Search results for "Geography"
showing 10 items of 11452 documents
Indigenous people’s responses to drought in northwest Bangladesh
2019
Abstract Bangladesh is highly disaster-prone, with drought being a major hazard which significantly impacts water, food, health, livelihoods, and migration. In seeking to reduce drought vulnerabilities and impacts while improving responses, existing literature pays limited attention to community-level views and actions. This paper aims to contribute to filling in this gap by examining how an indigenous group, the Santal in Bangladesh’s northwest, responds to drought through local strategies related to water, food, and migration which in turn impact health and livelihoods. A combination of quantitative data through a household survey and qualitative data through participatory rural appraisal…
The key role played by the Augusta basin (southern Italy) in the mercury contamination of the Mediterranean Sea.
2011
The Augusta basin, located in SE Sicily (southern Italy), is a semi-enclosed marine area, labelled as a highly contaminated site. The release of mercury into the harbour seawater and its dispersion to the blue water, make the Augusta basin a potential source of anthropogenic pollution for the Mediterranean Sea. A mass balance was implemented to calculate the HgT budget in the Augusta basin. Results suggest that an average of ∼0.073 kmol of HgT is released, by diffusion, on a yearly basis, from sediments to the seawater, with a consequent output of 0.162 kmol y(-1) to coastal and offshore waters; this makes the Augusta area an important contributor of mercury to the Mediterranean Sea. Owing …
Chemical speciation of Fe, Mn, Pb, Zn, Cd, Cu, Co, Ni and Cr in the suspended particulate matter off the Mejerda River Delta (Gulf of Tunis, Tunisia)
2016
International audience; Fluxes of suspended particulate matter (SPM) and their associated metals were performed off the Mejerda River Delta during both the wet (March) and the dry (July) seasons in 2012, using sediment traps at study stations at depths of 10, 20 and 40 m. Fluxes nearest to the Mejerda outlet were more significant, especially during winter (36 g m−2 day−1), but dissipated further offshore, 24.5–6 g m−2 day−1 at the 20 m and 21.8–4.8 g m−2 day−1 at the 40 m stations. Many variations observed in seasonal and spatial metal fluxes are similar to those of SPM, in particular Pb and Zn, probably because they are associated with the mining activity characteristic of the Mejerda catc…
Aseismic strain episodes at Campi Flegrei Caldera, Italy
2021
Since 2004 a research project has been developed to monitor subsurface deformation of Italian volcanoes using borehole strainmeters and long-baseline tiltmeters. Six Sacks-Evertson dilatometers were installed around Campi Flegrei caldera and Vesuvius during 2004–2005 (Scarpa et al., 2007), and in 2008 these instruments were supplemented by two arrays of 28–280 m long water-tube tiltmeters in underground tunnels. Relevant strainmeter and tiltmeter data have been collected and analysed from the instruments installed near Campi Flegrei caldera during the recent unrest episodes. In the period 2004–2005 strain, tilt and GPS data from Campi Flegrei indicate the onset of surface deformation that a…
Effect of the Ordovician paleogeography on the (in)stability of the climate.
2014
The Ordovician Period (485–443 Ma) is characterized by abundant evidence for continental-sized ice sheets. Modeling studies published so far require a sharp CO2 drawdown to initiate this glaciation. They mostly used non-dynamic slab mixed-layer ocean models. Here, we use a general circulation model with coupled components for ocean, atmosphere, and sea ice to examine the response of Ordovician climate to changes in CO2 and paleogeography. We conduct experiments for a wide range of CO2 (from 16 to 2 times the preindustrial atmospheric CO2 level (PAL)) and for two continental configurations (at 470 and at 450 Ma) mimicking the Middle and the Late Ordovician conditions. We find that the temper…
Holocene climate variability in north-eastern Italy: potential influence of the NAO and solar activity recorded by speleothem data
2012
Abstract. Here we present high-resolution stable isotope and lamina thickness profiles as well as radiocarbon data for the Holocene stalagmite ER 76 from Grotta di Ernesto (north-eastern Italy), which was dated by combined U-series dating and lamina counting. ER 76 grew between 8 ka (thousands of years before 2000 AD) and today, with a hiatus from 2.6 to 0.4 ka. Data from nine meteorological stations in Trentino show a significant influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on winter temperature and precipitation in the cave region. Spectral analysis of the stable isotope signals of ER 76 reveals significant peaks at periods of 110, 60–70, 40–50, 32–37 and around 25 a. Except for the …
From USSR to EU: 20 years of rural landscape changes in Vidzeme, Latvia
2012
Landscape changes have been observed throughout rural Europe over the past decades in relation to intensifying agriculture and land marginalisation. This is particularly true for Central and Eastern Europe as drastic political and socio-economic changes have taken place over the past century, as is the case for Latvia. Using a detailed time series of high-resolution remotely sensed images spanning from 1988 to 2007, the landscape structure (composition and configuration) in Vidzeme, central Latvia, is examined and compared between periods. Major recent events for the country, such as independence and entry into the European Union are covered. The effect on landscape structure of various soc…
Driving through floodwater: Exploring driver decisions through the lived experience
2019
Abstract More than half of unintentional flood-related drowning deaths in Australia are due to driving through floodwater, despite on-going public campaigns. Currently, there is a knowledge gap in understanding why individuals choose to drive through floodwater and the decisions that may lead to such actions. We propose that a more complete understanding of individuals’ decisions to drive through floodwater needs to be considered in the context of the lived experience. Australian drivers (N = 20) who had intentionally driven through floodwater participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using a thematic analysis based in an interpretivist approach. Past experience, indivi…
Thermal and structural modeling of the Scillato wedge-top basin source-to-sink system. Insights into the Sicilian fold-and-thrust belt evolution (Ita…
2019
AbstractTemperature-dependent clay mineral assemblages, vitrinite reflectance, and one-dimensional (1-D) thermal and three-dimensional (3-D) geological modeling of a Neogene wedge-top basin in the Sicilian fold-and-thrust belt and its pre-orogenic substratum allowed us to: (1) define the burial history of the sedimentary succession filling the wedge-top basin and its substratum, (2) reconstruct the wedge-top basin geometry, depocenter migration, and sediment provenance through time in the framework of a source-to-sink system, and (3) shed new light into the kinematic evolution of the Apennine-Maghrebian fold-and-thrust belt.The pre-orogenic substratum of the Scillato basin shows an increase…
Rare earth element and neodymium isotope tracing of sedimentary rock weathering
2020
Chemical weathering plays an important role in sequestering atmospheric CO2, but its potential influence on global climate over geological timescales remains debated. To some extent, this uncertainty arises from the difficulty in separating the respective contribution of sedimentary and crystalline silicate rocks to past weathering rates in the geological record; two types of rocks having presumably different impact on the long-term carbon cycle. In this study, we investigate the use of rare earth element (REE) and neodymium isotopes (εNd) in leached iron oxide fractions of river sediments for tracing the origin of weathered rocks on continents. A new index, called ‘concavity index’ (CI), i…