Search results for "Geophysic"
showing 10 items of 2684 documents
Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of soils and grasses as indicators of soil characteristics and biological taxa
2019
Abstract The use of stable isotope techniques can assist in understanding interactions of plants with various abiotic and biotic processes. In the research, we focused on carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) isotopes because they are the most important resources influencing plant function and the biogeochemical cycles. The 13C/12C and 15N/14N ratios in plants and in soils and the relationships between these ratios and biological and environmental factors of widely distributed native C3 plants (couch grass, plantain and yarrow) collected from two sites in St. Petersburg, Russia were studied. The soil characteristics of the sites were rather different. This had a significant effect on the isotope rati…
Ammonoid recovery after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction: a re-exploration of morphological and phylogenetic diversity patterns.
2013
The explosive ammonoid rediversification after the Permian–Triassic mass extinction is now well understood in terms of taxonomic richness and biogeography. Using an updated dataset of Early Triassic ammonoids, we compare morphological disparity and taxonomic richness patterns at the regional and global scales. Disparity evolved similarly at both scales, suggesting a global influence of abiotic factors. Morphological diversification occurred early in the Smithian and a marked contraction of the morphospace took place during the end-Smithian extinction. We confirm that trends in disparity and richness were decoupled during the Griesbachian and Dienerian. Three macroevolutionary processes may …
Sr-isotope analysis of speleothems by LA-MC-ICP-MS: High temporal resolution and fast data acquisition
2017
Speleothems are well established climate archives. A wide array of geochemical proxies, including stable isotopes and trace elements are present within speleothems to reconstruct past climate variability. However, each proxy is influenced by multiple factors, often hampering robust interpretation. Sr isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) can provide useful information about water residence time and water mixing in the host rock, as they are not fractionated during calcite precipitation. Laser ablation multi-collector-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-MC-ICP-MS) has rarely been used for determination of Sr isotope signatures in speleothems, as speleothems often do not possess appropriate…
Post-mortem alteration of diet-related enamel surface textures through artificial biostratinomy: A tumbling experiment using mammal teeth
2019
In the fossil record, teeth are often all that remains of a fossil organism. Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) is a common proxy for diet using dental wear features at the μm-scale, enabling comparative and quantitative assessments of various feeding traits in extant and extinct species. In extinct species, original diet-related dental wear features may be overprinted by post-mortem alteration including fluvial transport. Here we experimentally investigate the effects of mechanical alteration on diet-related 3D enamel surface texture (3DST) patterns of different mammal teeth. Post canine teeth of Equus sp., Capreolus capreolus and Otomys sp. are tumbled in sediment-water suspensio…
An Introduction to Soil and Water Infiltration
2016
This chapter provides a short presentation of general characteristics of the soil. Basic concepts concerning soil water content and potential and flow of water in the porous medium are then reported since these concepts are diffusely used throughout this book. The infiltration process is finally illustrated considering different modeling approaches. In particular, development of analytical infiltration models is described with reference to one-dimensional gravity-free water absorption, one-dimensional gravity driven infiltration, one-dimensional gravity and capillary driven infiltration and, finally, three-dimensional gravity and capillary driven infiltration.
Carbonate/evaporitic sedimentation during the Messinian salinity crisis in active accretionary wedge basins of the northern Calabria, southern Italy
2020
Abstract This work deals with Messinian deposits belonging to the Neogene infill of the Rossano and Belvedere Basins, respectively developed along the fore-arc and the back-arc areas of the north Calabria accretionary wedge. The main goal is to characterize the carbonate and evaporitic sedimentation during the Messinian Salinity Crisis, in the general framework of the basin architecture and the interplay between eustatic vs tectonic controlled sea-level variations. Fieldwork integrated with seismic lines and well logs interpretations led to the revision of the general stratigraphy of the basins and the proposal of a new sequential stratigraphic model driven by cyclic sea-level variations. E…
Accretionary orogens through Earth history
2009
Accretionary orogens form at intraoceanic and continental margin convergent plate boundaries. They include the supra-subduction zone forearc, magmatic arc and back-arc components. Accretionary orogens can be grouped into retreating and advancing types, based on their kinematic framework and resulting geological character. Retreating orogens (e.g. modern western Pacific) are undergoing long-term extension in response to the site of subduction of the lower plate retreating with respect to the overriding plate and are characterized by back-arc basins. Advancing orogens (e.g. Andes) develop in an environment in which the overriding plate is advancing towards the downgoing plate, resulting in th…
Scientific Merits and Analytical Challenges of Tree‐Ring Densitometry
2019
X-ray microdensitometry on annually resolved tree-ring samples has gained an exceptional position in last-millennium paleoclimatology through the maximum latewood density (MXD) parameter, but also increasingly through other density parameters. For 50 years, X-ray based measurement techniques have been the de facto standard. However, studies report offsets in the mean levels for MXD measurements derived from different laboratories, indicating challenges of accuracy and precision. Moreover, reflected visible light-based techniques are becoming increasingly popular, and wood anatomical techniques are emerging as a potentially powerful pathway to extract density information at the highest resol…
The Bi sulfates from the Alfenza Mine, Crodo, Italy: An automatic electron diffraction tomography (ADT) study
2014
We report about three bismuth sulfates from mineralized quartz dikes from Alfenza (Crodo, Italy), two new phases and a rare mineral, cannonite, all growing on bismuthinite. The first new phase occurs as white, "hortensia-like" aggregates of pseudo-hexagonal platelets, with perfect basal cleavage, similar to 20 mu m wide and few micrometers thick. The approximate composition is Bi2O2(SO4), and cell parameters and symmetry, as determined by automatic diffraction tomography, are a = 22.0(4), b = 16.7(3), c = 15.9(3) angstrom, beta = 102.9(5)degrees, space group Pc or P2/c. A major stacking disorder is detected by HR-SEM images and electron diffraction data.The second new phase was detected onl…
Geodetic and geological evidence of active tectonics in south-western Sicily (Italy)
2014
Abstract Integrated geological, geodetic and marine geophysical data provide evidence of active deformation in south-western Sicily, in an area spatially coincident with the macroseismic zone of the destructive 1968 Belice earthquake sequence. Even though the sequence represents the strongest seismic event recorded in Western Sicily in historical times, focal solutions provided by different authors are inconclusive on possible faulting mechanism, which ranges from thrusting to transpression, and the seismogenic source is still undefined. Interferometric (DInSAR) observations reveal a differential ground motion on a SW–NE alignment between Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano (CCA), locate…