Vulnerability of farm water supply systems to volcanic ash fall     

Thomas Wilson  Carol Stewart  Jim Cole  David Johnston  Shane Cronin 《Environmental Earth Sciences》2010,61(4):675-688

Agriculture is critically dependent on continuity of water quality and quantity. It is well-established that even small quantities of volcanic ash can disrupt municipal water supplies, with known impacts to quality including: acidification, increases in turbidity and ionic concentrations. In addition, delivery systems may be blocked or damaged by hard and abrasive suspended ash and related ash-cleanup operations place extra stress on water reserves. The aim of this study was to characterise the key areas of vulnerability of farm water supplies to volcanic ashfall, and to identify management recommendations to reduce these. From literature review and case studies of farms impacted by the 1991 Pinatubo (Philippines) and 1991 Hudson (Chile) eruptions, key issues were: sedimentation of irrigation ditches and drinking water ponds, turbidity induced abrasion of sprinkler nozzles and water pumps, and damage to electric pumps (by ash on air-intakes). Building on this, we characterised the water-use regimes and water supply system vulnerability of eight case-study farms from across the North Island, New Zealand. From this, we propose an index system to evaluate the vulnerability of farm water supply systems. The key contributors to the vulnerability index include: water source, storage capacity, reliance on electricity, independence/interconnectedness of system elements, volume of water use and other load factors. These allow identification of key strategies for mitigating water supply vulnerability during prevention, preparation, response and recovery phases of a volcanic eruption.  相似文献   

Sustainable Household Capability: which households are doing the work of environmental sustainability?   总被引：2，自引：2，他引：0  

Gordon Waitt  Peter Caputi  Chris Gibson  Carol Farbotko  Lesley Head  Nick Gill 《The Australian geographer》2012,43(1):51-74

This paper presents a framework for analysing which households are doing ‘their bit’ for sustainability in an era of climate change, using a two-stage cluster analysis of sustainable household capabilities. The framework segments households by their reported level of commitment to ‘pro-sustainability’ practices common to conventional government policies. Results are presented from a large-scale survey of Wollongong households, New South Wales, Australia. Results illustrate the importance of approaching household sustainability through everyday practices. Attention is drawn to the wide variation in participation in specific household sustainability practices. Investigation into sustainable household capability by household segments shows the limits of even the most committed households. Results show the importance of socio-cultural contexts in differentiating sustainable household capabilities—with women, suburban-detached households and lower income segments of the population ultimately doing most of the work of being sustainable.  相似文献   

Negotiating the boundary between state-led and farmer approaches to knowing nature: An analysis of UK agri-environment schemes     

Carol Morris 《Geoforum》2006,37(1):113-127

This paper explores the role of knowledge in the development of more environmentally sustainable farming systems in the UK and specifically seeks to reveal the porosity of the boundary between state-led and farmer approaches to knowing nature. Its empirical focus is two government sponsored ‘agri-environment schemes’—the Countryside Stewardship scheme and the Environmentally Sensitive Area scheme—which offer financial incentives to farmers and other land managers who agree to undertake environmentally beneficial practices. As a framework for analysis, the paper draws on the notion of ‘knowledge culture’, with agri-environment schemes represented as an emerging ‘policy knowledge culture’ that is seemingly distinct, in its approach to knowing nature, from pre-existing ‘agrarian knowledge cultures’. Data are derived from two large scale, countrywide surveys of agreement holders in the two agri-environment schemes. These reveal that alongside some resistance to the policy knowledge culture of AES, there is also negotiation and interchange taking place between knowledge cultures, and the policy knowledge culture is adapting to and accommodating aspects of the other. As such, the paper contests the findings of previous studies which assert that the codified knowledge of agri-environment schemes always wins out in the implementation of scheme agreements, with the subsequent marginalisation of other knowledge(s). In turn, it suggests that policy knowledge cultures can give voice to farmers’ ways of knowing nature with benefits both for them and nature itself. The paper concludes with some reflections on the extent of knowledge culture transformation and offers some policy recommendations.  相似文献   

Geomorphic response of an Appalachian Valley and Ridge stream to urbanization   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

