Rapid boron isotope and concentration measurements of silicate geological reference materials dissolved through sodium peroxide sintering

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue Cai ◽  
Troy E Rasbury ◽  
Kathleen M Wooton ◽  
Xin Jiang ◽  
Di Wang
Keyword(s):  
Solid Earth ◽  
Reference Materials ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Boron Isotope ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Sodium Peroxide ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Concentration Measurements

Understanding the movement of fluids in the solid Earth system is crucial for answering a wide range of important questions in Earth Science. Boron (B) is a perfect tracer for...

Experimental Access to Volcanic Processes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald B. Dingwell
Keyword(s):  
Solid Earth ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Experimental Volcanology ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Volcanic Processes ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Geochemical Diversity

<p>Volcanism, and its underlying magmatic origins, are key elements of the Earth System. Their central role can be summed up in the convention that a planet without volcanism is classified as dead. The scientific investigation of the origins, nature and impact of volcanic eruptions is currently one of the most vibrant areas of the solid earth sciences. Observation and quantification of volcanism is greatly assisted by its very nature which includes solid earth processes at the planetary surface and whose dynamics occur on observable timescales. Thus time and location work in our favour. Working against us however is the generally highly energetic, often highly violent, explosive nature of volcanism which frequently precludes deep access to eruptive processes during their operation. Here, the investigation of eruptive processes, together with their causes and consequences, has been greatly assisted by experimental approaches.</p><p>Highlights of the experimental investigation of volcanism have included the following:</p><p>1) The geochemical diversity of magma, together with its highly variable phase state, yield a very wide range of magmatic properties which form the basis for much of the variety of volcanic expression.</p><p>2) The eruptive products of volcanism present a wide range of types of information on the nature of volcano dynamics that can be calibrated with experimental methods.</p><p>3) The fate and influence of volcanic materials in the Earth System, whose investigation is often accessible via highly novel experiments,  provide a rich palette of impacts that have likely made the presence of volcanism on Earth a defining element in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and elsewhere.</p><p>Experimental volcanology has a rich future...  </p>

Global Adjoint Reconstructions of Earth’s Mantle

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sia Ghelichkhan ◽  
Jens Oeser
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Solid Earth ◽  
Mantle Convection ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Driving Mechanism ◽  
Earth Observations ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
High Resolution Images

<p><span>Mantle convection is the driving mechanism for plate tectonics and associated geological activities, including earthquakes, surface dynamic uplift and subsidence, and volcanoes. Mantle convection can be regarded as the central framework for linking the sub-disciplines of solid Earth science, e.g., geochemistry, seismology, mineral physics, geodesy and geology. </span></p><p><span>In theory, it is possible to model mantle convection by integrating the principial conservation equations in time, given a past mantle-state as the starting point. Nonetheless, there remains a fundamental lack of knowledge on any past mantle-states. Without such knowledge any direct comparison of convection models and solid Earth observations is challenging and often impractical. One can, however, pose the problem differently, and obtain a past flow history by minimising ‘a misfit’ functional between observations and models of Earth’s mantle. The recent applications of adjoint method in geodynamics, together with the ever-increasing computational power, has facilitated solutions to such minimisation problems, where a unique flow history in Earth’s mantle can be generated, subject to assumed geodynamic modelling parameters.</span></p><p><span>Here, we build on previously published adjoint models and present a suite of eight high resolution (11 kms) reconstruction models going back to 50 Ma ago. These models incorporate many improvements. First, we take advantage of the recent advances in surface and body waveform tomography to obtain high resolution images of present-day structures in Earth’s mantle. Our thermodynamic modelling of mantle structures rely on the most recent datasets of mantle mineralogy and account for effects of anelasticity. Furthermore, we assume a wide range of viscosity profiles, including published models consistent with observations of geoid, mantle mineralogy, and post-glacial rebound studies. Finally, we verify these models by comparisons against a range of different geologic observations.</span></p>

scholarly journals In-Situ Cosmogenic 14C: Production and Examples of its Unique Applications in Studies of Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Processes

Radiocarbon ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 43 (2B) ◽  
pp. 731-742 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Lal ◽  
A J T Jull
Keyword(s):  
Half Life ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Chemical Properties ◽  
Radioactive Isotopes ◽  
Earth’S Atmosphere ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Earth's Atmosphere

