Detrital Mineral U/Pb Age Dating and Geochemistry of Magmatic Products in Basin Sequences

Dating and geochemical analyses of detrital minerals (mainly zircons) combined with traditional methods, such as heavy minerals and sandstone modes, are a powerful tool in paleogeographic and paleotectonic research and industrial applications

Multispectral and Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Data for Mineral Exploration and Environmental Monitoring of Mined Areas

In recent decades, remote sensing technology has been incorporated in numerous mineral exploration projects in metallogenic provinces around the world. Multispectral and hyperspectral sensors play a significant role in affording unique data for mineral exploration and environmental hazard monitoring. This book covers the advances of remote sensing data processing algorithms in mineral exploration, and the technology can be used in monitoring and decision-making in relation to environmental mining hazard. This book presents state-of-the-art approaches on recent remote sensing and GIS-based mineral prospectivity modeling, offering excellent information to professional earth scientists, researchers, mineral exploration communities and mining companies

Abstracts of Papers, 85th Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 24-26, 2007, James Madison University, Harrisonburg VA

Full abstracts of the 85th Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 24-26, 2007, James Madison University, Harrisonburg V

Stone Quarries and Sourcing in the Carolina Slate Belt

Research Report No. 25, Research Laboratories of Archaeology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Reports in this series discuss the findings of archaeological excavations and research projects undertaken by the RLA between 1984 and present

An evaluation of macroinvertebrate-based biomonitoring and ecotoxicological assessments of deteriorating environmental water quality in the Swartkops River, South Africa

Freshwater resources are increasingly subject to pollution because of escalating human population growth, accompanied by urbanisation, industrialisation, and the increased demand for food. Consequently, freshwater quality, and aquatic ecosystem structure and function have been severely impaired. The Swartkops River, which drains an urbanised and industrialised catchment in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, is no exception. An integrated environmental water quality (EWQ) approach is needed to measure the impacts of deteriorating water quality on its aquatic ecosystem structure and function to sustain these vital ecosystem-attributes. In this study, an integrated EWQ approach, which included i) analysis of water physico-chemical variables; ii) macroinvertebrate-based family-level taxonomic- and traits-based community analysis; iii) Chironomidae species-level taxonomic- and traits-based community analysis; iv) Chironomidae deformity-based sub-lethal analysis; and v) experimental investigation of long-term wastewater effluent effects, using model stream ecosystems, were applied to investigate environmental water quality in the Swartkops River. One upstream reference site and three downstream sites in the Swartkops River were monitored over a period of three years (August 2009 – September 2012). The family-level taxonomic community responses based on the South African Scoring System version 5 (SASS5) and a newly developed Swartkops multimetric index indicated very poor river health conditions for the three downstream sites, compared with the good condition of the upstream site. The Chironomidae species-level responses in the three downstream sites provided evidence of differences in biotic impairments, which were not evident with the family-level taxonomic data at these sites, thus highlighting the importance of species identification in freshwater biomonitoring. The family-level traits-based approach (TBA) showed that macroinvertebrates with gills and lungs were more abundant at the upstream site, decreasing markedly at the downstream sites. The relative abundance of macroinvertebrates relying on aerial and tegument respiration increased at the downstream sites compared with the upstream sites. The results of the family-level TBA highlighted the inextricable link between the traits-based approach (TBA) and taxonomic identification, clearly showing that the TBA is additional to, and not an alternative to, taxonomic recognition because important traits, e.g. reproductive cannot be used at a coarse taxonomic identification. A novel chironomid species traits-based functional strategies approach developed in this study, based on species combining similar sets of traits, proved sensitive in diagnosing the main abiotic water physico-chemical stressors. The functional traits responded predictably to deteriorating water quality and provided an adaptive and mechanistic basis for interpreting chironomid species occurrences at the four sampling sites, providing insight into why certain chironomid species occurred at one site but not at the other. Chironomid deformities provided evidence of sub-lethal in-stream biological response to deteriorating water quality. A newly developed deformity-based extended toxic score index proved sensitive, enabling the discrimination of the sampling sites, indicating that a biomonitoring tool based on sub-lethal effects could be used to assess the effects of deteriorating water quality before it reached lethal levels. Empirical evidence based on the taxonomic, traits and sub-lethal responses suggested that the changes in macroinvertebrate community structure were caused chiefly by the discharge of wastewater effluents into the river. This was supported by the model-stream ecosystem results indicating significant effects of effluents on the macroinvertebrate community structure, similar to the observed in-stream responses. The model stream results indicated that improved physico-chemical effluent quality compliance after 50% effluent dilution did not significantly reduce the effects of the effluent on the macroinvertebrate communities, showing that ecologically-based methods rather than physico-chemical measures alone are necessary to assess effluent quality. Finally, the results of the multi-criteria approach were integrated to propose tools to manage environmental water quality in the Swartkops River, and the benefits of the study were highlighted in the context of biomonitoring in South Africa

