Enrichment of Rare Earth Elements during magmatic and post-magmatic processes: a case study from the Loch Loyal Syenite Complex, northern Scotland     

A. S. Walters  K. M. Goodenough  H. S. R. Hughes  N. M. W. Roberts  A. G. Gunn  J. Rushton  A. Lacinska 《Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology》2013,166(4):1177-1202

Concern about security of supply of critical elements used in new technologies, such as the Rare Earth Elements (REE), means that it is increasingly important to understand the processes by which they are enriched in crustal settings. High REE contents are found in syenite-dominated alkaline complexes intruded along the Moine Thrust Zone, a major collisional zone in north-west Scotland. The most northerly of these is the Loch Loyal Syenite Complex, which comprises three separate intrusions. One of these, the Cnoc nan Cuilean intrusion, contains two mappable zones: a Mixed Syenite Zone in which mafic melasyenite is mixed and mingled with leucosyenite and a Massive Leucosyenite Zone. Within the Mixed Syenite Zone, hydrothermal activity is evident in the form of narrow altered veins dominated by biotite and magnetite; these are poorly exposed and their lateral extent is uncertain. The REE mineral allanite is relatively abundant in the melasyenite and is extremely enriched in the biotite–magnetite veins, which have up to 2 % total rare earth oxides in bulk rock analyses. An overall model for development of this intrusion can be divided into three episodes: (1) generation of a Light Rare Earth Element (LREE)-enriched parental magma due to enrichment of the mantle source by subduction of pelagic carbonates; (2) early crystallisation of allanite in melasyenite, due to the saturation of the magma in the LREE; and (3) hydrothermal alteration, in three different episodes identified by petrography and mineral chemistry, generating the intense enrichment of REE in the biotite–magnetite veins. Dating of allanite and titanite in the biotite–magnetite veins gives ages of c. 426 Ma, overlapping with previously published crystallisation ages for zircon in the syenite.  相似文献   

Correlation of the upper devonian rocks of Australia     

J. Roberts  P. J. Jones  J. S. Jell  T. B. H. Jenkins  M. A. H. Marsden  R. G. Mckellar 《Australian Journal of Earth Sciences》2013,60(4):467-490

A heavy mineral concentrate from the undeformed Mundi Mundi Granite N of Broken Hill yielded very few zircons. U‐Th‐Pb measurements on microgram fractions of those extracted showed no indication of the stock's true 1500–1600 Ma intrusive event but revealed something inherited and of an age probably greater than 2 Ga. These zircons, either survivors of those inherited from the magma source or accidental inclusions from the wall rocks, may either represent sedimentary accumulations in the lower Willyama Supergroup with an older craton source i.e. provenance, or indicate the presence of a pre‐Willyama Supergroup basement. Considerable loss of Pb from the zircons is deduced to have occurred at (1) the time of granite intrusion, (2) in the lower Palaeozoic, and, (3) in the case of ²⁰⁸Pb, probably right up to recent time.  相似文献   

Evolution of central eastern Australia during the late Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic     

P. R. Evans  J. Roberts 《Australian Journal of Earth Sciences》2013,60(7-8):325-340

Palaeogeographic reconstructions and structural analysis of the Late Carboniferous to Triassic of central eastern Australia indicate that sedimentation and deformation were responses to the prolonged application of a dextral rotational force couple to the craton margin and to eustatic sea‐level changes. The force couple distorted the craton margins and adjacent Yarrol‐New England geosyncline and orogen into an incipient coupled orocline. The influence of the couple commenced in the Late Devonian and continued with varying effect until the Late Triassic, when it reversed to a sinistral system, part of a completely different stress regime that controlled sedimentation and structure during the Early Jurassic. Within the craton, deformation mainly took the form of a series of en echelon depressions, such as the Drummond Basin, Koburra, Denison and Taroom Troughs. A lineament between Longreach and Roma marks the southern boundary of this type of strain, although crust beyond its limit was not so rigid as to be unaffected by the force couple. The Yarrol‐New England region during the Devonian and the Early Carboniferous was the site of geosynclinal deposition where a thick and typically volcanogenic wedge lay along the eastern border of the craton. During the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian comparable wedges were formed farther to the east, in effect building outwards into the geosyncline. The same tensional regime that created the geosyncline is seen as the means for thinning crust below the sediment wedge and thus provided thermal instability, and for the igneous diapirism expressed as both intrusion and extrusion that characterizes the orogen from the Late Carboniferous onwards. The dextral force couple was responsible for most of the deformation and for controlling final emplacement of plutons. Sea‐level rises were marked in the late Early Permian and again in the early Late Permian.  相似文献   

