Quantifying Geomorphic Controls on Time in Weathering Systems

AbstractThe time minerals spend in the weathering zone is crucial in determining soil biogeochemical cycles, solid state chemistry and soil texture. This length of time is closely related to erosion rates and can be modulated by sediment transport, mixing rates within the soil and the temporal evolution of erosion. Here we describe how time length can be approximated using geomorphic metrics and how topography reveals changing residence times of minerals within soils. We also show model simulations from a field site in California that can reproduce observed solid state geochemistry in the eroding portion of the landscape

Extracting an accurate river network: Stream burning re-revisited

Extracting river networks that are both accurate and topologically connected is important for applications that involve correct routing of material, for example water and sediment, through such networks. We combined water and sediment extraction using radar and multispectral imagery from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 to create both water and sediment masks over a range of study areas. These were then used to condition topographic Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) by lowering the elevation of pixels with both water and sediment present, in a process known as stream burning. We examined how stream burning could improve accuracy of extracted networks and identified the most effective method of burning for optimal results. We find deeper burning depths improved accuracy, with diminishing returns: we suggest burning 40 to 50 meters. We find sediment burning improves accuracy in humid and temperate landscapes, but arid landscapes should be burned using only water pixels. We find accuracy of extracted networks is significantly better on the COP30 global topographic dataset compared to the NASADEM dataset, mainly due to the time of collection. The AW3D30 DEM and FABDEM datasets have accuracies just below that of the COP30 DEM

Understanding Music Interaction, and Why It Matters

This is the introductory chapter of a book dedicated to new research in, and emerging new understandings of, music and human-computer interaction—known for short as music interaction. Music interaction research plays a key role in innovative approaches to diverse musical activities, including performance, composition, education, analysis, production and collaborative music making. Music interaction is pivotal in new research directions in a range of activities, including audience participation, interaction between music and dancers, tools for algorithmic music, music video games, audio games, turntablism and live coding. More generally, music provides a powerful source of challenges and new ideas for human-computer interaction (HCI). This introductory chapter reviews the relationship between music and human-computer interaction and outlines research themes and issues that emerge from the collected work of researchers and practitioners in this book

Future Availability of Non-renewable Metal Resources and the Influence of Environmental, Social, and Governance Conflicts on Metal Production

Metal mining provides the elements required for the provision of energy, communication, transport and more. The increasing uptake of green technology, such as electric vehicles and renewable energy, will also further increase metal demand. However, the production lifespan of an average mine is far shorter than the timescales of mineral deposit formation, suggesting that metal mining is unsustainable on human timescales. In addition, some research suggests that known primary metal supplies will be exhausted within about 50 years. Here we present an analysis of global metal reserves that suggests that primary metal supplies will not run out on this timescale. Instead, we find that global reserves for most metals have not significantly decreased relative to production over time. This is the result of the replenishment of exhausted reserves by the further delineation of known orebodies as mineral exploration progresses. We suggest that environmental, social, and governance factors are likely to be the main source of risk in metal and mineral supply over the coming decades, more so than direct reserve depletion. This could potentially lead to increases in resource conflict and decreases in the conversion of resources to reserves and production

Detrital cosmogenic 21Ne records decoupling of source to sink signals by sediment storage and recycling in Miocene to present rivers of the Great Plains

The preservation of conglomerates far from mountainous sources is commonly interpreted in terms of tectonic or climatic forcing. To relate a depositional signal to changing conditions in source areas, the process and duration of sediment routing from source to sink need to be determined. For the first time, we quantified sediment transport histories using cosmogenic 21Ne in quartzite pebbles from modern river gravels and Neogene conglomerates from the modern and ancient North Platte River of the Great Plains of Nebraska, United States. We demonstrate that at ∼400 km distance from the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains, the majority of pebbles were stored in older channel deposits for up to several millions of years before being recycled; this was enabled by very slow to zero basin subsidence rates. This implies that upstream tectonic or climatic controls on surface processes were decoupled from the downstream depositional record—a result supported by the similarities in cosmogenic 21Ne values among Miocene, Pliocene, and modern river channel pebbles despite known changes in tectonic and climatic forcing