River landform dynamics detection and responses to morphology change in the rivers of North Luzon, the Philippines

River morphology detection has been improved considerably with the application of remote sensing and developments in computer science. However, applications that extract landforms within the active river channel remain limited, and there is a lack of studies from tropical regions. This thesis developed and then applied a workflow employing Sentinel-2 imagery for seasonal and annual river landform classification. Image downscaling approaches were investigated, and the performance of object-based image segmentation was assessed. The area to point regression kriging (ATPRK) approach was chosen to downscale coarser 20 m resolution Sentinel-2 bands to finer 10 m resolution bands. All features were set or processed at 10 m resolution before applying support vector machine (SVM) classification. To improve machine learning classification accuracy, Sentinel-2 acquisitions across one year, which incorporates multiple seasons, should be used. For rivers with different hydrological or geology settings, the thesis considered collecting river specific ground truth data to build a training model to avoid underfitting of models from other hydrological/geological settings. Applying the workflow, three landforms (water, unvegetated bars and vegetated bars) were classified within the active channel of the Bislak, Laoag, Abra and Cagayan Rivers, north Luzon, the Philippines, between 2016 to 2021, respectively. The spatial-temporal river landform datasets enabled the quantitative analysis of the river morphology changes. Water and unvegetated bars showed clear seasonal dynamics in all four rivers, whilst vegetated bars only showed seasonality in the rivers located in the northwest Luzon (the Bislak, Laoag and Abra Rivers). This thesis employed correlated coefficients to investigate the longitudinal correlation between river landforms and active width. It was found that vegetated bar areas always have strong significant correlations (≥0.67) with the active widths in all four rivers, whilst correlation coefficients between vegetated bar areas and active widths in the wet season are higher than that in the dry season. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) was applied to detect landform periodicity; this method indicated that water and vegetated bars commonly showed synchronised fluctuations with precipitation, while unvegetated bars had an anti-phase oscillation with precipitation. In the case of EEMD, deviations from periodic consistency in river pattern may reflect the influence of extreme events and/or human disturbance. Coefficient of variation (COV) was then used to evaluate the stability of the landforms; results suggested that the interplay of faults, elevation, confinement and tributary locations impacted landform stability. Finally, tributary inflow impacts on the mainstem river were investigated for eight tributaries of the lowland Cagayan River, also on Luzon Island. Longitudinal variations in channel morphology and stability, and temporal changes in landform frequency, using Simpson’s diversity index and COV, showed downstream widening associated with tributaries that was controlled by water discharge, with a secondary sediment flux effect. Overall, this thesis provided a novel example of combining remote sensing and GIS science, computing science, statistical science, and river morphology science to study the earth surface processes synthetically and quantitatively within river active channels in the tropical north Luzon, the Philippines. This work demonstrated how the fusion of techniques from these disciplines can be used to detect and analyse river landform changes, with potential applications for river management and restoration

Geochemical study of the Mesoproterozoic Belt-Purcell Supergroup, western North America : implications for provenance, weathering and diagenesis