Nuclear interactions of cosmic rays produce a number of stable and radioactive isotopes on the earth (Lai and Peters 1967). Two of these, 14C and 10Be, find applications as tracers in a wide variety of earth science problems by virtue of their special combination of attributes: 1) their source functions, 2) their half-lives, and 3) their chemical properties. The radioisotope, 14C (half-life = 5730 yr) produced in the earth's atmosphere was the first to be discovered (Anderson et al. 1947; Libby 1952). The next longer-lived isotope, also produced in the earth's atmosphere, 10Be (half-life = 1.5 myr) was discovered independently by two groups within a decade (Arnold 1956; Goel et al. 1957; Lal 1991a). Both the isotopes are produced efficiently in the earth's atmosphere, and also in solids on the earth's surface. Independently and jointly they serve as useful tracers for characterizing the evolutionary history of a wide range of materials and artifacts. Here, we specifically focus on the production of 14C in terrestrial solids, designated as in-situ-produced 14C (to differentiate it from atmospheric 14C, initially produced in the atmosphere). We also illustrate the application to several earth science problems. This is a relatively new area of investigations, using 14C as a tracer, which was made possible by the development of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). The availability of the in-situ 14C variety has enormously enhanced the overall scope of 14C as a tracer (singly or together with in-situ-produced 10Be), which eminently qualifies it as a unique tracer for studying earth sciences.

scholarly journals Geosystemics and Earthquakes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo De Santis ◽  
Gianfranco Cianchini ◽  
Rita Di Giovambattista ◽  
Cristoforo Abbattista ◽  
Lucilla Alfonsi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical System ◽  
Solid Earth ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Complex Dynamical System ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Earth’S Interior

Abstract. Geosystemics (De Santis 2009, 2014) studies the Earth system as a whole focusing on the possible coupling among the Earth layers (the so called geo-layers), and using universal tools to integrate different methods that can be applied to multi-parameter data, often taken on different platforms. Its main objective is to understand the particular phenomenon of interest from a holistic point of view. In this paper we will deal with earthquakes, considered as a long term chain of processes involving, not only the interaction between different components of the Earth’s interior, but also the coupling of the solid earth with the above neutral and ionized atmosphere, and finally culminating with the main rupture along the fault of concern (De Santis et al., 2015a). Some case studies (particular emphasis is given to recent central Italy earthquakes) will be discussed in the frame of the geosystemic approach for better understanding the physics of the underlying complex dynamical system.

scholarly journals Politics of Strata

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 211-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Clark
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Power Source ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
The Third ◽  
Earth System Governance ◽  
The Earth

Modern western political thought revolves around globality, focusing on the partitioning and the connecting up of the earth’s surface. But climate change and the Anthropocene thesis raise pressing questions about human interchange with the geological and temporal depths of the earth. Drawing on contemporary earth science and the geophilosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, this article explores how geological strata are emerging as provocations for political issue formation. The first section reviews the emergence – and eventual turn away from – concern with ‘revolutions of the earth’ during the 18th- and 19th-century discovery of ‘geohistory’. The second section looks at the subterranean world both as an object of ‘downward’ looking territorial imperatives and as the ultimate power source of all socio-political life. The third section weighs up the prospects of ‘earth system governance’. The paper concludes with some general thoughts about the possibilities of ‘negotiating strata’ in more generative and judicious ways.

scholarly journals Ubiquity of human-induced changes in climate variability

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1393-1411
Author(s):  
Keith B. Rodgers ◽  
Sun-Seon Lee ◽  
Nan Rosenbloom ◽  
Axel Timmermann ◽  
Gokhan Danabasoglu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Variability ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
System Modeling ◽  
Greenhouse Warming ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
State Changes ◽  
Mean State

Abstract. While climate change mitigation targets necessarily concern maximum mean state changes, understanding impacts and developing adaptation strategies will be largely contingent on how climate variability responds to increasing anthropogenic perturbations. Thus far Earth system modeling efforts have primarily focused on projected mean state changes and the sensitivity of specific modes of climate variability, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. However, our knowledge of forced changes in the overall spectrum of climate variability and higher-order statistics is relatively limited. Here we present a new 100-member large ensemble of climate change projections conducted with the Community Earth System Model version 2 over 1850–2100 to examine the sensitivity of internal climate fluctuations to greenhouse warming. Our unprecedented simulations reveal that changes in variability, considered broadly in terms of probability distribution, amplitude, frequency, phasing, and patterns, are ubiquitous and span a wide range of physical and ecosystem variables across many spatial and temporal scales. Greenhouse warming in the model alters variance spectra of Earth system variables that are characterized by non-Gaussian probability distributions, such as rainfall, primary production, or fire occurrence. Our modeling results have important implications for climate adaptation efforts, resource management, seasonal predictions, and assessing potential stressors for terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

scholarly journals Combined numerical and experimental study of microstructure and permeability in porous granular media

