WaterStressAT - Climate change induced water stress - participatory modeling to identify risks and opportunities in Austrian regions

In Austria, increase in demand as well as climate change might create local and seasonal hot-spots of water stress. It is thus important to understand the status quo and future development of these phenomena to identify potential areas of tension. WaterStressAT assesses water availability and demand in two Austrian case studies under a set of regional development and climate change scenarios

Asian dust events of April 1998

On April 15 and 19, 1998, two intense dust storms were generated over the Gobi desert by springtime low-pressure systems descending from the northwest. The windblown dust was detected and its evolution followed by its yellow color on SeaWiFS satellite images, routine surface-based monitoring, and through serendipitous observations. The April 15 dust cloud was recirculating, and it was removed by a precipitating weather system over east Asia. The April 19 dust cloud crossed the Pacific Ocean in 5 days, subsided to the surface along the mountain ranges between British Columbia and California, and impacted severely the optical and the concentration environments of the region. In east Asia the dust clouds increased the albedo over the cloudless ocean and land by up to 10-20%, but it reduced the near-UNI cloud reflectance, causing a yellow coloration of all surfaces. The yellow colored backscattering by the dust eludes a plausible explanation using simple Mie theory with constant refractive index. Over the West Coast the dust layer has increased the spectrally uniform optical depth to about 0.4, reduced the direct solar radiation by 30-40%, doubled the diffuse radiation, and caused a whitish discoloration of the blue sky. On April 29 the average excess surface-level dust aerosol concentration over the valleys of the West Coast was about 20-50 mug/m(3) with local peaks \u3e 100 mug/m(3). The dust mass mean diameter was 2-3 mum, and the dust chemical fingerprints were evident throughout the West Coast and extended to Minnesota. The April 1998 dust event has impacted the surface aerosol concentration 2-4 times more than any other dust event since 1988. The dust events were observed and interpreted by an ad hoc international web-based virtual community. It would be useful to set up a community-supported web-based infrastructure to monitor the global aerosol pattern for such extreme aerosol events, to alert and to inform the interested communities, and to facilitate collaborative analysis for improved air quality and disaster management

Whole-Day Schools - Management and Education

Ganztagsschulen haben durch ihr Mehr an Zeit einen größeren Spielraum, die Schulgestaltung an den Bedürfnissen der Beteiligten zu orientieren. In einer Auseinandersetzung mit anderen Perspektiven kann es gelingen, die Ausrichtung der eigenen Schule zu diskutieren, zu festigen und zu schärfen. Pädagogische Fortbildungsveranstaltungen bieten dazu eine Möglichkeit. Der zweite bayerische Ganztagsschulkongress Ganztagsschule gestalten – ganztags Unterricht organisieren am 3. und 4. März 2010 in Forchheim bot den Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmern anhand vielfältiger Vorträge und Workshops ein Forum zur Diskussion mit Perspektiven aus Wissenschaft, Schulpraxis und Bildungspolitik. Die Dokumentation der Veranstaltung liegt hiermit vor.All-day schools stand out against other types of schools due to the extended availability of time and therewith a wider range of possibilities to adjust the orientation of the school to the needs of the persons involved. Schools can evolve and strengthen their orientation by a discursive examination and discussion of different approaches. A good opportunity for advancing this discussion are events in pedagogical further education. During the second Bavarian all-day school congress "Modelling All-Day School - Organizing All-Day Tuition", held on the 3rd and 4th of March 2010 in Forchheim/Germany, participants had the opportunity to attend numerous workshops and presentations as well as a panel discussion featuring experts from the fields of educational science, educational policy and teaching. The documentation of the congress is now available

Panel Discussion: Georgia Water Policy and New Legislation

Proceedings of the 2001 Georgia Water Resources Conference, April 26 and 27, 2001, Athens, Georgia.This paper provides background material for the panel discussion on Georgia water policy and new legislation. The first statement is by Michelle Fried, who initiated this panel, and includes a table on the proposed "Georgia'sWater Bill of Rights." The second background item consists of remarks prepared for Governor Roy Barne's presentation on February 5, 2001, along with two summary statements for his proposed Water Planning Study Commitee and proposed Metropolitan North Georgia Water District. Background papers from other panelists are included separately in this proceedings; see individual papers by Joseph Dellapenna, Jim Kundell, Stephen Draper, Pat Stevens, and Kevin Green. Two additional related papers are by Susan Richardson and by Maggie Kelly.Sponsored and Organized by: U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Natural Resources Conservation Service, The University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of TechnologyThis book was published by the Institute of Ecology, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2202. The views and statements advanced in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of The University of Georgia, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Georgia Water Research Institute as authorized by the Water Resources Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-397) or the other conference sponsors

A Quarter-million Years of Paleoenvironmental Change at Bear Lake, Utah and Idaho

A continuous, 120-m-long core (BL00-1) from Bear Lake, Utah and Idaho, contains evidence of hydrologic and environmental change over the last two glacial-interglacial cycles. The core was taken at 41.95°N, 111.31°W, near the depocenter of the 60-m-deep, spring-fed, alkaline lake, where carbonate-bearing sediment has accumulated continuously. Chronological control is poor but indicates an average sedimentation rate of 0.54 mm yr−1. Analyses have been completed at multi-centennial to millennial scales, including (in order of decreasing temporal resolution) sediment magnetic properties, oxygen and carbon isotopes on bulk-sediment carbonate, organic- and inorganic- carbon contents, palynology; mineralogy (X-ray diffraction), strontium isotopes on bulk carbonate, ostracode taxonomy, oxygen and carbon isotopes on ostracodes, and diatom assemblages. Massive silty clay and marl constitute most of the core, with variable carbonate content (average = 31 ± 19%) and oxygen-isotopic values (δ18O ranging from −18‰ to −5‰ in bulk carbonate). These variations, as well as fluctuations of biological indicators, reflect changes in the water and sediment discharged from the glaciated headwaters of the dominant tributary, Bear River, and the processes that influenced sediment delivery to the core site, including lake-level changes. Although its influence has varied, Bear River has remained a tributary to Bear Lake during most of the last quarter-million years. The lake disconnected from the river and, except for a few brief excursions, retracted into a topographically closed basin during global interglaciations (during parts of marine isotope stages 7, 5, and 1). These intervals contain up to 80% endogenic aragonite with high δ18O values (average = −5.8 ± 1.7‰), indicative of strongly evaporitic conditions. Interglacial intervals also are dominated by small, benthic/tychoplanktic fragilarioid species indicative of reduced habitat availability associated with low lake levels, and they contain increased high-desert shrub and Juniperus pollen and decreased forest and forest-woodland pollen. The 87Sr/86Sr values (\u3e0.7100) also increase, and the ratio of quartz to dolomite decreases, as expected in the absence of Bear River inflow. The changing paleoenvironments inferred from BL00-1 generally are consistent with other regional and global records of glacial-interglacial fluctuations; the diversity of paleoenvironmental conditions inferred from BL00-1 also reflects the influence of catchment-scale processes

Uncertainties in slip-rate estimates for the Mission Creek strand of the southern San Andreas fault at Biskra Palms Oasis, southern California

This study focuses on uncertainties in estimates of the geologic slip rate along the Mission Creek strand of the southern San Andreas fault where it offsets an alluvial fan (T2) at Biskra Palms Oasis in southern California. We provide new estimates of the amount of fault offset of the T2 fan based on trench excavations and new cosmogenic 10Be age determinations from the tops of 12 boulders on the fan surface. We present three alternative fan offset models: a minimum, a maximum, and a preferred offset of 660 m, 980 m, and 770 m, respectively. We assign an age of between 45 and 54 ka to the T2 fan from the 10Be data, which is significantly older than previously reported but is consistent with both the degree of soil development associated with this surface, and with ages from U-series geochronology on pedogenic carbonate from T2, described in a companion paper by Fletcher et al. (this volume). These new constraints suggest a range of slip rates between ∼12 and 22 mm/yr with a preferred estimate of ∼14–17 mm/yr for the Mission Creek strand of the southern San Andreas fault. Previous studies suggested that the geologic and geodetic slip-rate estimates at Biskra Palms differed. We find, however, that considerable uncertainty affects both the geologic and geodetic slip-rate estimates, such that if a real discrepancy between these rates exists for the southern San Andreas fault at Biskra Palms, it cannot be demonstrated with available data

Unpublished letter from US Geological Survey Scientists to the editor of the New York Times Magazine regarding William J. Broads` November 18, 1990 article on Yucca Mountain

This letter documents objections of a group of US Geological Survey Scientists to an article appearing November 18, 1990 in New York Times Magazine. The article was written by William J. Broad and dealt with a hypothesis of Jerry S. Szymanski. The letter addressed areas of concern; including hydrology, geology, tectonics, and the integrity of the scientists and their conclusions. (SM