The relationship between methane migration and shale-gas well operations near Dimock,Pennsylvania, USA     

Hammond  Patrick A. 《Hydrogeology Journal》2016,24(2):503-519

Migration of stray methane gas near the town of Dimock, Pennsylvania, has been at the center of the debate on the safety of shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the United States. The presented study relates temporal variations in molecular concentrations and stable isotope compositions of methane and ethane to shale-gas well activity (i.e., vertical/horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and remedial actions). This was accomplished by analyzing data collected, between 2008 and 2012, by state and federal agencies and the gas well operator. In some cases, methane migration started prior to hydraulic fracturing. Methane levels of contaminated water wells sampled were one to several orders of magnitude greater than the concentrations due to natural variation in water wells of the local area. Isotope analyses indicate that all samples had a thermogenic origin at varying maturity levels, but from formations above the hydraulically fractured Marcellus Shale. The results from the initial water well samples were similar to annular gas values, but not those of production gases. This indicates that leakage by casing cement seals most likely caused the impacts, not breaks in the production casing walls. Remediation by squeeze cementing was partially effective in mitigating impacts of gas migration. In several cases where remediation caused a substantial reduction in methane levels, there were also substantial changes in the isotope values, providing evidence of two sources, one natural and the other man-induced. Sampling water wells while venting gas wells appears to be a cost-effective method for determining if methane migration has occurred.

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Spectral distortion inherent in airborne profilometer measurements of ocean wave heights     

Donald L. Hammond  Charles R. McClain   《Ocean Engineering》1980,7(1):99-108

A theoretical analysis of the performance characteristics of an airborne profilometer is presented. The analytical characteristics are shown to agree with those of the prototype. Results show that both the wave spectra and the dominant wave heading can be determined using the airborne profilometer.  相似文献   

River management response to multi-decade changes in timing of reservoir inflows,Columbia River Basin,USA     

Julia A. Jones  John C. Hammond 《水文研究》2020,34(25):4814-4830

Around the world, long-term changes in the timing and magnitude of streamflow are testing the ability of large managed water resource systems constructed in the 20th century to continue to meet objectives in the 21st century. Streamflow records for unregulated rivers upstream of reservoirs can be combined with records downstream of reservoirs using a paired-watershed framework and concepts of water resource system performance to assess how reservoir management has responded to long-term change. Using publicly available data, this study quantified how the intra-annual timing of inflows and outflows of 25 major reservoirs has shifted, how management has responded, and how this has influenced reliability and vulnerability of the water resource system in the 668,000 km² Columbia River basin from 1950 to 2012. Reservoir inflows increased slightly in early spring and declined in late spring to early fall, but reservoir outflows increased in late summer from 1950 to 2012. Average inflows to reservoirs in the low flow period exceeded outflows in the1950s, but inflows are now less than outflows. Reservoirs have increased hedging, that is, they have stored more water during the spring, in order to meet the widening gap between inflows and outflows during the summer low flow period. For a given level of reliability (the fraction of time flow targets were met), vulnerability (the maximum departure from the flow target) was greater during periods with lower than average inflows. Thus, the water management system in this large river basin has adjusted to multi-decade trends of declining inflows, but vulnerability, that is, the potential for excess releases in spring and shortfalls in summer, has increased. This study demonstrates the value of combining publicly available historical data on streamflow with concepts from paired-watershed analyses and metrics of water resource performance to detect, evaluate, and manage water resource systems in large river basins.  相似文献   

The use of regional and alluvial groundwater by riparian trees in the wet-dry tropics of northern Australia     

Caroline A. Canham  Clément Duvert  Leah S. Beesley  Michael M. Douglas  Samantha A. Setterfield  Fiona L. Freestone  Steven Clohessy  Robyn C. Loomes 《水文研究》2021,35(5):e14180

Riparian trees play a critical role in the ecological function of rivers, yet are threatened by anthropogenic change to the hydrological cycle. Identifying the sources of water used by riparian trees can inform sustainable water policy. We used isotopic analysis complemented by measurements of plant water relations to assess water sources for riparian trees at two sites with contrasting hydrogeological processes; one with an alluvial aquifer overlaying an aquitard, and one where fault-induced preferential pathways in the aquitard allowed the flow of deeper, older groundwater from a regional aquifer to the alluvium. At both sites, plant water potential, stomatal conductance, and plant water isotope composition in the xylem sap of riparian trees were collected from two landscape positions, the riverbank and floodplain. We used a Bayesian mixing model (MixSIAR) to assess differences in the proportion of water sources for sites and landscape positions. We found that xylem water isotope values differed between the two sites in line with their hydrogeological characteristics, with trees at the regional aquifer site using water sourced from the regional groundwater and trees at the site with only an alluvial aquifer present using a mixture of water sources, with no dominant source identified. Higher plant predawn water potential values at the regional site indicated greater water availability and support the inference that plants were using more groundwater at the regional site compared to the alluvial site. Trees closer to the river had higher isotope values, indicative of surficial water sources i.e. shallow soil water and river water. Our findings show that the water sources used by riparian trees reflect local hydrogeology and resource availability. Water managers should identify and protect plant water sources to ensure maintenance of riparian trees.  相似文献   