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Eichheimer ◽  
Marcel Thielmann ◽  
Wakana Fujita ◽  
Gregor J. Golabek ◽  
Michihiko Nakamura ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fluid Flow ◽  
Numerical Simulations ◽  
Granular Media ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Numerical Models ◽  
Effective Porosity ◽  
Flow Properties ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Flow Through

Abstract. Fluid flow on different scales is of interest for several Earth science disciplines like petrophysics, hydrogeology and volcanology. To parameterize fluid flow in large-scale numerical simulations (e.g. groundwater and volcanic systems), flow properties on the microscale need to be considered. For this purpose experimental and numerical investigations of flow through porous media over a wide range of porosities are necessary. In the present study we sinter glass bead media with various porosities. The microstructure, namely effective porosity and effective specific surface, is investigated using image processing. We determine flow properties like hydraulic tortuosity and permeability using both experimental measurements and numerical simulations. By fitting microstructural and flow properties to porosity, we obtain a modified Kozeny-Carman equation for isotropic low-porosity media, that can be used to simulate permeability in large-scale numerical models. To verify the modified Kozeny-Carman equation we compare it to the computed and measured permeability values.

BedformsML0, a preliminary metadata language for a large, engineered and freely accessible bed form database

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald R. Gutierrez ◽  
Frank E. Escusa ◽  
Alice Lefebvre ◽  
Carlo Gualtieri ◽  
Francisco Nunez-Gonzalez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Relational Databases ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Laboratory Measurements ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Bed Form ◽  
Science Information

<p>Open and data-driven paradigms have allowed to answer fundamental scientific questions in different disciplines such as astronomy, ecology and fluid mechanics, among others. Recently, the need to collaboratively build a large, engineered and freely accessible bed form database has been highlighted as a necessary step to adopt these paradigms in bed form dynamics research.</p><p>Most large database architectures have followed the principles of relational databases model solutions (RDBMS). Recently, non-relational (NoSQL) architectures (e.g., key-value store, graph databases, document-oriented, etc.) have been proposed to improve the capabilities and flexibility of RDBMS. Both RDBMS and NoSQL architectures require designing an engineered metadata structure to define the data taxonomy and structure, which are subsequently used to develop a metadata language for data querying. Past research suggests that the development of a metadata language needs a collaborative and iterative approach.</p><p>Defining the data taxonomy and structure for bed form data may be challenging because: [1] there is not a standardized protocol for conducting field and laboratory measurements; [2] it is expected that existing bed form data have a wide spectrum of data characteristics (e.g. length, format, resolution, structured or non-structured, etc.); and [3] bedforms are studied by scientists and engineers from different disciplines (e.g., geologists, ecologists, civil and water engineers, etc.).</p><p>In recent years, several data repositories have been built to manage large datasets related to the Earth System. One of these repositories is the Earth Science Information Partners, which has proposed standards to promote and improve the preservation, availability and overall quality of Earth System related data. These standards map the roles of participants (e.g., creators, intermediaries and end users) and delivers protocols to ensure proper data distribution and quality control.</p><p>This contribution presents the first iteration of a metadata language for subaqueous bed form data, named BedformsML0, which adopts the standards of the Earth Science Information Partners. BedformsML0 may serve as a prototype to describe bed form observations from field and laboratory measurements, model outputs, technical reports, scientific papers, post processed data, etc. Biogeoenvironmental observations associated to bed form dynamics (e.g., hydrodynamics, turbulence, river and coastal morphology, biota density, habitat metrics, sediment transport, sediment properties, land use dynamics, etc.) may also be represented in BedformsML0. It could subsequently be improved in future iterations via the collaboration of professionals from different Earth science fields to also describe subaerial, and extraterrestrial bed form data. Likewise, BedformsML0 can be used as machine search query selection for massive data processing and visualization of bed form observations. </p>