Reservoir Description with Integrated Multiwell Data Using Two-Dimensional Wavelets     

Abeeb A. Awotunde  Roland N. Horne 《Mathematical Geosciences》2013,45(2):225-252

Inferring reservoir data from dynamic production data has long been done through matching the production history. However, proper integration of available production history has always been a challenge. Different production history data such as well pressure and water cut often occur at different scales making their joint inversion difficult. Furthermore, production data obtained from the same well or even the same reservoir are often correlated making a significant portion of the dataset redundant. Thirdly, the massiveness of the data recorded from wells in a large reservoir over a long period of time makes the nonlinear inversion of such data computational demanding. In this paper, we propose the integration of multiwell production data using wavelet transform. The method involves the use of a two-dimensional wavelet transformation of the data space in order to integrate multiple production data and reduce the correlation between multiwell data. Multiple datasets from different wells, representing different production responses (pressure, water cut, etc.), were treated as a single matrix of data rather than separate vectors that assume no correlation amongst datasets. This enabled us to transform the multiwell production data into a two-dimensional wavelet domain and subsequently select the most important wavelets for history match. By minimizing the square of the Frobenius norm of the residual matrix we were able to match the calculated response to the observed response. We derived the relationship that allows us to replace a conventional minimization of the sum of squares of the l ₂ norms of multi-objective functions with the minimization of the square of the Frobenius norm of the integrated data. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated using two examples. The approach proved very effective at reducing correlation between multiwell data. In addition, the method helped to reduce the cost of computing sensitivity coefficients. However, the method gave poor prediction of water cut when the datasets were not scaled before inverse modeling.  相似文献   

Contamination of marine biogenic habitats and effects upon associated epifauna     

Roberts DA  Johnston EL  Poore AG 《Marine pollution bulletin》2008,56(6):1057-1065

Habitat-forming organisms are frequently used as biomonitors in marine environments due to a widespread ability to accumulate toxic contaminants. Few studies, however, have considered the consequences of these accumulated contaminants on the abundant and diverse fauna associated with these habitats. In this review, we summarize research which has investigated the contamination of biogenic habitats (including seagrasses, macroalgae, ascidians, sponges and bivalve reefs) and the impact of this contamination on the habitat use, feeding behaviour and survival of associated epifauna. In many cases, ecological impacts upon epifauna are not simply predicted by levels of contamination in their habitat, but are determined by the foraging, feeding and reproductive behaviours of the inhabiting organisms. Thus, a thorough understanding of these ecological processes is essential in order to understand the effects of contaminants upon epifaunal communities. The scope of biomonitoring studies which assess the contamination of biogenic habitats should be expanded to include an assessment of potential effects upon associated epifauna. When combined with manipulative field experiments such an approach would greatly assist in our understanding of indirect effects of contaminants in these important benthic habitats.  相似文献   

Interactive effects of environmental variability and human impacts on the long-term dynamics of an Amazonian floodplain lake and a South Atlantic coastal lagoon   总被引：2，自引：1，他引：1  

Reinaldo L. Bozelli  Adriano Caliman  Rafael D. Guariento  Luciana S. Carneiro  Jayme M. Santangelo  Marcos P. Figueiredo-Barros  Joo J.F. Leal  Adriana M. Rocha  Letícia B. Quesado  Paloma M. Lopes  Vinicius F. Farjalla  Claudio C. Marinho  Fabio Roland  Francisco A. Esteves 《Limnologica》2009,39(4):306-313

Human activities are exposing freshwater ecosystems to a wide range of stressors, whose direct and indirect effects can be alleviated or exacerbated through interactive effects with dynamic environmental drivers. This study used long-term data from two Neotropical lacustrine freshwater systems (Batata Lake, an Amazonian floodplain lake and Imboassica lagoon, an Atlantic coastal lagoon) subjected to different kinds of environmental fluctuations (i.e., flood pulse and sandbar opening) and anthropogenic impacts (i.e., siltation and eutrophication). Our objective was to determine whether the effects of human perturbations are contingent on modifications of important biotic and abiotic characteristics through environmental variability. For both ecosystems, environmental variability consistently interacted with anthropogenic perturbations to alter most of the variables analyzed, such as nutrient dynamics, chlorophyll-a concentration, zooplankton and benthic invertebrate species richness, and temporal community stability, which indicates that interactive effects between environmental variability and anthropogenic perturbations may impact a myriad of ecosystem properties. Furthermore, the nature of these interactive effects was highly dependent on the variable considered and on the ecosystem analyzed. For example, at Imboassica lagoon, sandbar openings interacted synergistically with trophic state to increase the phosphorus concentration in the water column. At Batata Lake, flooding generally alleviated the negative effects of siltation on species richness by both diluting inorganic suspended material concentration and by promoting local recruitment from the regional species pool. Such results indicate that our ability to understand and predict the outcome of anthropogenic impacts on inland aquatic systems can be hampered if we consider human stressors as “static” phenomena disconnected from dynamic interactions with major local environmental drivers.  相似文献   

Earthquake swarms at Upptyppingar,north-east Iceland: A sign of magma intrusion?     

S. S. Jakobsdóttir  M. J. Roberts  G. B. Guđmundsson  H. Geirsson  R. Slunga 《Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica》2008,52(4):513-528

In 2007, intense swarms of deep, tectonic earthquakes, amounting to at least 5 300 epicentres, were detected near to Mount Upptyppingar, which forms part of the Kverkfjöll volcano system in Iceland’s Northern Volcanic Zone. Although micro-seismicity is common within such volcanic regions, the Upptyppingar swarms have been more intensive and persistent than any other deep-seated seismicity observed in Iceland. Here we outline the spatial and temporal changes in ongoing seismicity that began in February 2007; in addition, we document enhanced levels of GPS-derived crustal deformation, recorded within 25 km of the area of swarming. Besides displaying spatial clustering, the Upptyppingar micro-earthquakes are noteworthy because: (i) they concentrate at focal depths of 14–22 km; (ii) the swarms comprise brittle-type earthquakes < 2 in magnitude, yielding a b-value of 2.1; and (iii) several of the swarms originate at focal depths exceeding 18 km. Additionally, different parts of the affected region have exhibited seismicity at different times, with swarm sites alternating between distinct areas. The activity moved with time towards east-north-east and to shallower depths. Linear regression approximates the seismicity on a southward-dipping, ～41° plane. Alongside sustained earthquake activity, significant horizontal displacement was registered at two permanent GPS stations in the region. High strain rates are required to explain brittle fracturing under visco-elastic conditions within the Earth’s crust; similarly, intense, localised deformation at considerable depth is necessary to reconcile the measured surface deformation. Such remarkable seismicity and localised deformation suggests that magma is ascending into the base of the crust.  相似文献   

Deterministic sensitivity analysis for a model for flow in porous media     

Estelle Marchand  François Clément  Jean E. Roberts  Guillaume Pépin 《Advances in water resources》2008