Historical Gorda Ridge t-phase swarms: relationships to ridge structure and the tectonic and volcanic state of the ridge during 1964–1966     

Daniel A. Walker  Stephen R. Hammond 《Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography》1998,45(12):2531-2545

The U.S. Navy’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) hydrophone arrays are extemely efficient receptors of a high-frequency earthquake energy phase known as the t(ertiary)-wave, or t-phase (Fox et al., 1994). After a nearly 30-year hiatus in such studies, SOSUS arrays are again being utilized to detect t-phases and to locate seismic and volcanic events occurring along the Gorda seafloor spreading center (Fox et al., 1995; Fox and Dziak, 1998). Earlier, Northrop et al. (1968) also used other military arrays to infer tectonic structure along the Gorda Ridge. From October 1964 through December 1966, over 600 low-magnitude earthquakes occurred along the Gorda Ridge. Nearly all of these events had magnitudes below the detection thresholds of land-based seismic networks. Northrop et al. (1968) interpreted the geographic distribution of these events as evidence for a nascent fracture zone near the midpoint of the ridge. In the present study, the spatial distributions of these older data and, for the first time, their temporal distributions as well, were examined with respect to detailed bathymetry of the ridge that was acquired in the early 1980s. This analysis, of 570 on-axis and 74 off-axis events, led to the following observations: (1) nearly all of the Gorda Ridge t-phase events occurred in discreet swarms centered about the ridge axis, (2) most of the events within each of 8 (of 9) observed swarms occurred mainly along single ridge segments, and, (3) reconfirming the earlier Northrop et al. (1968) conclusion, most of the events originated in the region of a major change in the strike of the ridge axis. During the 27-month interval that the ridge was observed, relatively few t-phase events took place along the northernmost segment of the Gorda Ridge where the 1996 eruption occurred. However, a unique sequence of small events which visually resemble the events associated with a Juan de Fuca Ridge eruption in 1993 (Fox et al., 1995) and a Gorda Ridge eruption in 1996 (Fox and Dziak, 1998) may have been associated with an eruption on the ridge during 1965.  相似文献   

Hubble Space Telescope survey of the Perseus Cluster – I. The structure and dark matter content of cluster dwarf spheroidals     

Samantha J. Penny  Christopher J. Conselice  Sven De Rijcke  Enrico V. Held 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2009,393(3):1054-1062

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GAUGE: the GrAnd Unification and Gravity Explorer     

G. Amelino-Camelia  K. Aplin  M. Arndt  J. D. Barrow  R. J. Bingham  C. Borde  P. Bouyer  M. Caldwell  A. M. Cruise  T. Damour  P. D’Arrigo  H. Dittus  W. Ertmer  B. Foulon  P. Gill  G. D. Hammond  J. Hough  C. Jentsch  U. Johann  P. Jetzer  H. Klein  A. Lambrecht  B. Lamine  C. Lämmerzahl  N. Lockerbie  F. Loeffler  J. T. Mendonca  J. Mester  W.-T. Ni  C. Pegrum  A. Peters  E. Rasel  S. Reynaud  D. Shaul  T. J. Sumner  S. Theil  C. Torrie  P. Touboul  C. Trenkel  S. Vitale  W. Vodel  C. Wang  H. Ward  A. Woodgate 《Experimental Astronomy》2009,23(2):549-572

The GAUGE (GrAnd Unification and Gravity Explorer) mission proposes to use a drag-free spacecraft platform onto which a number of experiments are attached. They are designed to address a number of key issues at the interface between gravity and unification with the other forces of nature. The equivalence principle is to be probed with both a high-precision test using classical macroscopic test bodies, and, to lower precision, using microscopic test bodies via cold-atom interferometry. These two equivalence principle tests will explore string-dilaton theories and the effect of space–time fluctuations respectively. The macroscopic test bodies will also be used for intermediate-range inverse-square law and an axion-like spin-coupling search. The microscopic test bodies offer the prospect of extending the range of tests to also include short-range inverse-square law and spin-coupling measurements as well as looking for evidence of quantum decoherence due to space–time fluctuations at the Planck scale.  相似文献   