Benchmarking GPS stations: an improved way to identify the GPS sensitivity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Klos ◽  
Jürgen Kusche ◽  
Artur Lenczuk ◽  
Grzegorz Leszczuk ◽  
Janusz Bogusz
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Global Positioning System ◽  
Spatial Density ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Mass Redistribution ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Positioning ◽  
Temporal And Spatial

<p>Global Positioning System (GPS) stations are affected by a plethora of real and system-related signals and errors that occur at various temporal and spatial resolutions. Geophysical changes related to mass redistribution within the Earth system, common mode components, instability of GPS monuments or thermal expansion of ground, all contribute to the GPS-derived displacement time series. Different spatial resolutions that real and system-related errors occur within are covered thanks to the global networks of GPS stations, characterized presently by an unprecedented spatial density. Various temporal resolutions are covered by displacement time series which span even 25 years now, as estimated for the very first stations established. However, since the GPS sensitivity remains unrecognized, retrieving one signal from this wide range of processes may be very uncertain. Up to now, a comparison between GPS-observed displacement time series and displacements predicted by a set of models, as e.g. environmental loading models, was used to demonstrate the accuracy of the model to predict the observed phenomena. Such a comparison is, however, dependent on the accuracy of models and also on the sensitivity of individual GPS stations. We present a new way to identify the GPS sensitivity, which is based on benchmarking of individual GPS stations using statistical clustering approaches. We focus on regional sets of GPS stations located in Europe, where technique-related signals cover real geophysical changes for many GPS permanent stations and those located in South America and Asia, where hydrological and atmospheric loadings dominate other effects. We prove that combining GPS stations into smaller sets improves our understanding of real and system-related signals and errors.</p>

Alexander von Humboldt’s legacy in Earth System Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred R. Strecker
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Early Recognition ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Earth System Science ◽  
System Science ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Alexander Von Humboldt

<p>In this lecture I will first review some of Alexander von Humboldt’s studies on the importance of vertical and latitudinal temperature gradients and surface processes in the context of mountain building and thereby highlight his seminal contributions to Earth System Science. In a second step I will briefly comment on his influence beyond science, including public outreach and the general public’s Earth science literacy – in the face of fake news and distrust in scientific method and discourse, an issue more timely than ever.</p><p>The past decades have witnessed a radical shift in human perception of Earth and nature; climate change and increased competition for natural resources combined with human vulnerability to natural hazards have moved environmentalism from the fringes of public awareness to governmental policies. This shift in awareness was presaged by paradigmatic shifts in Earth Science leading to the modern view of Earth as a dynamic system of interactive physical, chemical and biological processes, and ultimately to establishment of the integrative field of Earth System Science. To a certain extent, this point of view and the realization that research across disciplinary boundaries is important and necessary to understand geoprocesses at a variety of time and length scales and in the context of linkages between the different spheres was already the fundament of Humboldt’s thinking and research philosophy during the first half of the 19<sup>th</sup> century: "The principal impulse by which I was directed was the earnest endeavor to comprehend the phenomena of physical objects in their general connection, and to represent nature as one great whole." Alexander von Humboldt, Kosmos, I, ch. VII, 1845. Although Humboldt wrote this sentence 176 years ago, it reveals his early recognition of the importance of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches in science. In this regard Humboldt clearly was ahead of his time and most research areas of modern Earth System Science had already been touched upon by him. From mineralogy, geology, volcanology, stratigraphy and paleontology to climatology, biogeography and geobotany, and oceanography he had addressed many aspects research in an integrative, non-isolationist approach. Although Humboldt published his work very early on in disciplinary journals, he followed a holistic approach in science, where inherent processes, their connections across spheres, and feedbacks between them were addressed. Consequently, he also analyzed the influence of humans on the environment, particularly with regards to changes in microclimate, erosion, and biodiversity. By recognizing these relationships he truly followed an early Earth System Science approach, thus linking the geosphere and the anthroposphere. Interestingly, during his career Humboldt devoted himself increasingly to the transfer of knowledge to the general public, which not only resulted in regular public lectures, but also had a far-reaching influence in the art world. Taken together, Humboldt therefore paved the way for an integrative approach to the exploration of the Earth’s systems beyond disciplinary boundaries, and with a strong commitment to share knowledge and educate the public.</p>

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