Provenance in the lower Belt-Purcell Supergroup is constrained based on geochemical systematics and chemical monazite ages of argillites and sandstones. Rare earth element (REE), Cr-Ni, and Th/Sc-Sc systematics is equivalent for both facies and consistent with a dominantly post-Archean source area. Detrital monazite chemical ages restrict major provenance for the Appekunny and Grinnell sandstones and argillites to Paleoproterozoic terranes at ~1800-1600 Ma, minor contributions at ~1600-1500 Ma, and marginal contributions from Archean terranes at ~2600, likely in Laurentia. Similar detrital age spectra for monazites of argillites and sandstones of the Appekunny Formation are consistent with a common provenance for the two facies. The Belt-Purcell sequence records three major diagenetic stages displayed in argillites and sandstones: (1) K-addition and rare earth element post-Archean upper continental crust (PA-UCC)-like pattern; (2) a stage characterized by heavy REE enrichment relative to light REE and HFSE fractionation, and U and Ce mobility; and (3) local dolomitization with REE and high field strenght elements (HFSE) mobility. REE and HFSE mobility are interpreted as the result of oxidized alkaline brines developed by dissolution of evaporites. Monazites from the Appekunny and Grinnell formations differ compositionally and texturally in two groups. Rounded or inclusions with ages >~1400 Ma, interpreted as detrital, have higher Th2O, Y2O3 and lower LREE/HREE contents than euhedral individual monazite grains with chemical age

Spatial variability of aircraft-measured surface energy fluxes in permafrost landscapes

Arctic ecosystems are undergoing a very rapid change due to global warming and their response to climate change has important implications for the global energy budget. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how energy fluxes in the Arctic will respond to any changes in climate related parameters. However, attribution of these responses is challenging because measured fluxes are the sum of multiple processes that respond differently to environmental factors. Here, we present the potential of environmental response functions for quantitatively linking energy flux observations over high latitude permafrost wetlands to environmental drivers in the flux footprints. We used the research aircraft POLAR 5 equipped with a turbulence probe and fast temperature and humidity sensors to measure turbulent energy fluxes along flight tracks across the Alaskan North Slope with the aim to extrapolate the airborne eddy covariance flux measurements from their specific footprint to the entire North Slope. After thorough data pre-processing, wavelet transforms are used to improve spatial discretization of flux observations in order to relate them to biophysically relevant surface properties in the flux footprint. Boosted regression trees are then employed to extract and quantify the functional relationships between the energy fluxes and environmental drivers. Finally, the resulting environmental response functions are used to extrapolate the sensible heat and water vapor exchange over spatio-temporally explicit grids of the Alaskan North Slope. Additionally, simulations from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model were used to explore the dynamics of the atmospheric boundary layer and to examine results of our extrapolation

Long View (41RB112): Data Recovery of Two Plains Village Period Components in Roberts County, Texas, Volume 1

