The Meseta de Somuncura forms the largest basaltic plateau (20 000 km2) of southern Argentina (extra-Andean domain). Most of these tholeiitic to alkaline rocks were extruded at ˜ 25 Ma (late Oligocene). The absence of rifting–thinning processes, plume activity, or slab-window phenomena leaves only one major possibility for the generation of Somuncura: asthenospheric ('OIB-like') corner flow leading to a transient thermal anomaly above the subducting plate. It is suggested herein that the intake of hot asthenosphere was forced into a favourable topography (concave-up) of the subducting plate, when a major plate reorganization event (Farallon to Nazca) was taking place in late Oligocene to early Miocene time. The fast and vigorous intake of asthenosphere would have been induced by slab roll-back, leading to decoupling of the subducting plate. The Somuncura volcanic episode can be regarded as a marker of the passage from the extremely oblique subduction of Farallon, to the birth of the Nazca plate and roughly perpendicular convergence between South America and Nazca. 相似文献
This paper presents an example of application of the double solid reactant method (DSRM) of Accornero and Marini (Environmental
Geology, 2007a), an effective way for modeling the fate of several dissolved trace elements during water–rock interaction. The EQ3/6 software
package was used for simulating the irreversible water–rock mass transfer accompanying the generation of the groundwaters
of the Porto Plain shallow aquifer, starting from a degassed diluted crateric steam condensate. Reaction path modeling was
performed in reaction progress mode and under closed-system conditions. The simulations assumed: (1) bulk dissolution (i.e.,
without any constraint on the kinetics of dissolution/precipitation reactions) of a single solid phase, a leucite-latitic
glass, and (2) precipitation of amorphous silica, barite, alunite, jarosite, anhydrite, kaolinite, a solid mixture of smectites,
fluorite, a solid mixture of hydroxides, illite-K, a solid mixture of saponites, a solid mixture of trigonal carbonates and
a solid mixture of orthorhombic carbonates. Analytical concentrations of major chemical elements and several trace elements
(Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Sr and Ba) in groundwaters were satisfactorily reproduced. In addition to these simulations,
similar runs for a rhyolite, a latite and a trachyte permitted to calculate major oxide contents for the authigenic paragenesis
which are comparable, to a first approximation, with the corresponding data measured for local altered rocks belonging to
the silicic, advanced argillic and intermediate argillic alteration facies. The important role played by both the solid mixture
of trigonal carbonates as sequestrator of Mn, Zn, Cu and Ni and the solid mixture of orthorhombic carbonates as scavenger
of Sr and Ba is emphasized.
Spatial patterns and replacement in ten cacti were studied on an island of the coastal desert of Sinaloa, México. Four platyopuntias had 74–92% of their individuals beneath shrub canopies, whereas three globose cacti, one columnar cactus and two cylindropuntias had similar or higher percentages of individuals in open spaces. This study advances the idea that open-space colonization is enhanced by less harsh physical and biotic conditions in coastal deserts, and by certain morphological and physiological adaptations of cacti. The absence of nurse-shrub replacement is understood as a result of induced co-existence by physical damage from cyclones in the coastal zone. 相似文献
Robust decision-making is being increasingly used to support environmental resources decisions and policy analysis under changing climate and society. In this context, a robust decision is a decision that is as much as possible insensitive to a large degree of uncertainty and ensures certain performance across multiple plausible futures. Yet, the concept of robustness is neither unique nor static. Multiple robustness metrics, such as maximin, optimism-pessimism, max regret, have been proposed in the literature, reflecting diverse optimistic/pessimistic attitudes by the decision maker. Further, these attitudes can evolve in time as a response to sequences of favorable (or adverse) events, inducing possible dynamic changes in the robustness metrics. In this paper, we explore the impact of alternative definitions of robustness and their evolution in time for a case of water resources system management under changing climate. We study the decisions of the Lake Como operator, who is called to regulate the lake by balancing irrigation supply and flood control, under an ensemble of climate change scenarios. Results show a considerable variability in the system performance across multiple robustness metrics. In fact, the mis-definition of the actual decision maker’s attitude biases the simulation of its future decisions and produces a general underestimation of the system performance. The analysis of the dynamic evolution of the decision maker’s preferences further confirms the potentially strong impact of changing robustness definition on the decision-making outcomes. Climate change impact assessment studies should therefore include the definition of robustness among the uncertain parameters of the problem in order to analyze future human decisions under uncertainty. 相似文献
Since 2002 the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS) in Udine (Italy), the Agencija Republike Slovenije za Okolje (ARSO) in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) in Vienna (Austria), are collecting, analyzing, archiving and exchanging seismic data in real time, initially in the framework of the EU Interreg IIIa Italia-Austria project “Trans-national seismological networks in the South-Eastern Alps”. As outcome of the successful cooperation, in the 2013 OGS, ARSO and ZAMG decided to officially merge their seismic monitoring efforts into the “Central and Eastern European Earthquake Research Network—CE3RN”. This work reports the results of a nine-month real-time test of the earthquake early warning (EEW) algorithm probabilistic and evolutionary early warning system carried out at the CE3RN. The study allowed identifying the actions to be implemented in order to let the CE3RN become in the next future an efficient cross-border EEW system.
The last few years have seen the debate on the geoethics of environmental and climatic protection growing to include resilience as a central idea within this new discipline, which holds many similarities with geography. Resilience analysis often looks at the capacity to re-establish conditions of equilibrium within a system which has been hit by a serious shock, e.g. a natural or man-made disaster. Geoethics works, in tandem with geological analyses and the geography of risk, to inform a population and develop integrated risk management in such a way as to strengthen a community’s resilience. The aim of this work is to study some people’s capacity to overcome what was potentially a disastrous event and, through a process of reconstruction, turn it into an occasion for growth. The experiment, carried out in the primary and middle schools in Aiello Calabro (Calabria, southern Italy), was conducted on the basis of the belief that there is a close relationship between a population’s having a realistic understanding of the risk of such an event, e.g. an earthquake, and high levels of resilience. We also tried to gain an insight into the relationship that may exist between resilience in primary and secondary school children and methods of coping which give an appropriate management of seismic risk. To be more precise, we try to discover whether there is a link between good/appropriate resilience and good/appropriate risk management.
