalline slip and dynamic recrystallization of quartz.In both field areas the role of fluids has been important from the onset of brittle deformation. Fluids may have enhanced early fracturing in addition to causing the alteration and hydrolytic weakening of host rock minerals and the introduction of new mineral species. Each of these processes is thought to have contributed to the later localization of crystal plastic deformation in the rocks.  相似文献   

Use of dust storm observations on satellite images to identify areas vulnerable to severe wind erosion     

Carol S. Breed  John F. McCauley 《Climatic change》1986,9(1-2):243-258

Blowing dust is symptomatic of severe wind erosion and deterioration of soils in areas undergoing dessication and/or devegetation. Dust plumes on satellite images can commonly be traced to sources in marginally arable semiarid areas where protective lag gravels or vegetation have been removed and soils are dry, as demonstrated for the Portales Valley, New Mexico. Images from Landsat and manned orbiters such as Skylab and the Space Shuttle are useful for illustrating the regional relations of airborne dust plumes to source areas. Geostationary satellites such as GOES are useful in tracking the time-histories of episodic dust storms. These events sometimes go unrecognized by weather observers and are the precursors of long-term land degradation trends. In areas where soil maps and meteorological data are inadequate, satellite images provide a means for identifying problem areas where measures are needed to control or mitigate wind erosion.  相似文献