A deterministic method for sensitivity analysis is developed and applied to a mathematical model for the simulation of flow in porous media. The method is based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) of the Jacobian matrix of the model. It is a local approach to sensitivity analysis providing a hierarchical classification of the directions in both the input space and of those in the output space reflecting the degree of sensitiveness of the latter to the former. Its low computational cost, in comparison with that of statistical approaches, allows the study of the variability of the results of the sensitivity analysis due to the variations of the input parameters of the model, and thus it can provide a quality criterion for the validity of more classical probabilistic global approaches. For the example treated here, however, this variability is weak, and deterministic and statistical methods yield similar sensitivity results.  相似文献   

Spatial patterns of sub-tidal seagrasses and their tissue nutrients in the Torres Strait,northern Australia: Implications for management     

James K. Sheppard  Alex B. Carter  Len J. McKenzie  C. Roland Pitcher  Robert G. Coles 《Continental Shelf Research》2008

The distribution and nutritional profiles of sub-tidal seagrasses from the Torres Strait were surveyed and mapped across an area of 31,000 km². Benthic sediment composition, water depth, seagrass species type and nutrients were sampled at 168 points selected in a stratified representative pattern. Eleven species of seagrass were present at 56 (33.3%) of the sample points. Halophila spinulosa, Halophila ovalis, Cymodocea serrulata and Syringodium isoetifolium were the most common species and these were nutrient profiled. Sub-tidal seagrass distribution (and associated seagrass nutrient concentrations) was generally confined to northern-central and south-western regions of the survey area (<longitude 142.60), where mean water depth was relatively shallow (approximately 13 m below MSL) and where sediments were comprised primarily muddy sand to gravelly sand. Seagrass nitrogen and starch content, the most important nutrients for marine herbivores, were significantly correlated with species and with the plant component (above or below ground). For all seagrass species, the above-ground component (shoots and leaves) possessed greater nitrogen concentrations than the below-ground component (roots and rhizomes), which possessed greater starch concentrations. S. isoetifolium had the highest total nitrogen concentrations (1.40±0.05% DW). However, it also had higher fibre concentrations (38.2±0.68% DW) relative to the other four species. H. ovalis possessed the highest starch concentrations (2.76±0.12% DW) and highest digestibility (83.24±0.66% DW) as well as the lowest fibre (27.2±0.66% DW). The high relative abundance (found at 55% of the sites that had seagrass) and nutrient quality characteristics of H. ovalis make it an important source of energy to marine herbivores that forage sub-tidally in the Torres Strait. There were two regions in Torres Strait (north-central and south-western) where sub-tidal seagrass meadows were prevalent and of relatively higher nutritional value. This spatial and nutritional information can be used by local agencies to manage and to protect the ecological, economic and cultural values of the sub-tidal seagrass ecosystems and associated fisheries of the Torres Strait.  相似文献   

The use of secondary information in geostatistical target area identification     

Barry L. Roberts  Sean A. McKenna 《Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA)》2009,23(2):227-236

The identification and characterization of target areas at former bombing ranges is the first step in investigating these sites for residual unexploded ordnance. Traditionally, magnetometer surveys along transects are used in identifying areas with high densities of magnetic anomalies, which are likely former target areas. Combining magnetometer survey data with other data sources may reduce the level of survey data required for site characterization, increasing characterization efficiency. Here, several techniques for incorporating secondary information into kriging estimates of magnetic anomaly density are investigated for a former bombing range located near Pueblo, Colorado. In particular, kriging with external drift, collocated ordinary cokriging, and simple kriging with local means (SKLM) are used to incorporate information from a secondary variable. The secondary variable consists of a grid of crater density values derived from a topographic light detection and ranging (LIDAR) analysis. The craters, which are clearly identifiable in the LIDAR data, were generated through munitions use at the site and are therefore related to the target locations. The results from this study indicate that the inclusion of the secondary information in the kriging estimates does benefit target area characterization and provides a means of elucidating target area details from only limited magnetometer transect data. For the Pueblo site, the use of SKLM with the crater density as a secondary variable and only limited magnetometer transect data, provided results comparable to those obtained from using much larger magnetometer transect data sets.  相似文献