Caracterización de suelos forestales de la provincia de Huelva

Se pretende estudiar los suelos de la provincia de Huelva, en cuanto a sus aptitudes para los distintos usos forestales. Para elo, se hace un análisis previo de la variedad del medio provincial y se escogen, como zonas de trabajo, dos hojas de mapa 1:25.000 que contienen una proporción importante de la diversidad ecológica onubense. Se revisa la importancia del suelo sobre la calidad del medio, con especial atención a la capacidad hídrica y el espesor, considerados fundamentales en el medio forestal mediterráneo. Se obtuvieron las principales relaciones causa-efecto entre el medio y el suelo, resultando ser el tipo de roca el factor más influyente, seguido por los aspectos del relieve relacionados con la llegada lateral de agua a cada punto de muestreo (área de drenaje específico). Los resultados del trabajo se trasladaron a una cartografía general de suelos, así como de sus propiedades hídricas y su profundidad. Toda esta información fue generada a partir del levantamiento de más de cien calicatas y sondeos diversos, con sus correspondientes analíticas, para luego insertar la información en una base de datos diseñada al efecto. El método cartográfico utilizado se basó sobre la formación de unidades geomorfolitológicas, realizándose una revisión completa de este método frente a otras sendas

Evaluation of the stiffness tensor of a fractured medium with harmonic experiments

A fractured medium behaves as an anisotropic medium when the wavelength is much larger than the distance between fractures. These are modeled as boundary discontinuities in the displacement and particle velocity. When the set of fractures is plane, the theory predicts that the equivalent medium is transversely isotropic and viscoelastic (TIV). We present a novel procedure to determine the complex and frequency-dependent stiffness components. The methodology amounts to perform numerical compressibility and shear harmonic tests on a representative sample of the medium. These tests are described by a collection of elliptic boundary-value problems formulated in the space-frequency domain, which are solved with a Galerkin finite-element procedure. The examples illustrate the implementation of the tests to determine the set of stiffnesses and the associated phase velocities and quality factors.Fil: Santos, Juan Enrique. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto del Gas y del Petróleo; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Benedettini, Stefano. Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale; ItaliaFil: Carcione, José M.. Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale; Itali

Numerical experiments of fracture-induced velocity and attenuation anisotropy

Fractures are common in the Earth's crust due to different factors, for instance, tectonic stresses and natural or artificial hydraulic fracturing caused by a pressurized fluid. A dense set of fractures behaves as an effective long-wavelength anisotropic medium, leading to azimuthally varying velocity and attenuation of seismic waves. Effective in this case means that the predominant wavelength is much longer than the fracture spacing. Here, fractures are represented by surface discontinuities in the displacement u and particle velocity v as [κ · u + η · v], where the brackets denote the discontinuity across the surface, κ is a fracture stiffness and η is a fracture viscosity. We consider an isotropic background medium, where a set of fractures are embedded. There exists an analytical solution-with five stiffness components-for equispaced plane fractures and an homogeneous background medium. The theory predicts that the equivalent medium is transversely isotropic and viscoelastic. We then perform harmonic numerical experiments to compute the stiffness components as a function of frequency, by using a Galerkin finite-element procedure, and obtain the complex velocities of the medium as a function of frequency and propagation direction, which provide the phase velocities, energy velocities (wavefronts) and quality factors. The algorithm is tested with the analytical solution and then used to obtain the stiffness components for general heterogeneous cases, where fractal variations of the fracture compliances and background stiffnesses are considered.Este documento tiene una corrección (ver documento relacionado).Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísica

Anisotropic poroelasticity and wave-induced fluid flow: Harmonic finite-element simulations

A dominant P-wave attenuation mechanism in reservoir rocks at seismic frequencies is due to wave-induced fluid flow (mesoscopic loss). The P-wave induces a fluid-pressure difference at mesoscopic-scale inhomogeneities (larger than the pore size but smaller than the wavelength), generating fluid flow and slow (diffusion) Biot waves. The theory has been developed in the 1970s for the symmetry axis of the equivalent transversely isotropic (TI) medium corresponding to a finely layered medium, and has recently been generalized to all propagation angles. The new theory states that the fluid-flow direction is perpendicular to the layering plane and it is independent of the loading direction. As a consequence, the relaxation behaviour can be described by a single relaxation function, since the medium consists of plane homogeneous layers. Besides P-wave losses, the coupling between the qP and qSV waves generates shear-wave anisotropic velocity dispersion and attenuation. In this work, we introduce a set of quasi-static numerical experiments to determine the equivalent viscoelastic TI medium to a finely layered poroelastic medium, which is validated using a recently developed analytical solution. The modelling technique is the finite-element (FE) method, where the equations of motion are solved in the space-frequency domain. Numerical rock physics may, in many circumstances, offer an alternative to laboratory measurements. Numerical experiments are inexpensive and informative since the physical process of wave propagation can be inspected during the experiment. Moreover, they are repeatable, essentially free from experimental errors, and may easily be run using alternative models of the rock and fluid properties. We apply the methodology to the Utsira aquifer of the North Sea, where carbon dioxide (CO2) has been injected during the last 15 years. The tests consider alternating layers of the same rock saturated with gas and brine and a sequence of gas-saturated sandstone and mudstone layers, which represent possible models of the reservoir and cap rock of the aquifer system. The numerical examples confirm the new theory and illustrate the implementation of the harmonic tests to determine the complex and frequency-dependent effective stiffnesses and the associated wave velocities and quality factors.Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísica

Numerical experiments of fracture-induced velocity and attenuation anisotropy

Fractures are common in the Earth's crust due to different factors, for instance, tectonic stresses and natural or artificial hydraulic fracturing caused by a pressurized fluid. A dense set of fractures behaves as an effective long-wavelength anisotropic medium, leading to azimuthally varying velocity and attenuation of seismic waves. Effective in this case means that the predominant wavelength is much longer than the fracture spacing. Here, fractures are represented by surface discontinuities in the displacement u and particle velocity v as [κ · u + η · v], where the brackets denote the discontinuity across the surface, κ is a fracture stiffness and η is a fracture viscosity. We consider an isotropic background medium, where a set of fractures are embedded. There exists an analytical solution-with five stiffness components-for equispaced plane fractures and an homogeneous background medium. The theory predicts that the equivalent medium is transversely isotropic and viscoelastic. We then perform harmonic numerical experiments to compute the stiffness components as a function of frequency, by using a Galerkin finite-element procedure, and obtain the complex velocities of the medium as a function of frequency and propagation direction, which provide the phase velocities, energy velocities (wavefronts) and quality factors. The algorithm is tested with the analytical solution and then used to obtain the stiffness components for general heterogeneous cases, where fractal variations of the fracture compliances and background stiffnesses are considered.Este documento tiene una corrección (ver documento relacionado).Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísica

Fracture-induced anisotropic attenuation

The triaxial nature of the tectonic stress in the earth's crust favors the appearance of vertical fractures. The resulting rheology is usually effective anisotropy with orthorhombic and monoclinic symmetries. In addition, the presence of fluids leads to azimuthally varying attenuation of seismic waves. A dense set of fractures embedded in a background medium enhances anisotropy and rock compliance. Fractures are modeled as boundary discontinuities in the displacement u and particle velocity v as [ κ · u + ν · v] where the brackets denote discontinuities across the fracture surface, j is a fracture stiffness, and g is a viscosity related to the energy loss. We consider a transversely isotropic background medium (e.g., thin horizontal plane layers), with sets of long vertical fractures. Schoenberg and Muir's theory combines the background medium and sets of vertical fractures to provide the 13 complex stiffnesses of the long-wavelength equivalent monoclinic and viscoelastic medium. Long-wavelength equivalent means that the dominant wavelength of the signal is much longer than the fracture spacing. The symmetry plane is the horizontal plane. The equations for orthorhombic and transversely isotropic media follow as particular cases. We compute the complex velocities of the medium as a function of frequency and propagation direction, which provide the phase velocities, energy velocities (wavefronts), and quality factors. The effective medium ranges from monoclinic symmetry to hexagonal (transversely isotropic) symmetry from the low-to the high-frequency limits in the case of a particle-velocity discontinuity (lossy case) and the attenuation shows typical Zener relaxation peaks as a function of frequency. The attenuation of the coupled waves may show important differences when computed versus the ray or phase angles, with triplication appearing in the Q factor of the qS wave. We have performed a full-wave simulation to compute the field corresponding to the coupled qP-qS waves in the symmetry plane of an effective monoclinic medium. The simulations agree with the predictions of the plane-wave analysis.Fil: Carcione, Jose M.. Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale; ItaliaFil: Santos, Juan Enrique. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto del Gas y del Petróleo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Picotti, Stefano. Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale; Itali

Effect of the solvent on the conformational behavior of the alanine dipeptide deduced from MD simulations

In general, peptides do not exhibit a well-defined conformational profile in solution. However, despite the experimental blurred picture associated with their structure, compelling spectroscopic evidence shows that peptides exhibit local order. The conformational profile of a peptide is the result of a balance between intramolecular interactions between different atoms of the molecule and intermolecular interactions between atoms of the molecule and the solvent. Accordingly, the conformational profile of a peptide will change upon the properties of the solvent it is soaked. To get insight into the balance between intraand intermolecular interactions on the conformational preferences of the peptide backbone we have studied the conformational profile of the alanine dipeptide in diverse solvents using molecular dynamics as sampling technique. Solvents studied include chloroform, methanol, dimethyl sulfoxide, water and N-methylacetami de. Different treatments of the solvent have been studied in the present work including explicit solvent molecules, a generalized Born model and using the bulk dielectric constant of the solvent. The diverse calculations identify four major conformations with different populations in the diverse solvents: the C-7(eq) only sampled in chloroform; the C-5 or extended conformation; the polyproline (PII) conformation and the right-handed alpha-helix conformation (alpha(R)). The results of present calculations permit to analyze how the balance between intra- and intermolecular interactions explains the populations of the diverse conformations observed. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved