Régionalisation des modules annuels et des régimes d'étiage du bassin hydrographique de la Moselle française : lien entre modèles régionaux

Les modélisations régionales proposées sur les modules annuels et les débits moyens d'étiage des sous-bassins de la Moselle française devraient contribuer à l'amélioration des connaissances sur le fonctionnement physique actuel des hydrosystèmes. Elles s'inscrivent dans le contexte des directives de la loi Pêche et de la loi sur l'Eau et plus récemment de la Directive Cadre Européenne. Quarante neuf sous-bassins répartis en trois jeux ont permis de caler et valider un modèle régional des modules annuels et un modèle régional d'étiage. Dans le cas du bassin hydrographique de la Moselle française une certaine dépendance existe entre modèles régionaux dont la loi statistique choisie est la loi de Weibull à 2 paramètres. Une pseudo-dépendance est observée entre la loi régionale des modules annuels et la loi régionale des débits moyens d'étiage pour les années moyennes à sèches. Cette propriété va permettre en particulier l'usage d'une procédure simplifiée commune, établie à partir de la connaissance de jaugeages épisodiques d'étiage, pour l'estimation des descripteurs de débit d'un sous-bassin non observé : le module médian /qa et le débit quotidien minimal médian /vcnd=1. Pour le modèle régional d'étiage un deuxième descripteur local est nécessaire. Il s'agit d'un temps caractéristique d'étiage du sous-bassin ∆e (j) permettant de généraliser le modèle à toute durée d. Le concept débit-durée-fréquence QdF appliqué aux étiages exploite la convergence observée des distributions de différentes durées d et est indépendant de la loi fréquentielle choisie. Le caractère opérationnel de ces modélisations régionales dépend essentiellement de la précision d'estimation des descripteurs de débit du sous-bassin étudié /qa, pour les modules annuels et /vcnd=1 pour les étiages. Ces descripteurs de débit ont été estimés selon deux approches : l'approche classique par régression multiple et selon une approche simple de recherche d'un coefficient de tendance k entre jaugeages épisodiques d'étiage concomitants au sous-bassin étudié (pas ou peu d'observations) et au sous-bassin de référence (chronique de débit continue). Pour cela, un choix de cinq jaugeages d'étiage par an sur les douze dernières années en moyenne a été fait. Le descripteur de débit du sous-bassin étudié est ensuite déduit du produit de k par le descripteur de débit du sous-bassin de référence. Pour /vcnd=1, sb. étudié nous observons dans la majorité des cas une nette amélioration de l'estimation obtenue par régression, notamment une forte réduction des écarts les plus importants. Une similitude des classes de superficie entre sous-bassin étudié et sous-bassin de référence n'est pas exigée. La proximité géographique des sous-bassins semble donner de meilleurs résultats. En ce qui concerne le module médian /qasb. étudié, son estimation par régression multiple est assez performante. Parallèlement à cela, le coefficient k de tendance permet, de même que pour, une estimation cohérente de /qasb. étudié. Ce résultat un peu inattendu laisse supposer que la pseudo-dépendance observée entre modèles régionaux a bien une réalité physique. Nous avons insisté sur cette démarche "de régionalisation" nécessitant un faible investissement en mesures de débit des sous-bassins non observés par rapport au réseau national de suivi hydrométrique. Elle se présente à notre avis comme une alternative (ou complémentarité) intéressante aux méthodes de régionalisation à bases géostatistiques : telles que l'identification du voisinage hydrologique homogène du sous-bassin étudié ou encore la prise en compte de l'effet structurant du réseau hydrographique dans la cartographie du descripteur de débit. L'ensemble des connaissances relative à cette recherche est repris dans un Système d'Information Géographique pour répondre éventuellement à la demande.Regional modelling of the annual mean discharge and average low-flow discharge of the French Moselle sub-basins should improve our knowledge of its hydrosystem functioning. These models are part of the directives of the Water Act and Fishery Act and more recently of the European Framework Directive. Forty-nine sub-basins divided into three groups were used to calibrate and validate a regional model of the annual mean discharge and a regional model of low-flow discharge.A two-parameter Weibull distribution was used to represent the regional models of the Moselle catchment. Results show a relative dependence between the regional models. A pseudo-dependence was observed between the regional annual mean discharge model and the regional average low-flow discharge model for the average years to the dry ones. This property allowed us to use a common simplified procedure, established from the low-flow episodic discharge measurements, to estimate the flow descriptors of an ungauged sub-basin, namely the median annual mean discharge /qa and the median minimal daily low-flow discharge /vcnd=1. For the low-flow regional model a second local descriptor was necessary, the characteristic time of low-flow discharges of the sub-basin ∆e (j), which allowed us to generalize the model for every duration (d). The QdF flow-duration-frequency concept, applied to the low-flow discharge, is independent of the selected frequency law and uses the observed convergence of the distributions of various durations (d). The operational character of these regional models depends strongly on the accuracy of the estimation of the flow descriptors of the studied sub-basin (/qa for the annual mean discharges and /vcnd=1 for the low-flow discharges). These flow descriptors were estimated according to two approaches: a traditional approach based on multiple regression and a simple approach based on a trend coefficient (k) calculated between low-flow episodic discharge measurements that are concomitant between the studied sub-basin (no or few observations) and the reference sub-basin (time series of continuous discharges). A choice of five low flow discharge measurements per year over the last twelve years (on average) was made. Knowing the flow descriptor of the reference sub-basin, the flow descriptor of the studied sub-basin was then deduced from the trend coefficient k. For /vcnd=1, sb. étudié we observe in the majority of cases a significant improvement of the estimation obtained by regression, especially a net reduction of the most important variations. A similarity of the surface classes between the studied sub-basin and the reference sub-basin is not required. Geographical proximity of the sub-basins seems to provide better results. The estimation of the median annual mean discharges /qasb. étudié using multiple regression was rather impressive. In addition, the trend coefficient k established for the low-flow discharges allowed a coherent estimation of /vcnd=1, sb. étudié and /qasb. étudié. This quite unexpected result suggests that the observed pseudo-dependence between regional models has a physical reality.The "regionalization" technique detailed herein does not require a significant investment in flow measurements of the ungauged sub-basin compared to the national hydrometric network. It is an interesting (or complementary) alternative to the regionalization approach based on geostatistical methods that, for instance, identify the homogeneous hydrological vicinity of each sub-basin or take into account the structuring effect of the hydrographic network in the cartography of the flow descriptor

