Search results for "GEOLOGY"

Late Quaternary Variations in the South American Monsoon System as Inferred by Speleothems—New Perspectives using the SISAL Database

2019

Here we present an overview of speleothem δ18O records from South America, most of which are available in the Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and Analysis (SISAL_v1) database. South American tropical and subtropical speleothem δ18O time series are primarily interpreted to reflect changes in precipitation amount, the amount effect, and consequently history of convection intensity variability of convergence zones such as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the South America Monsoon System (SAMS). We investigate past hydroclimate scenarios in South America related to the South American Monsoon System in three different time periods: Late Pleistocene, Holocene, and the last tw…

Cretaceous ultrapotassic magmatism from the Sava-Vardar Zone of the Balkans

2020

Highlights • Geochemically diverse Late Cretaceous small-volume magmatism in the Sava-Vardar Zone. • Late Cretaceous ultrapotassic lava, equivalent of minette and kersantite. • Magma derivation from a LREE and K enriched, garnet-bearing anciently metasomatized mantle source. • Magmatism occurred either in a fore-arc setting or is associated with transtensional tectonics. Abstract Late Cretaceous global plate reorganization associated with the inception of counterclockwise rotation of Africa relative to Europe initiated in the Balkan region small-volume magmatism of diverse geochemical signature along the enigmatic Sava-Vardar Zone. We study a Late Cretaceous lamprophyric sill in Ripanj vill…

Testing Sediment Connectivity at the Experimental SPA2 Basin, Sicily (Italy)

2017

The concept of sediment delivery can be used as a measure of sediment connectivity, and it can be linked to the structural connectivity (morphological unit, slope length, slope steepness, travel time) of a basin and to the hydrological connectivity (rainfall–runoff processes at morphological unit scale). In this paper, the sediment connectivity concept was tested at basin scale applying SEdiment Delivery Distributed model, which takes into account the hillslope sediment transport, and using sediment yield measurements carried out at SPA2 experimental basin (Sicily, Italy). For the SPA2 basin discretized into morphological units, the SEdiment Delivery Distributed model was first calibrated a…

Applying the USLE Family of Models at the Sparacia (South Italy) Experimental Site

2016

Soil erosion is a key process to understand the land degradation, and modelling of soil erosion will help to understand the process and to foresee its impacts. The applicability of the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) at event scale is affected by the fact that USLE rainfall erosivity factor does not take into account runoff explicitly. USLE-M and USLE-MM, including the effect of runoff in the event rainfall– runoff erosivity factor, are characterized by a better capacity to predict event soil loss. The specific objectives of this paper were (i) to determine the suitable parameterization of USLE, USLE-M and USLE-MM by using the dataseries of Sparacia experimental site and (ii) to evaluat…

Magmas near the critical degassing pressure drive volcanic unrest towards a critical state

2016

During the reawaking of a volcano, magmas migrating through the shallow crust have to pass through hydrothermal fluids and rocks. The resulting magma–hydrothermal interactions are still poorly understood, which impairs the ability to interpret volcano monitoring signals and perform hazard assessments. Here we use the results of physical and volatile saturation models to demonstrate that magmatic volatiles released by decompressing magmas at a critical degassing pressure (CDP) can drive volcanic unrest towards a critical state. We show that, at the CDP, the abrupt and voluminous release of H2O-rich magmatic gases can heat hydrothermal fluids and rocks, triggering an accelerating deformation …

Phlogopite-pargasite coexistence in an oxygen reduced spinel-peridotite ambient

2021

AbstractThe occurrence of phlogopite and amphibole in mantle ultramafic rocks is widely accepted as the modal effect of metasomatism in the upper mantle. However, their simultaneous formation during metasomatic events and the related sub-solidus equilibrium with the peridotite has not been extensively studied. In this work, we discuss the geochemical conditions at which the pargasite-phlogopite assemblage becomes stable, through the investigation of two mantle xenoliths from Mount Leura (Victoria State, Australia) that bear phlogopite and the phlogopite + amphibole (pargasite) pair disseminated in a harzburgite matrix. Combining a mineralogical study and thermodynamic modelling, we predict …

2018

The Yellowstone magmatic system is one of the largest magmatic systems on Earth, and thus an ideal location to study magmatic processes. Whereas previous seismic tomography results could only image...

Selenium mobilization in soils due to volcanic derived acid rain: An example from Mt Etna volcano, Sicily

2011

International audience; The significant amounts of selenium (Se) emitted by volcanoes may have important impact on human health due to the narrow range between nutrition requirement and toxic effects for living organisms upon Se exposure. Although soils play a key role in determining the level in food and water and thereby human health, little is known about the behaviour of Se in volcanic soils. In this work we evaluated the Se release during rainwater–soil interaction under controlled conditions using soils collected on the flanks of Etna volcano and synthetic rain. Selenium concentrations in soil leachate solutions displayed a spatial distribution, which cannot be explained by plume depo…

Stage–Discharge Relationship for an Upstream Inclined Grid with Transversal Bars

2016

AbstractCheck dams with grids upgrading upstream are often used in mountain rivers, where intense sediment transport and steep slopes occur. In some cases, sloping grids are used in the construction of debris flow breakers. In this paper, the outflow process of an upstream-inclined grid with transversal bars is studied by using the dimensional analysis and the incomplete self-similarity theory. Next, the theoretical analysis shows that a power equation can be used for establishing the stage-discharge equation. The coefficient of the power equation depends on both the slope angle and the void ratio, whereas the exponent depends only on the slope angle. Finally, this deduced stage–discharge r…

Comparison of cloud-reconstruction methods for time series of composite NDVI data

2010

Land cover change can be assessed from ground measurements or remotely sensed data. As regards remotely sensed data, such as NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) parameter, the presence of atmospherically contaminated data in the time series introduces some noise that may blur the change analysis. Several methods have already been developed to reconstruct NDVI time series, although most methods have been dedicated to reconstruction of acquired time series, while publicly available databases are usually composited over time. This paper presents the IDR (iterative Interpolation for Data Reconstruction) method, a new method designed to approximate the upper envelope of the NDVI time s…