Synergistic effect of calcium and bicarbonate in enhancing arsenate release from ferrihydrite   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Samantha L. Saalfield  Benjamin C. Bostick 《Geochimica et cosmochimica acta》2010,74(18):5171-141

Many groundwater systems contain anomalously high arsenic concentrations, associated with less than expected retention of As by adsorption to iron (hydr)oxides. Although carbonates are ubiquitous in aquifers, their relationship to arsenate mobilization is not well characterized. This research examines arsenate release from poorly crystalline iron hydroxides in abiotic systems containing calcium and magnesium with bicarbonate under conditions of static and dynamic flow (pH 7.5-8). Aqueous arsenic levels remained low when arsenate-bearing ferrihydrite was equilibrated with artificial groundwater solution containing Ca, Mg, and HCO₃⁻. In batch titrations in which a solution of Ca and HCO₃⁻ was added repeatedly, the ferrihydrite surface became saturated with adsorbed Ca and HCO₃⁻, and aqueous As levels increased by 1-2 orders of magnitude. In columns containing Ca or Mg and HCO₃⁻, As solubility initially mimicked titrations, but then rapidly increased by an additional order of magnitude (reaching 12 μM As). Separately, calcium chloride and other simple salts did not induce As release, although sodium bicarbonate and lactate facilitated minor As release under flow. Results indicate that adsorption of calcium or magnesium with bicarbonate leads to As desorption from ferrihydrite, to a degree greater than expected from competitive effects alone, especially under dynamic flow. This desorption may be an important mechanism of As mobilization in As-impacted, circumneutral aquifers, especially those undergoing rapid mineralization of organic matter, which induces calcite dissolution and the production of dissolved calcium and bicarbonate.  相似文献   

Dissolution kinetics of biogenic silica collected from the water column and sediments of three Southern California borderland basins     

Tao Cheng  Douglas E. Hammond  William M. Berelson  Janet G. Hering  Suvasis Dixit 《Marine Chemistry》2009,113(1-2):41-49

Understanding biogenic silica (bSi) dissolution kinetics in margin environments is important in assessing the global silicon cycle, a cycle closely linked to the global carbon cycle. This understanding is also essential to answer the question of whether bSi content in marine sediment is a valid indicator of productivity in the overlying surface ocean. In this study, plankton tow, sediment trap, and sediment samples were collected at sites in three Southern California borderland basins. Batch dissolution experiments with plankton tow and sediment trap materials (conducted in the laboratory at 22 °C) showed linear dissolution kinetics, from which mean dissolution rate constants of 0.05 d^? 1 for plankton tow samples and 0.07 d^? 1 for sediment trap samples could be calculated. The dissolution rate constants for both types of samples showed seasonal variability but not the same seasonal patterns. Faster dissolution was observed with sediment trap samples collected at 800 m than at 550 m. With sediment multi-core samples, non-linear dissolution kinetics was observed, which complicates the direct comparison of dissolution rates. Nonetheless, dissolution appeared to be slower for the sediments samples than for samples collected from the water column and to decrease with depth in the sediments. Rate constants for surface sediment (0–0.5 cm) were at least 3–5 times less, and sediments at depths > 2 cm had rate constants at least 6–13 times less than those for material sinking to the sediment surface at these sites. Dissolution experiments conducted with Santa Barbara Basin surface sediment samples amended with dissolved aluminum (Al) and San Pedro Basin trap samples amended with enriched detrital materials (obtained by leaching bSi from sediment samples) suggested that dissolution was inhibited by Al and that the sediments from the different basins varied in the extent of Al release.  相似文献   

Paleomagnetic polarity sequence and radiolarian zones,brunhes to polarity epoch 20     

F. Theyer  S.R. Hammond 《Earth and Planetary Science Letters》1974,22(4):307-319

Superposition of paleomagnetic polarity logs of seven chronologically overlapping piston cores from the central equatorial Pacific, using the established tropical radiolarian zonation as a stratigraphic reference, produced a nearly continuous correlation of magnetic and radiolarian events ranging from late Pleistocene to earliest Miocene. Twenty magnetic polarity epochs, and possibly as many as 30 polarity events, occur during this time span. Epoch 16 (reversed polarity) appears to be the longest interval (～ 14.8–17.6m.y. B.P.) among these Neogene magnetostratigraphic units. The middle/late Miocene boundary is shown to fall within latest Epoch 11 (normal) and its approximate age is between 10.5 and 11 m.y. B.P. The early/middle Miocene boundary occurs within the top of Epoch 16 at a suggested age of about 15 m.y. B.P.  相似文献