Sand texture and depositional environments in Essex County, Ontario.

Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-07, page: . Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1976

A Survey of Heavy Metal Concentrations in the Surface Sediments along the Iranian Coast of the Caspian Sea

Metals discharged into coastal areas of marine environments are likely to be scavenged by particles and removed to the sediments. The sediments, therefore, become large repositories of toxic heavy metals. This research examined the concentrations of heavy metals (Al, Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni, Zn) in the nearshore sediments in the alongshore direction of the Iranian coast of the Caspian Sea. Fourteen samples were collected and granulometric compositions were determined. The consideration of three grain size fractions (0.355 mm, 0.212 mm and 0.075 mm), plus fourteen bulk samples required analyzing 56 samples for the presence of heavy metals. Laboratory analysis of the samples was accomplished using the Cold Acetic Protocol, followed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy. Preparation of the samples involved the utilization of the Cold Acetic Acid Extraction Protocol established by the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER), Canada. The results provided evidence of large differences in total metal concentrations in the sediment samples from the fourteen sites. Box and Whisker plots demonstrated that metal concentrations were not homogeneously distributed, and that there were large spatial variations in the median concentrations of heavy metals at each sample site. The statistical technique of discriminant analysis revealed that the six heavy metals had distinct and statistically significant concentrations at various locations along the coast. Concentrations reflected metal loadings from anthropogenic sources located at and in the vicinity of the sampling sites

Environmental Protection Efforts in a Developing Country: The Case of Guyana

Historical overview of Guyana’s environmental problems with an assessment of recent initiatives for protecting the damaged environment

A GIS-BASED METHOD FOR DEPICTING THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MESOSCALE EDDIES: A CASE STUDY IN THE NORTHERN SOUTH CHINA SEA

The paper presents a Geographical Information System (GIS)-based method for depicting the characteristics, particularly the internal structures and evolutionary processes, of mesoscale eddies. This was done by examining topologic relations among closed Sea Surface Height (SSH) contours which were reconstructed from the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Layered Ocean Model (NLOM). Different scenarios of the topological relations among the contour lines permitted the identification of the outermost outline of eddies and the depiction of the number of cores in each mesoscale oceanic eddy. With full consideration of the internal structure of the eddies, we then reconstructed the evolutionary processes of these eddies and the results were compared with empirical observations on three long-lived mesoscale eddies in the northern South China Sea (SCS). Tracking results were similar, thereby validating our method as being efficient and robust in reconstructing mesoscale ocean eddies, especially their evolutionary processes based on their internal structures.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

Application of rough set-based analysis to extract spatial relationship indicator rules: An example of land use in Pearl River Delta

National Natural Science Foundation of China 40971222 60970014 60875040;State Key Laboratory of Independent Innovation Team Project O88RA203SA;Ministry of Education of China 200801080006;Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province 2010011021-1Spatial relations, reflecting the complex association between geographical phenomena and environments, are very important in the solution of geographical issues. Different spatial relations can be expressed by indicators which are useful for the analysis of geographical issues. Urbanization, an important geographical issue, is considered in this paper. The spatial relationship indicators concerning urbanization are expressed with a decision table. Thereafter, the spatial relationship indicator rules are extracted based on the application of rough set theory. The extraction process of spatial relationship indicator rules is illustrated with data from the urban and rural areas of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, located in the Pearl River Delta. Land use vector data of 1995 and 2000 are used. The extracted spatial relationship indicator rules of 1995 are used to identify the urban and rural areas in Zhongshan, Zhuhai and Macao. The identification accuracy is approximately 96.3%. Similar procedures are used to extract the spatial relationship indicator rules of 2000 for the urban and rural areas in Zhongshan, Zhuhai and Macao. An identification accuracy of about 83.6% is obtained