Oligocene-Miocene burial and exhumation of the Southern Pyrenean foreland quantified by low-temperature thermochronology

International audienceThe central Pyrenees experienced an episode of rapid exhumation in Late Eocene-Early Oligocene times. Erosional products shed from the range during this time were deposited in large palaeovalleys of the southern flank of the Axial Zone, leading to significant sediment accumulation. A recent numerical modelling study of the post-orogenic exhumation and relief history of the central Axial Zone allowed us to constrain this valley-filling episode in terms of timing and thickness of conglomeratic deposits. This paper aims to test these results for the southern fold-and-thrust belt using apatite fission-track and (U-Th)/He analysis on detrital samples from the Tremp-Graus and Ager basins. inverse thermal-history modelling of the low-temperature thermochronology data indicates that the fold-and-thrust belt was covered during the Late Eocene to Miocene by 0.7-1.6 km of sediments and confirms the timing of re-excavation of the valleys during the Miocene. A detailed analysis of the apatite (U-Th)/He results shows that the significant scatter in grain ages can be explained by the influence of alpha-recoil damage with varying effective uranium content together with distinct pre-depositional thermal histories; the age scatter is consistent with initial exhumation of the sediment sources during the Triassic and Early Cretaceous

Strong tectonic and weak climatic control on exhumation rates in the Venezuelan Andes

International audienceWe studied the relationships among present-day relief, precipitation, stream power, seismic energy, seismic strain rate, and long-term exhumation rates for the Venezuelan Andes. Average long-term exhumation rates were determined for seven large catchments in the Venezuelan Andes from fi ssion-track analysis of detrital apatite. A quantitative comparison between eight new detrital apatite fi ssion-track (AFT) age distributions presented here and previously published bedrock AFT age patterns shows that detrital AFT ages can be used for predicting exhumation patterns across the mountain belt. Catchment-averaged exhumation rates estimated from the raw data range from 0.48 ± 0.02 km m.y.-1 to 0.80 ± 0.26 km m.y.-1 Accounting for variable sediment yield and assuming that short-term sediment production rates scale with long-term exhumation rates, these rates vary from 0.33 ± 0.07 km m.y.-1 to 0.48 ± 0.08 km m.y.-1 No variation in rates is observed between the northwestern and southeastern fl anks of the mountain belt, despite a threefold increase in precipitation from the northwest to the southeast. Long-term exhumation rates are strongly correlated with relief in the different catchments, weak or negative correlations exist with precipitation data or present-day erosion indexes, while the correlation with seismic energy released by earthquakes is weak to moderate. This lack of correlation may be caused by the insuffi cient temporal range of the available precipitation and seismicity data, and the different time scales involved in the comparison. Long-term exhumation rates are, however, strongly correlated with seismic strain rates (which take the temporal earthquake magnitude-frequency scaling into account), suggesting that the moderate correlation with seismic energy is indeed related to the different time scales and that tectonic control on exhumation is signifi cant. In contrast, given that precipitation patterns in the Venezuelan Andes should have been installed during Miocene times, we suggest that decoupling of relief and exhumation from present-day climate explains the lack of correlation between exhumation and precipitation

Root Cause Analysis of vibrations in a Roots Blower system

Case StudyProblems: •A roots blower system is suffering from excessive vibrations •A temporary work-around enabled the operation of the plant, at a large expense of additional power consumption •The fundamental mechanism of the observed vibrations was insufficiently clear, and there was an urgent need for an effective solution strateg

Increase in late Neogene denudation of the European Alps confirmed by analysis of a fission-track thermochronology database

International audienceA sharp increase in deposited sediment volume since Pliocene times has been observed worldwide and in particular around the European Alps. This phenomenon has been linked to a rise in denudation rates controlled by an increase of either climatic or tectonic forcing. Observation of in-situ cooling histories for orogens is critical to assess the reality of the inferred increase in denudation rates, and to determine whether this phenomenon is widespread or localized at active tectonic structures. We exploit the unique density of fission-track ages in the Western European Alps to reconstruct cooling isoage surfaces and to estimate exhumation rates on the orogen scale between 13.5 and 2.5 Ma. Our novel technique is based on the association of isoage contours with age–elevation relationships. It uses map-view interpolation, enabling a spatio-temporal analysis of exhumation rates over the entire Western Alps. The resulting exhumation histories reconstructed for eight areas of the Western Alps display strong similarities in timing and rates with orogen-wide average denudation rates inferred from sediment volumes. This consistency validates the use of both techniques for the study of an orogen characterized by strong relief and high recent exhumation rates. We conclude that exhumation rates in the Western Alps have increased more than twofold since Late Miocene times. This increase may have been locally modulated by the distinct response of different tectonic units