J. L. Grable  Carol P. Harden 《地球表面变化过程与地形》2006,31(13):1707-1720

Human‐induced changes to the channel and 18·6 km² catchment of Second Creek, in Knox County, Tennessee (USA), have included deliberate channel realignment, channelization of some reaches in culverts or cement‐lined channels, the addition of coarse particles, and intentional and unintentional changes in catchment hydrology. Field observations and measurements made between 1997 and 2001 showed active adjustment of the stream channel. Channel bank erosion is the dominant adjustment, but aggradation also occurs. One change following urbanization is an increase in bed particle size due to the addition of particles of anthropogenic origin. Such particles constitute 2–21 per cent of particles sampled at eight sites along the stream, and their D₅₀ exceeds the D₅₀ of natural particles at five of the sites. The downstream portion of the catchment has been urbanized for more than 150 years, but urbanizing activity has continued throughout the catchment, occurring not as a discrete perturbation, but as a set of disturbances with varying spatial and temporal scales. Spatial patterns of erosion and deposition in the channel are complex and do not show an upstream–downstream trend. Effective, although unintended, decoupling of the most manipulated reaches has hindered the propagation of changes in channel morphology and channel materials in this urbanized stream system. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

On leakage of energy from turbulence to internal waves in the oceanic mixed layer     

Lakshmi H. Kantha  Carol Anne Clayson 《Ocean Dynamics》2007,57(2):151-156

In this paper, we address the question of energy leakage from turbulence to internal waves (IWs) in the oceanic mixed layer (OML). If this leakage is substantial, then not only does this have profound implications as far as the dynamics of the OML is concerned, but it also means that the equation for the turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) used in OML models must include an appropriate sink term, and traditional models must be modified accordingly. Through comparison with the experimental data on grid-generated turbulence in a stably stratified fluid, we show that a conventional two-equation turbulence model without any IW sink term can explain these observations quite well, provided that the fluctuating motions that persist long after the decay of grid-generated turbulence are interpreted as being due to IW motions generated by the initial passage of the grid through the stably stratified fluid and not during turbulence decay. We conclude that there is no need to postulate an IW sink term in the TKE equation, and conventional models suffice to model mixing in the OML.  相似文献   

Landscape scale controls on the vascular plant component of dissolved organic carbon across a freshwater delta   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Robert S. Eckard  Brian A. Bergamaschi  Carol Kendall 《Geochimica et cosmochimica acta》2007,71(24):5968-5984

Lignin phenol concentrations and compositions were determined on dissolved organic carbon (DOC) extracts (XAD resins) within the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta (the Delta), the tidal freshwater portion of the San Francisco Bay Estuary, located in central California, USA. Fourteen stations were sampled, including the following habitats and land-use types: wetland, riverine, channelized waterway, open water, and island drains. Stations were sampled approximately seasonally from December, 1999 through May, 2001. DOC concentrations ranged from 1.3 mg L⁻¹ within the Sacramento River to 39.9 mg L⁻¹ at the outfall from an island drain (median 3.0 mg L⁻¹), while lignin concentrations ranged from 3.0 μg L⁻¹ within the Sacramento River to 111 μg L⁻¹ at the outfall from an island drain (median 11.6 μg L⁻¹). Both DOC and lignin concentrations varied significantly among habitat/land-use types and among sampling stations. Carbon-normalized lignin yields ranged from 0.07 mg (100 mg OC)⁻¹ at an island drain to 0.84 mg (100 mg OC)⁻¹ for a wetland (median 0.36 mg (100 mg OC)⁻¹), and also varied significantly among habitat/land-use types. A simple mass balance model indicated that the Delta acted as a source of lignin during late autumn through spring (10-83% increase) and a sink for lignin during summer and autumn (13-39% decrease). Endmember mixing models using S:V and C:V signatures of landscape scale features indicated strong temporal variation in sources of DOC export from the Delta, with riverine source signatures responsible for 50% of DOC in summer and winter, wetland signatures responsible for 40% of DOC in summer, winter, and late autumn, and island drains responsible for 40% of exported DOC in late autumn. A significant negative correlation was observed between carbon-normalized lignin yields and DOC bioavailability in two of the 14 sampling stations. This study is, to our knowledge, the first to describe organic vascular plant DOC sources at the level of localized landscape features, and is also the first to indicate a significant negative correlation between lignin and DOC bioavailability within environmental samples. Based upon observed trends: (1) Delta features exhibit significant spatial variability in organic chemical composition, and (2) localized Delta features appear to exert strong controls on terrigenous DOC as it passes through the Delta and is exported into the Pacific Ocean.  相似文献   