Effects of long term application of compost and poultry manure on soil quality of citrus orchards in Southern Italy.

A six-year study was carried out in an organically managed orange orchard located in Sicily (Southern Italy) to assess the effect of compost and organic fertilizers utilisation on soil quality. Adopting a randomized-block experimental design with three replicates, four treatments were carried out. In treatments 1 and 2, two different composts (C1 from distillery by products and C2 from livestock wastes) were applied. The plots of treatment 3 were fertilized using dried poultry manure. The control treatment was fertilized with mineral/synthetic fertilizers. In order to verify the hypothesis that composts and organic fertilizers improve soil fertility, soil quality was evaluated by selecting dynamic soil parameters, as indicators linked to C and N cycles. Total organic C, total N, C/N ratio, humified fraction, isoelectric focusing (IEF) of extracted organic matter, microbial biomass C, potentially mineralisable N under anaerobic conditions, potenzially mineralizable C, C mineralization quotient and metabolic quotient were determined for each sample. Furthermore, the Comunity level Physiological Profile (by Biolog tecnique) was defined, calculating derived functional biodiversity and versatility indexes. Parameters related to IEF and potentially mineralizable C showed significant differences among the treatments. Moreover, total C, total N and humification parameters tended to increase, while no differences were observed in biodiversity indexes. On these findings, it was concluded that composts and poultry manure only weakly affected soil properties, though they increased soil nutritive elements potentially available to crops

Antimony doping of Si layers grown by solid-phase epitaxy

We report here that layers of Si formed by solid-phase epitaxial growth (SPEG) can be doped intentionally. The sample consists initially of an upper layer of amorphous Si (~1 µm thick), a very thin intermediate layer of Sb (nominally 5 Å), and a thin lower layer of Pd (~500 Å), all electron-gun deposited on top of a single-crystal substrate (1–10 Ω cm, p type, orientation). After a heating cycle which induces epitaxial growth, electrically active Sb atoms are incorporated into the SPEG layer, as shown by the following facts: (a) the SPEG layer forms a p-n junction against the p-type substrate, (b) the Hall effect indicates strong n-type conduction of the layer, and (c) Auger electron spectra reveal the presence of Sb in the layer

Spectral properties of a generalized chGUE

We consider a generalized chiral Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (chGUE) based on a weak confining potential. We study the spectral correlations close to the origin in the thermodynamic limit. We show that for eigenvalues separated up to the mean level spacing the spectral correlations coincide with those of chGUE. Beyond this point, the spectrum is described by an oscillating number variance centered around a constant value. We argue that the origin of such a rigid spectrum is due to the breakdown of the translational invariance of the spectral kernel in the bulk of the spectrum. Finally, we compare our results with the ones obtained from a critical chGUE recently reported in the literature. We conclude that our generalized chGUE does not belong to the same class of universality as the above mentioned model.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

A new application of emulsions to measure the gravitational force on antihydrogen