This archeological data recovery investigation in Roberts County in the northeastern panhandle of Texas was necessitated by the proposed widening of State Highway 70 (CSJ: 0490-04-037) by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), Amarillo District. This proposed highway rehabilitation program will directly impact a roughly 10 meter (m, 30 ft.) wide north-south section of prehistoric site 41RB112, the Long View site. This site consists of two horizontally distinct Plains Village period occupations shallowly buried along a linear interfluvial ridge between two small tributary creeks to the Canadian River in the midslope of this broad, dissected valley. This site was initially discovered by TxDOT archeologist, Dennis Price in June 2004 during an archeological inventory of the proposed 9.7 kilometer (6 mile) section north of the Canadian River in response to the planned highway rehabilitation program. Based on Mr. Price’s discovery of multiple artifact classes in buried context he recommended this site be assessed for its eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places under criterion d and possible designation as a State Archeological Landmark (SAL) per the requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and other related legislation. Following the Texas Historical Commissions concurrence with that recommendation, TxDOT through the Environmental (ENV) Affairs Division, contracted to TRC Environmental Corporation (TRC) under an existing Scientific Services Contract No. 57XXSA006 and issued a Work Authorization to TRC of Austin to conduct the site eligibility assessment. During a site visit by TxDOT geoarcheologist James Abbott and TRC archeologist Mike Quigg in February 2005, the site boundaries were expanded to nearly 300 meters (m) along the proposed area of potential effect (APE). Investigative strategies were devised to assess the Long View site. In May 2005, TRC’s archeologists from Austin conducted archeological testing for a NRHP and SAL eligibility assessment investigation at 41RB112. The assessment along the 10-m-wide by 300-m-long APE was accomplished by hand-excavating 28 1-by-1 m units (totaling 16.8 m3), hand-excavating four narrow ca. 30 centimeter (cm) wide trenches (two in each area totaling nearly 32 linear meters), as well as cleaning and inspecting 28 m of existing road cut exposures. These investigations determined that cultural materials clustered at the northern and southern ends (Areas A and C respectively) of the site with nearly 120 m of noncultural bearing deposits (Area B) between the two concentrations. A 4-m-wide mechanically bladed fireguard paralleled the existing fenceline throughout the length of the APE and disturbed much of the near surface materials in that zone. The opposite, eastern side of the highway was investigated through the excavation of six 50-by-50 cm shovel tests, surface, and road cut inspection. Based on the results from the hand-excavations and various collections conducted during the site assessment, it became apparent that the two ends (Areas A and C) of the Long View site in TxDOT’s proposed APE contained well-defined cultural components in the top 50 cmbs. Each end appeared to represent habitation remains from single occupation episodes with potential structures, restricted to a narrow time period of less than 100 years between uncalibrated 630 and 710 B.P. of the Plains Village period. Rodent and natural disturbances had vertically displaced some small cultural objects within the sandy deposits, but the restricted period of occupation to roughly a 100 year period reduces this impact. TRC recommended the site was eligible for listing on the National Register and as a State Landmark. The Texas Historical Commissions concurred with that recommendation, and subsequently the ENV Affairs Division of TxDOT, again contracted to TRC under an existing Scientific Services Contract No. 575XXSA008 and issued a Work Authorization to TRC Austin to perform the mitigation of the proposed impacts. Data recovery investigations were conducted during August through November 2006 along the western side of the existing highway. The previously identified northern-Area A and southern–Area C areas with high concentrations of cultural materials were targeted. These investigations began with a thorough geophysical survey that employed three noninvasive electrical detective instruments across Areas A and C anticipating to detect the locations of subsurface cultural features to target by hand-excavations. Some excavations targeted the detected anomalies, whereas others targeted previously identified features. In the end, hand-excavated blocks were completed in Areas A and C. The excavations totaled 128 m2 in Area A and 93 m2 in Area C for a grand total of 221 m2 or 103.4 m3. In conjunction with the archeological excavations, geoarcheological investigations focused on defining the age and development of the natural Holocene sediments that contained the cultural materials. The geoarcheological assessment included detailed stratigraphic documentation of site and near site deposits, sediment texture characterization, soil thin sections, magnetic susceptibility, multiple chemical analyses (organic, calcium, and phosphorus). Detailed stratigraphic data was also collected at two rare pithouse structures to pursue construction and filling episodes. The excavations yielded significant and diverse cultural assemblages from the two occupations assigned Component A and C. Both components are attributed to the Plains Village period with two discrete occupations dating to uncalibrated 460 to 535 B.P. (cal A.D. 1398 to 1447) in Component A and 530 to 700 B.P. (cal A.D. 1280 to 1437) in Component C. The two assemblages are significant not only in their diversity and quality of materials but also in the information they yielded. This report represents one of the first complete documents to present the entire cultural assemblage from a single site for this time period and region. The total recovered assemblage includes 157 formal chipped and ground stone tools, 226 informal tools, 3,414 pieces of lithic debitage, over 6,400 faunal fragments (1.4 kg), some 1,541 ceramic sherds, 1,790 burned rocks, at least 116 macrobotanical samples that includes 16 maize cobs, two human burials, and remains of a third, juvenile scattered along a previously bladed fireguard, 32 intact cultural features that include two rare pithouses, and other cultural debris related to these two campsites. The human remains and associated artifacts will be repatriated in accord with the requirements of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). A suite of 10 technical analyses directed at mostly the cultural assemblages included; use-wear, phytolith, diatom, petrography, macrobotanical, starch grain, instrumental neutron activation, bison bone isotopes, obsidian sourcing, radiocarbon and optical stimulated dating. This data was used to address 11 specific research questions concerning these Plains Village period occupations. Not only does the cultural debris contribute to our understanding of the time period but the geoarcheological information obtained explains the conditions and how the materials were preserved, and inform us concerning the past depositional environment in this immediate area. The combined information contributes to a significant understanding to a specific part of the Plains Village cultures in the Texas panhandle. Following the acceptance of the final report by the TxDOT and the Texas Historical Commission these cultural materials and all the documentation from the combined investigations will be permanently curated at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. The curated materials will provide important data that can be researched by interested parties in the future