474 research outputs found
Vegetation response to the "African Humid Period" termination in Central Cameroon (7° N) – new pollen insight from Lake Mbalang
A new pollen sequence from the Lake Mbalang (7°19´ N, 13°44´ E, 1110 m a.s.l.) located on the eastern Adamawa plateau, in Central Cameroon, is presented in this paper to analyze the Holocene African Humid Period (AHP) termination and related vegetation changes at 7° N in tropical Africa, completing an important transect for exploring shifts in the northern margin of the African Monsoon. This sequence, spanning the last 7000 cal yr BP, shows that the vegetation response to this transitional climatic period was marked by significant successional changes within the broad context of long-term aridification. Semi-deciduous/sub-montane forest retreat in this area is initially registered as early as ca. 6100 cal yr BP and modern savannah was definitely established at ca. 3000 cal yr BP and stabilized at ca. 2400 cal yr BP; but a slight forest regeneration episode is observed between ca. 5200 and ca. 4200 cal yr BP. In this area with modern high rainfall, increasing in the length of the dry season during the AHP termination linked to a contraction of the northern margin of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) from ca. 6100 cal yr BP onward, probably associated with decreasing in cloud cover and/or fog frequency, has primarily controlled vegetation dynamics and above all the disappearance of the forested environment on the Adamawa plateau. Compared to previous studies undertaken in northern tropical and Central Africa, this work clearly shows that the response of vegetation to transitional periods between climatic extremes such as the AHP termination might be different in timing, mode and amplitude according to the regional climate of the study sites, but also according to the stability of vegetation before and during these climatic transitions
Vegetation reconstruction to the mid-Holocene transition in Sahel and Sahara : first palynological results of a lacustrine record from the Mega-Lake Chad
Changement majeur de la végétation du lac Sinnda (vallée du Niari, Sud-Congo) consécutif à l'assèchement climatique holocène supérieur : apport de la palynologie
Evidence for Spinodal Decomposition in Nuclear Multifragmentation
Multifragmentation of a ``fused system'' was observed for central collisions
between 32 MeV/nucleon 129Xe and natSn. Most of the resulting charged products
were well identified thanks to the high performances of the INDRA 4pi array.
Experimental higher-order charge correlations for fragments show a weak but non
ambiguous enhancement of events with nearly equal-sized fragments. Supported by
dynamical calculations in which spinodal decomposition is simulated, this
observed enhancement is interpreted as a ``fossil'' signal of spinodal
instabilities in finite nuclear systems.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. Letter
Multifragmentation process for different mass asymmetry in the entrance channel around the Fermi energy
The influence of the entrance channel asymmetry upon the fragmentation
process is addressed by studying heavy-ion induced reactions around the Fermi
energy. The data have been recorded with the INDRA 4pi array. An event
selection method called the Principal Component Analysis is presented and
discussed. It is applied for the selection of central events and furthermore to
multifragmentation of single source events. The selected subsets of data are
compared to the Statistical Multifragmentation Model (SMM) to check the
equilibrium hypothesis and get the source characteristics. Experimental
comparisons show the evidence of a decoupling between thermal and compresional
(radial flow) degrees of freedom in such nuclear systems.Comment: 28 pages, 15 figures, article sumitted to Nuclear Physics
Event by event analysis of collision induced cluster ion fragmentation: sequential monomer evaporation versus fission reactions
IP
- …