We propose to build and operate a detector based on the emulsion film technology for the measurement of the gravitational acceleration on antimatter, to be performed by the AEgIS experiment (AD6) at CERN. The goal of AEgIS is to test the weak equivalence principle with a precision of 1% on the gravitational acceleration g by measuring the vertical position of the anni- hilation vertex of antihydrogen atoms after their free fall in a horizontal vacuum pipe. With the emulsion technology developed at the University of Bern we propose to improve the performance of AEgIS by exploiting the superior position resolution of emulsion films over other particle de- tectors. The idea is to use a new type of emulsion films, especially developed for applications in vacuum, to yield a spatial resolution of the order of one micron in the measurement of the sag of the antihydrogen atoms in the gravitational field. This is an order of magnitude better than what was planned in the original AEgIS proposal.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figure

On the critical level-curvature distribution

The parametric motion of energy levels for non-interacting electrons at the Anderson localization critical point is studied by computing the energy level-curvatures for a quasiperiodic ring with twisted boundary conditions. We find a critical distribution which has the universal random matrix theory form ${\bar P}(K)\sim |K|^{-3}$ for large level-curvatures $|K|$ corresponding to quantum diffusion, although overall it is close to approximate log-normal statistics corresponding to localization. The obtained hybrid distribution resembles the critical distribution of the disordered Anderson model and makes a connection to recent experimental data.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Longitudinal and transversal piezoresistive response of granular metals

In this paper, we study the piezoresistive response and its anisotropy for a bond percolation model of granular metals. Both effective medium results and numerical Monte Carlo calculations of finite simple cubic networks show that the piezoresistive anisotropy is a strongly dependent function of bond probability p and of bond conductance distribution width \Delta g. We find that piezoresistive anisotropy is strongly suppressed as p is reduced and/or \Delta g is enhanced and that it vanishes at the percolation thresold p=p_c. We argue that a measurement of the piezoresistive anisotropy could be a sensitive tool to estimate critical metallic concentrations in real granular metals.Comment: 14 pages, 7 eps figure

Spin Excitations in La2CuO4: Consistent Description by Inclusion of Ring-Exchange

We consider the square lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet with plaquette ring exchange and a finite interlayer coupling leading to a consistent description of the spin-wave excitation spectrum in La2CuO4. The values of the in-plane exchange parameters, including ring-exchange J_{\Box}, are obtained consistently by an accurate fit to the experimentally observed in-plane spin-wave dispersion, while the out-of-plane exchange interaction is found from the temperature dependence of the sublattice magnetization at low temperatures. The fitted exchange interactions J=151.9 meV and J_{\Box}=0.24 J give values for the spin stiffness and the Neel temperature in excellent agreement with the experimental data.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, RevTe

Systematics of electronic and magnetic properties in the transition metal doped Sb2_2Te3_3 quantum anomalous Hall platform

The quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) has recently been reported to emerge in magnetically-doped topological insulators. Although its general phenomenology is well established, the microscopic origin is far from being properly understood and controlled. Here we report on a detailed and systematic investigation of transition-metal (TM)-doped Sb$_2$Te$_3$. By combining density functional theory (DFT) calculations with complementary experimental techniques, i.e., scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), resonant photoemission (resPES), and x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), we provide a complete spectroscopic characterization of both electronic and magnetic properties. Our results reveal that the TM dopants not only affect the magnetic state of the host material, but also significantly alter the electronic structure by generating impurity-derived energy bands. Our findings demonstrate the existence of a delicate interplay between electronic and magnetic properties in TM-doped TIs. In particular, we find that the fate of the topological surface states critically depends on the specific character of the TM impurity: while V- and Fe-doped Sb$_2$Te$_3$ display resonant impurity states in the vicinity of the Dirac point, Cr and Mn impurities leave the energy gap unaffected. The single-ion magnetic anisotropy energy and easy axis, which control the magnetic gap opening and its stability, are also found to be strongly TM impurity-dependent and can vary from in-plane to out-of-plane depending on the impurity and its distance from the surface. Overall, our results provide general guidelines for the realization of a robust QAHE in TM-doped Sb$_2$Te$_3$ in the ferromagnetic state.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figure

Two--magnon scattering and the spin--phonon interaction beyond the adiabatic approximation

We consider a model of Raman scattering for a two--dimensional $S=1/2$ Heisenberg Anti-Ferromagnet which includes a {\it dynamical} spin--phonon interaction. We observe a broadening of the line shape due to increased coupling with excited high--energy spin states. Our results are close to a model of random static exchange interactions, first introduced in this context by Haas {\it et al.} [J. Appl. Phys. {\bf 75}, 6340, (1994)], which, when extended to large numbers of spins, explains experiments in the parent insulating compounds of high-$T_c$ superconductors.Comment: 14 pages (revtex format), 8 postscript figure