The problem of small divisors in planetary motion     

Carol A. Williams 《Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy》1984,34(1-4):395-410

Small divisors caused by certain linear combinations of frequencies appear in all analytical planetary theories. With the exception of the deep resonance between Neptune and Pluto, they can be removed at the expense of introducing secular and mixed secular terms, limiting the domain in which the solution is valid. Because of them classical solutions are known not to converge uniformly; Poincaré referred to them as asymptotic. The KAM theory shows that if one is far enough from exact commensurability and has small enough planetary masses, expansions exist which will converge to quasi-periodic orbits. Solutions showing very small divisors are excluded from this region of convergence. The question of whether they are intrinsic to the problem or are just manifestations of the method of solution is not settled. Problems with a single commensurabily that can be isolated from the rest of the Hamiltonian may have solutions with no small divisors. The problem of two or more commensurabilities remains unsolved.  相似文献   

Spectral analyses of solar photospheric fluctuations     

Frank N. Edmonds Jr.  Carol J. Webb 《Solar physics》1972,22(2):276-296

The application of the fast-Fourier-transform (FFT) algorithm to calculating one-dimensional and bi-dimensional (temporal and spatial), power and cross-power (coherence and phase) spectra is examined for solar photospheric fluctuations. Alternative methods for smoothing raw spectra, direct averaging (employing various weights) and indirect truncation of the correlation function, are compared, and indirect smoothing is compared with spectra calculated by mean-lagged-product (MLP) methods. Besides providing the raw spectrum, FFT techniques easily allow computing a series of spectra with varying amounts of smoothing. From these spectra a range of satisfactory compromise between resolution and stability can be determined which helps in the interpretation of spectral trends, and in identifying more clearly the existence and significance of spectral features. For bi-dimensional spectra presented as contour plots, this range of satisfactory smoothing can be restricted, particularly when spectral trends must be represented by small-scale contours. Equivalent spectra (i.e. comparable equivalent degrees of freedom) computed or smoothed by different methods have minor, but not negligible, differences. Examination of these differences favors computing of FFT spectra smoothed by averaging for photospheric fluctuations.  相似文献   

Late Quaternary Iceberg Rafting along the Antarctic Peninsula Continental Rise and in the Weddell and Scotia Seas     

Colm Cofaigh  Julian A Dowdeswell  Carol J Pudsey 《Quaternary Research》2001,56(3)

Sediment cores from the continental rise west of the Antarctic Peninsula and the northern Weddell and Scotia Seas were investigated for their ice-rafted debris (IRD) content by lithofacies logging and counting of particles >0.2 cm from core x-radiographs. The objective of the study was to determine if there are iceberg-rafted units similar to the Heinrich layers of the North Atlantic that might record periodic, widespread catastrophic collapse of basins within the Antarctic Ice Sheet during the Quaternary. Cores from the Antarctic Peninsula margin contain prominent IRD-rich units, with maximum IRD concentrations in oxygen isotope stages 1, 5, and 7. However, the greater concentration of IRD in interglacial stages is the result of low sedimentation rates and current winnowing, rather than regional-scale episodes of increased iceberg rafting. This is also supported by markedly lower mass accumulation rates (MAR) during interglacial periods versus glacial periods. Furthermore, thinner IRD layers within isotope stages 2–4 and 6 cannot be correlated between individual cores along the margin. This implies that the ice sheet over the Antarctic Peninsula did not undergo widespread catastrophic collapse along its western margin during the late Quaternary (isotope stages 1–7). Sediment cores from the Weddell and Scotia Seas are characterized by low IRD concentrations throughout, and the IRD signal generally appears to be of limited regional significance with few strong peaks that can be correlated between cores. Tentatively, this argues against pervasive, rapid ice-sheet collapse around the Weddell embayment over the last few glacial cycles.  相似文献   

LEACHING OF TRACE ORGANICS INTO WATER FROM FIVE COMMON PLASTICS   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Carol M. Curran  Mason B. Tomson 《Ground Water Monitoring & Remediation》1983,3(3):68-71

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