Evidence for Amazonian acidic liquid water on Mars—A reinterpretation of MER mission results     

Alberto G. Fairén  Dirk Schulze-Makuch  Wolfgang Fink  Esther R. Uceda  Ricardo Amils 《Planetary and Space Science》2009,57(3):276-318

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) missions have confirmed aqueous activity on Mars. Here we review the analyses of the field-based MER data, and conclude that some weathering processes in Meridiani Planum and Gusev crater are better explained by late diagenetic water-rock interactions than by early diagenesis only. At Meridiani, the discovery of jarosite by MER-1 Opportunity indicates acidic aqueous activity, evaporation, and desiccation of rock materials. MER-based information, placed into the context of published data, point to local and limited aqueous activity during geologically recent times in Meridiani. Pre-Amazonian environmental changes (including important variations in the near-surface groundwater reservoirs, impact cratering, and global dust storms and other pervasive wind-related erosion) are too extreme for pulverulent jarosite to survive over extended time periods, and therefore we argue instead that jarosite deposits must have formed in a climatically more stable period. Any deposits of pre-existent concretionary jarosite surviving up to the Amazonian would not have reached completion in the highly saline and acidic brines occurring at Meridiani. MER-2 Spirit has also revealed evidence for local and limited Amazonian aqueous environmental conditions in Gusev crater, including chemical weathering leading to goethite and hematite precipitation, rock layering, and chemical enhancement of Cl, S, Br, and oxidized iron in rocks and soils. The estimated relative age of the impact crater materials in Gusev indicates that these processes have taken place during the last 2 billion years. We conclude that minor amounts of shallow acidic liquid water have been present on the surface of Mars at local scales during the Amazonian Period.  相似文献   

Geo-environmental mapping using physiographic analysis: constraints on the evaluation of land instability and groundwater pollution hazards in the Metropolitan District of Campinas,Brazil     

Paulo Cesar Fernandes-da-Silva  Ricardo Vedovello  Claudio Jose Ferreira  John Canning Cripps  Maria Jose Brollo  Amelia Joao Fernandes 《Environmental Earth Sciences》2010,61(8):1657-1675

Geo-environmental terrain assessments and territorial zoning are useful tools for the formulation and implementation of environmental management instruments (including policy-making, planning, and enforcement of statutory regulations). They usually involve a set of procedures and techniques for delimitation, characterisation and classification of terrain units. However, terrain assessments and zoning exercises are often costly and time-consuming, particularly when encompassing large areas, which in many cases prevent local agencies in developing countries from properly benefiting from such assessments. In the present paper, a low-cost technique based on the analysis of texture of satellite imagery was used for delimitation of terrain units. The delimited units were further analysed in two test areas situated in Southeast Brazil to provide estimates of land instability and the vulnerability of groundwater to pollution hazards. The implementation incorporated procedures for inferring the influences and potential implications of tectonic fractures and other discontinuities on ground behaviour and local groundwater flow. Terrain attributes such as degree of fracturing, bedrock lithology and weathered materials were explored as indicators of ground properties. The paper also discusses constraints on- and limitations of- the approaches taken.  相似文献   

Biostratigraphy and paleoenvironmental characterization of the Middle Ordovician from the Sierras Subandinas (NW Argentina) based on organic-walled microfossils and sequence stratigraphy     

Claudia V. Rubinstein  Marco Vecoli  Ricardo A. Astini 《Journal of South American Earth Sciences》2011,31(1):124-138

Middle Ordovician acritarchs, including enigmatic, spore-like microfossils, are recorded from the Labrado and Capillas formations, of the Sierras Subandinas (Capillas River Section, Sierra de Zapla), northwestern Argentina. The Sierras Subandinas represent the outermost exposures of the Central Andean Basin that display an alternation of shallow-marine deltaic systems and estuarine environments, where relative sea-level fluctuations are frequent. The scarcity of fossils in the section, due to the marginal marine settings and frequent subaerial exposures, hinders the biostratigraphic constraining of these sedimentary successions. Based on the palynological assemblages, a probably Dapingian age is interpreted for the upper Lagunilla Member of the Labrado Formation, whereas the lower part of the Capillas Formation is assigned to the Darriwilian. Acritarchs from the lower part of the Capillas Formation indicate clear affinities with the “peri-Gondwana province”. However the lack of Frankea, a marker taxa for the Middle Ordovician, could be related either to the intermediate paleolatitudinal position of the Central Andean Basin or to local paleoenvironmental conditions. The facies analysis and the distribution of palynomorph assemblages throughout the studied section, suggest that organic-walled microfossils are influenced by local paleoenvironmental conditions. A probable non-marine origin is proposed for the spore-like microfossils co-occurring within the acritarch assemblages.  相似文献   