Flexural isostatic response of the Alps to increased Quaternary erosion recorded by foreland basin remnants, SE France

International audienceWe test the hypothesis that flexural isostatic compensation of the mass removed by enhanced Quaternary erosion is responsible for uplift of the Western European Alps and their forelands. We use two well-preserved and well-dated (1.8 Ma) abandonment surfaces of foreland basin remnants in SE France (the Chambaran and Valensole plateaux) as passive benchmarks for tilting of the foreland. Estimating their initial slope from morphometric scaling relationships, we determine bulk post-depositional tilting of 0.5–0.8% for these surfaces. The calculated isostatic response of the Alpine lithosphere to erosional unloading, using the method recently proposed by Champagnac et al. [Geology 35 (2007) 195–198], yields a predicted tilting of 0.3–0.4% in the considered areas, explaining approximately half of the determined post-depositional tilting. Such long-term deformation being insensitive to cyclic loading/unloading because of glaciations, we suspect the other half to be related to as yet undetermined long-wavelength and long-lived tectonic process(es)

Combining airborne thermal infrared images and radium isotopes to study submarine groundwater discharge along the French Mediterranean coastline

The French Mediterranean coastline, which includes karstic springs discharging into coastal seas and coastal lagoons. Study focus We investigated submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), an important vector for many chemical elements that may impact the quality of the coastal environment. First, we acquired airborne thermal infrared (TIR) images to detect terrestrial groundwater inputs. Then we report in situ data (salinity; temperature; radium isotopes). We use these data i) to confirm the presence of groundwater discharge and to characterize the different systems, and ii) to quantify SGD fluxes and estimate the residence time of the water bodies. New hydrological insights for the region Few studies have been conducted on SGD along the French Mediterranean coastline. The terrestrial groundwater spring inputs in La Palme and Salses-Leucate coastal lagoons are in the range (0.04–0.11) m 3 s −1 , ≤ 2% of the local river inputs. In comparison, total SGD estimates to La Palme lagoon (0.56–1.7 m 3 s −1 ) suggest that the recirculation of lagoon water through the sediment is two orders of magnitude greater than the terrestrial groundwater inputs. At the Calanque of Port-Miou, the terrestrial groundwater flux to the coastal seas was between 0.6 and 1.2 m 3 s −1 in July 2009. This study demonstrates the application of airborne TIR remote sensing for detecting surficial groundwater springs, and the inability of the method to detect deeper, submerged springs

Severe leptospirosis in a Dutch traveller returning from the Dominican Republic, October 2011

In October 2011, a case of leptospirosis was identified in a Dutch traveller returning from the Dominican Republic to the Netherlands. The 51-year-old man had aspired muddy water in the Chavón river on 29 September. Twenty days later he presented with fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, arthralgia, headache, conjunctival suffusion and icterus. Leptospira serovar Icterohaemorrhagiae or Australis infection was confirmed ten days later by laboratory testing

Sampled-data control of hybrid systems with discrete inputs and outputs

We address the control synthesis of hybrid systems with discrete inputs, disturbances and outputs. The control objective is to ensure that the events of the closed-loop system belong to the language of the control requirements. The controller is sampling-based and it is representable by a finite-state machine. We formalize the control problem and provide a theoretically sound solution. The solution is based on solving a discrete-event control problem for a finite-state abstraction of the plant. We propose a specific construction for the finite-state abstraction. This construction is not based on discretizing the state-space, but rather on converting the continuous-time hybrid system to a discrete-time one based on sampling. The construction works only for a specific class of hybrid systems. We describe this class of systems and we provide an example of such a system, inspired by an industrial use-case

New concepts in the abstract format of the Compositional Interchange Format

The compositional interchange format for hybrid systems (CIF) supports inter-operability of a wide range of tools by means of model transformations to and from the CIF. Work on the CIF takes place in the FP7 Multiform project, and in several other European projects. The CIF consists of an abstract and a concrete format, used for defining a formal semantics and for modeling, respectively. This paper discusses the results of a redesign of the abstract format as previously published, leading to the following main changes: variables are introduced using scoping operators; the abstract language is made more orthogonal by providing an operator for each concept in the language; parallel composition has been defined in such a way that compositional verification (assume/guarantee reasoning) is supported; and the concept of urgent actions has been properly defined. As a result, the expressivity and semantics of the abstract language have been considerably improved