Speleothems and pine trees as sensitive indicators of environmental pollution – A case study of the effect of uranium-ore mining in Hungary     

Zoltan Siklosy  Zoltan Kern  Attila Demeny  Sebastian Pilet  Szabolcs Leel-Ossy  Ke Lin  Chuan-Chou Shen  Eva Szeles  Daniel Breitner 《Applied Geochemistry》2011,26(5):666-678

Four decades of U ore production in Hungary provides an opportunity to study the possible environmental effects of mining. The study reveals significant changes in chemical composition of a stalagmite (cave deposit). The good fit between U content changes in the studied deposit and the U ore production rate support the assumption of the relationship with mining activity. An independent chemoenviromental archive, living pine (Pinus sylvestis) trees were also investigated. Data on pine tree cores collected from the same region show different levels of pollution (Cu, Zn, Mn, U) after the 1950s and 1960s, linked to the opening of mines and subsequent dust fallout around the site. Elevated concentrations of detritally derived elements (Si, Al, Th) coupled with a rise in U concentration and change in δ²³⁴U values of the stalagmite suggest increasing amounts of mine-derived dust from 1 to 3 km distance that settled and washed into the karst system. The combined usage of different proxies not only provides historic records for the anthropogenic impact in the environment, but also allows the timing of U concentration increases within the stalagmite and the identification of elemental behavior from the pollution. This study shows that complementary geochemical archives such as stalagmites and tree rings used together can enhance understanding of past environmental contamination.  相似文献   

Projected evolution of circulation types and their temperatures over Central Europe in climate models     

Eva Plavcová  Jan Kyselý 《Theoretical and Applied Climatology》2013,114(3-4):625-634

The study deals with changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation (represented by circulation types) and associated surface air temperatures as projected in an ensemble of regional climate models (RCMs) from the ENSEMBLES project. We examine changes of circulation type frequencies and means of daily maximum and minimum temperatures within circulation types in individual seasons for two time slices of transient runs under the SRES A1B scenario (2021–2050 and 2071–2100) with respect to the control period (1961–1990). To study the influence of driving data, simulations of the driving general circulation models (GCMs) also are evaluated. We find that all models project changes of atmospheric circulation that are statistically significant for both future time slices. The models tend to project strengthening of the westerly circulation in winter and its weakening in summer. We show that increases of daily maximum and minimum temperatures in all seasons differ for individual circulation types. There are, however, only few features of the projected changes in the future circulation–temperature links that are common among the models, in particular relatively smaller warming for westerly types. Only in winter, projected changes in circulation types tend to contribute to the projected overall warming. This effect is negligible and mostly opposite in the other seasons. We also detect a strong influence of driving data on RCMs’ simulation of atmospheric circulation and temperature changes.  相似文献   

Long-Term Evolution of FU Ori-Type Stars at Infrared Wavelengths     

Ágnes Kóspál  Péter Ábrahám  Mária Kun  Szilárd Csizmadia  Eva Verdugo 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2004,292(1-4):547-551

We investigated the brightness evolution of 5 FU Ori systems in the 1–200 μm wavelength range using observations from the Infrared Space Observatory, 2MASS and MSX data. The SEDs were compared with earlier ones derived from the IRAS photometry and ground-based observations around the epoch 1983. In three cases no difference was seen, in one object the near- and mid-infrared part of the spectrum became fainter by a factor of 2, and in the fifth case a marginal fading was observed. We study in detail the case of V1057 Cyg.  相似文献   

A New Method for Low‐Temperature Decomposition of Chromites and Dichromium Trioxide using Bromic Acid Evaluated by Chromium Isotope Measurements     

Vladislav Chrastný  Jan Rohovec  Eva Čadková  Jan Pašava  Juraj Farkaš  Martin Novák 《Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research》2014,38(1):103-110

In recent years, routine application of the stable isotope determination of chromium (Cr) in environmental and health protection research has led to the search for simpler chromite decomposition techniques. As the range of Cr isotope abundance ratios in nature is very narrow, conventional chromite decomposition techniques are no longer suitable, due to the relatively high risk of contamination during laboratory procedures. We have developed a protocol for the decomposition of chromites based on oxidation by bromic acid at room temperature. The procedure takes 15 d and requires two doses of bromic acid during the reaction period (day 1 and 8), due to the limited stability of the reagent. Chromium extracted by alkaline oxidative fusion and by bromic acid decomposition yielded statistically indistinguishable δ⁵³Cr values, measured by multi‐collector inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometry following addition of a ⁵⁰Cr‐⁵⁴Cr double‐spike.  相似文献   

Erratum to: Melts of garnet lherzolite: experiments,models and comparison to melts of pyroxenite and carbonated lherzolite     

Timothy?L.?GroveEmail author  Eva?S.?Holbig  Jay?A.?Barr  Christy?B.?Till  Michael?J.?Krawczynski 《Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology》2014,168(6):1086

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Monitoring 25 years of land cover change dynamics in Africa: A sample based remote sensing approach   总被引：3，自引：1，他引：2  

Andreas Bernhard Brink  Hugh Douglas Eva   《Applied geography (Sevenoaks, England)》2009,29(4):501-512

The study examines the changes in sub-Saharan's natural land cover resources for a 25 year period. We assess these changes in four broad land cover classes – forests, natural non-forest vegetation, agriculture and barren – by using high spatial resolution Earth observing satellites. Two sets of sample images, one ‘historical’ targeted at 1975 and a second ‘recent’ targeted at the year 2000, have been selected through a stratified random sampling technique over the study area, targeting a sampling rate of 1% in each of the strata. The results, presented at eco-region level and aggregated at sub-Saharan level, show a 57% increase in agriculture area at the expense of natural vegetation which has itself decreased by 21% over the period, with nearly 5 million hectares forest and non-forest natural vegetation lost per year. The impacts of these changes on the environment on one site and on the socio-economy on the other site are discussed and possible pressures on human well being are highlighted.  相似文献   

Response to Kinnell's ‘Comment on “A transport‐distance approach to scaling erosion rates: III. Evaluating scaling characteristics of Mahleran”’     

John Wainwright  Anthony J. Parsons  Eva N. Müller  Richard E. Brazier  D. Mark Powell 《地球表面变化过程与地形》2009,34(9):1320-1321

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Declining impacts of hot spells on mortality in the Czech Republic, 1986–2009: adaptation to climate change?     

Jan Kysely  Eva Plavcová 《Climatic change》2012,113(2):437-453

The study examines temporal changes in mortality associated with spells of large positive temperature anomalies (hot spells) in extended summer season in the population of the Czech Republic (Central Europe) during 1986?C2009. Declining trends in the mortality impacts are found in spite of rising temperature trends. The finding remains unchanged if possible confounding effects of within-season acclimatization to heat and the mortality displacement effect are taken into account. Recent positive socioeconomic development, following the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, and better public awareness of heat-related risks are likely the primary causes of the declining vulnerability. The results suggest that climate change may have relatively little influence on heat-related deaths, since changes in other factors that affect vulnerability of the population are dominant instead of temperature trends. It is essential to better understand the observed nonstationarity of the temperature-mortality relationship and the role of adaptation and its limits, both physiological and technological, and to address associated uncertainties in studies dealing with climate change projections of temperature-related mortality.  相似文献   

Atmospheric circulation in regional climate models over Central Europe: links to surface air temperature and the influence of driving data   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  

Eva Plavcová  Jan Kysely 《Climate Dynamics》2012,39(7-8):1681-1695

The study examines simulation of atmospheric circulation, represented by circulation indices (flow direction, strength and vorticity), and links between circulation and daily surface air temperatures in regional climate models (RCMs) over Central Europe. We explore control simulations of five high-resolution RCMs from the ENSEMBLES project driven by re-analysis (ERA-40) and the same global climate model (ECHAM5 GCM) plus of one RCM (RCA) driven by different GCMs. The aims are to (1) identify errors in RCM-simulated distributions of circulation indices in individual seasons, (2) identify errors in simulated temperatures under particular circulation indices, and (3) compare performance of individual RCMs with respect to the driving data. Although most of the RCMs qualitatively reflect observed distributions of the airflow indices, each produces distributions significantly different from the observations. General biases include overestimation of the frequency of strong flow days and of strong cyclonic vorticity. Some circulation biases obviously propagate from the driving data. ECHAM5 and all simulations driven by ECHAM5 underestimate frequency of easterly flow, mainly in summer. Except for HIRHAM, however, all RCMs driven by ECHAM5 improve on the driving GCM in simulating atmospheric circulation. The influence on circulation characteristics in the nested RCM differs between GCMs, as demonstrated in a set of RCA simulations with different driving data. The driving data control on circulation in RCA is particularly weak for the BCM GCM, in which case RCA substantially modifies (but does not improve) the circulation from the driving data in both winter and summer. Those RCMs with the most distorted atmospheric circulation are HIRHAM driven by ECHAM5 and RCA driven by BCM. Relatively strong relationships between circulation indices and surface air temperatures were found in the observed data for Central Europe. The links differ by season and are usually stronger for daily maxima than minima. RCMs qualitatively reproduce these relationships. Effects of the driving model biases were found on RCMs’ performance in reproducing not only atmospheric circulation but also the links to surface temperature. However, the RCM formulation appears to be more important than the driving data in representing the latter. Differences of the circulation-to-temperature links among the RCA simulations are smaller and the links tend to be more realistic compared to the driving GCMs.  相似文献   

Variability comparisons for some mixture models with stochastic environments in biosciences and engineering     

Laureano F. Escudero  Eva María Ortega  José Alonso 《Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA)》2010,24(2):199-209

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