Deterministic ground motion simulations with shallow crust nonlinearity at Garner Valley in Southern California     

Elnaz Seylabi  Doriam Restrepo  Ricardo Taborda  Domniki Asimaki 《地震工程与结构动力学》2021,50(1):43-59

We present deterministic ground motion simulations that account for the cyclic multiaxial response of sediments in the shallow crust. We use the Garner Valley in Southern California as a test case. The multiaxial constitutive model is based on the bounding surface plasticity theory in terms of total stress and is implemented in a high‐performance computing finite‐element parallel code. A major advantage of this model is the small number of free parameters that need to be calibrated given a shear modulus reduction curve and the ultimate soil strength. This, in turn, makes the model suitable for regional‐scale simulations, where geotechnical data in the shallow crust are scarce. In this paper, we first describe a series of numerical experiments designed to verify the model implementation. This is followed by a series of idealized large‐scale simulations in a 35 26 4.5 km domain that encompasses the Garner Valley downhole array site, which is an instrumented and well‐characterized site in Southern California. Material properties were extracted from the Southern California Earthquake Center Community velocity model, CVM‐S4.26, considering its optional geotechnical layer, while the modulus reduction curves and soil strength were selected empirically to constrain the nonlinear soil model parameters. Our nonlinear simulations suggest that peak ground displacements within the valley increase relative to the linear case, while peak ground accelerations can increase or decrease, depending on the frequency content of the excitation. The comparisons of our simulations against hybrid three‐dimensional–one‐dimensional site response analyses suggest the inadequacy of the latter to capture the complexity of fully three‐dimensional simulations.  相似文献   

A computational workflow for rupture‐to‐structural‐response simulation and its application to Istanbul     

Wenyang Zhang  Doriam Restrepo  Jorge G.F. Crempien  Bulent Erkmen  Ricardo Taborda  Asli Kurtulus  Ertugrul Taciroglu 《地震工程与结构动力学》2021,50(1):177-196

Scenario‐based earthquake simulations at regional scales hold the promise in advancing the state‐of‐the‐art in seismic risk assessment studies. In this study, a computational workflow is presented that combines (i) a broadband Green's function‐based fault‐rupture and ground motion simulation—herein carried out using the “UCSB (University of California at Santa Barbara) method”, (ii) a three‐dimensional physics‐based regional‐scale wave propagation simulation that is resolved at  Hz, and (iii) a local soil‐foundation‐structure finite element analysis model. These models are interfaced with each other using the domain reduction method. The innermost local model—implemented in ABAQUS—is additionally enveloped with perfectly matched layer boundaries that absorb outbound waves scattered by the structures contained within it. The intermediate wave propagation simulation is carried out using Hercules , which is an explicit time‐stepping finite element code that is developed and licensed by the CMU‐QUAKE group. The devised workflow is applied to a  km region on the European side of Istanbul, which was modeled using detailed soil stratigraphy data and realistic fault rupture properties, which are available from prior microzonation surveys and earthquake scenario studies. The innermost local model comprises a chevron‐braced steel frame building supported by a shallow foundation slab, which, in turn, rests atop a three‐dimensional soil domain. To demonstrate the utility of the workflow, results obtained using various simplified soil‐structure interaction analysis techniques are compared with those from the detailed direct model. While the aforementioned demonstration has a limited scope, the devised workflow can be used in a multitude of ways, for example, to examine the effects of shallow‐layer soil nonlinearities and surface topography, to devise site‐ and structure‐specific seismic fragilities, and for calibrating regional loss models, to name a few.  相似文献   

Apparent propagation velocity of body waves     

Michael J. O'Rourke  Mary C. Bloom  Ricardo Dobry 《地震工程与结构动力学》1982,10(2):283-294

The apparent horizontal propagation velocity, that is the propagation velocity of seismic waves with respect to the ground surface, is discussed in this paper. This parameter is needed to determine the effects of earthquakes on long structures such as bridges and buried pipelines as well as the torsional rotation of foundations of multi-storey buildings. A time window intensity tensor introduced by Penzien and Kubo is used herein to determine the predominant directions of ground motion during an earthquake. Considering the reflection of waves at a free surface, an approximate relationship between the predominant direction and the angle of incidence of body waves with respect to the ground surface is presented. Knowing the material properties of the top layer and the angle of incidence, the desired propagation velocity with respect to the ground surface is readily calculated. The median value of the apparent propagation velocity of shear waves for near field sites which recorded the 1971 San Fernando earthquake was determined to be about 2-1 km/s using the above method. A similar value for the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake is 3·7 km/s. These values are consistent with the range of values for the apparent propagation velocity determined by other researchers.  相似文献   

Selective destruction and differentiation of clay minerals from natural diaspore admixture by mortar grinding     

Efraïm Mendelovici  Rafael Villalba  Amaya Sagarzazu 《International Journal of Mineral Processing》1983,11(2):131-138

A dry grinding process at several periods has been used successfully in order to differentiate among the different minerals forming a natural diaspore clay. This is achieved by selective and incongruent destruction of the clay minerals of this admixture, on the basis of their disparate structural stability, hardness and relative amount present. Kaolin clays (represented mainly by kaolinite + halloysite) are destroyed after >3 hr grinding, anatase after ～40 hr, whereas the structure of α-AlOOH is still preserved after >250 hr, as ascertained from XRD. From IR spectroscopy analysis it is inferred that as a consequence of grinding prototropy takes place in some of the clay hydroxyls. This is supported by water losses results at 600°C.  相似文献   

Statistical analysis of the largest possible earthquake magnitudes on the Ecuadorian coast for selected return periods     

Sandra García-Bustos  Jimmy Landín  Ricardo Moreno  A.S.E. Chong  Maurizio Mulas  Mónica Mite 《Georisk: Assessment and Management of Risk for Engineered Systems and Geohazards》2020,14(1):56-68

ABSTRACT

In this work, we have studied the largest earthquake magnitudes on the Ecuadorian coast by using the principles of Extreme Value Analysis based on its two approaches: Block Maxima and Peaks-over-Threshold. First, before modelling the recorded earthquakes, the K-means clustering technique was applied to determine a classification according to the level of magnitude of the earthquakes. Then, models based on the Extreme Value theory of earthquake magnitudes were developed for each of the four clusters that were found, and finally, the best-fitted models were those known as Fréchet and Gumbel ones. The zone with the greatest earthquake magnitudes on the Ecuadorian coast is located between the north of the province of Manabí and the south of the province of Esmeraldas, with a return period of 50 years for an earthquake with magnitude greater than 7.7 M_W.  相似文献   

Minor improvement for intertidal seaweeds and invertebrates after acid mine drainage diversion at Britannia Beach, Pacific Canada     

Zis T  Ronningen V  Scrosati R 《Marine pollution bulletin》2004,48(11-12):1040-1047

In December 2001, acid mine drainage (AMD) from an abandoned copper mine at Britannia Beach (British Columbia, Canada) was diverted to flow from Britannia Creek into an outfall at 30 m depth in Howe Sound. Britannia Beach was studied in early 2003 to determine whether AMD diversion resulted in improved conditions for intertidal organisms. Species number and abundance have increased at the intertidal zone since AMD diversion, although they were still lower than at an unpolluted control site nearby (Furry Creek). Survivorship and growth rates of transplanted Mytilus trossulus (mussel) have increased since AMD diversion, although they were still significantly lower than at the control site. Transplanted Fucus gardneri (seaweed) performed better than before the AMD diversion; at Britannia Beach the chlorophyll a concentration in tissues was not significantly different from that at the control site, although the concentration of chlorophyll c in tissues and the chlorophyll c to a ratio was lower than at the control site six weeks after transplantation. Britannia Beach is still subject to leaching of metals from surrounding soils, low levels of AMD coming down the creek, and AMD discharge from the deep outfall. Although there has been an improvement, the intertidal environment at Britannia Beach still seems unable to support normal growth and survival of organisms.  相似文献   

A participatory approach to integrated aquifer management: The case of Guanajuato State,Mexico     

Ricardo?SandovalEmail author 《Hydrogeology Journal》2004,12(1):6-13

Guanajuato State, located in central Mexico, with less than 2% of the countrys area, has almost 17,000 deep water wells, from which nearly 4,000 cubic hectometers (hm³) per year are being extracted, more than 1,000 hm³ over the estimated renewable yield. Since, in Mexico, water is administered under federal jurisdiction by the National Water Commission (CNA, for its Spanish acronym), the state government faces the challenge of ensuring its populations economic development without formal means of intervention. Being thus limited to apply mandatory policies and measures, the state water program has focused on the implementation of a two-sided strategy. First, basic hydrogeological studies and mathematical groundwater hydrodynamic models were developed upon a comprehensive survey of existing wells and a general revision of the states geological framework. Second, a structure for water users participation in water management actions was promoted (from the dissemination of information to the implementation of pilot efficient water use projects) with financial, technical and political support from the state. Simultaneously, a coordinated effort towards the completion of the water users registry was performed with the federal authority along with other supporting measures such as training and monitoring programs. In this paper, a general overview of the projects achievements and challenges is presented.To make direct contact with the water-user associations mentioned in this paper, please write to Eng. Aurelio Navarrete of the State Water Council at: cehgto@prodigy.net.mx.  相似文献