ALBERT

Description: Late Miocene–Recent micropaleontological and geochemical records from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 1143 in the southern South China Sea (SCS) indicate that increase and decrease in abundance of siliceous plankton may be controlled mainly by the input of nutrients derived from land and provided by upwelling. A high export production event - a “biogenic bloom” event - occurred in the southern SCS between 12 and 6 Ma. During this period, high ratios of smectite/(illite + chlorite), smectite/quartz and Al/K indicate a high weathering intensity of the Asian continent, possibly due to the intensification of the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM), which may have increased the net flux of nutrients to the ocean, both directly through terrestrial input and indirectly through upwelling activity. A drop in Ba/Ti, Al/Ti and Ca/Ti values around 6 Ma may indicate a lowering of productivity, possibly due to the large consumption of sea surface nutrients by the “biogenic bloom”. Alternatively, it may indicate a shift in terrigenous input source area. At about 5.4 Ma, a decrease in weathering intensity, as indicated by a sudden decrease in the values of smectite/(illite + chlorite), smectite/quartz and Al/K, might have led to a sudden decrease of terrestrial nutrient input to the SCS. We suggest that the biogenic bloom ended when nutrients in surface waters were exhausted, because of a decrease in supply as well as a decrease in upwelling intensity due to weakening of the EASM. As a result, radiolarians were absent in the studied area between ~6 and 3.2 Ma. At ~3.2 Ma, radiolarians began to recover, possibly because the start of Northern Hemispheric glaciation and the rapid uplift of the Tibet Plateau led to intensification of the East Asian monsoon. After the Mid-Pleistocene Climate Transition at 0.9 Ma, the abundance and mass accumulation rates of radiolarians increased, probably as a result of increased upwelling activity driven by the increasing intensity of the summer monsoon.

Description: The Sanjiang Basin has received more attention in Mesozoic stratum and petroleum potential research because of its particularity in geographic and tectonic position. There remains debate on the basement structure of the basin since igneous rocks and faults make the structure and stratigraphy more complicated. In this paper we utilize gravity and magnetic data as well as petrophysical properties and drilling logs to understand the structure of the Sanjiang Basin. The study is focused on the comparison between the western and eastern parts of the basin. The comparison reveals that there are distinct differences in the gravity and magnetic field between the western and eastern parts. The integrated analysis of the gravity, magnetic, geological, petrophysical data and drilling logs indicates that the difference in the gravity and magnetic field results from the different basement structure and caprock formation of the two parts of the basin. The basement consists of three parts from west to east, the Proterozoic crystalline basement, the Neopaleozoic fold basement and the Lower Mesozoic fold basement separately. The Tongjiang–Yingchun Fault and the Qinglongshan–Xiaoheyan Fault controlled the formation and development of depressions and uplifts and also affected the sedimentation and volcanic activities of the basin. The Sanjiang Basin has relatively thin and stable crust thickness, varying around 33 km, and the deep structure has control and constraint over the shallow conformations.

Description: Electromagnetic (EM) surveys are widely used in geophysical study. Reliable 3-D forward modeling is required for the inversion and interpretation of geophysical data. We have introduced a novel method for 3-D EM modeling using stretching grids, which uses a multigrid iterative solver for solving the formed linear system of equations based on the staggered finite-difference method. The developed algorithm is applied for the simulation of the magnetotelluric fields. We have tested this new algorithm using synthetic geoelectric models. The proposed multigrid method using stretching grids is also compared with the preconditioned Krylov-subspace solvers, the biconjugate gradients stabilized method, and the generalized minimum residual method. The developed multigrid method is proved to be more stable and requires less iterations to converge.

Description: An effective solver for the large complex system of linear equations is critical for improving the accuracy of numerical solutions in three-dimensional (3D) magnetotelluric (MT) modeling using the staggered finite-difference (SFD) method. In electromagnetic modeling, the formed system of linear equations is commonly solved using preconditioned iterative relaxation methods. We present 3D MT modeling using the SFD method, based on former work. The multigrid solver and three solvers preconditioned by incomplete Cholesky decomposition—the minimum residual method, the generalized product bi-conjugate gradient method and the bi-conjugate gradient stabilized method—are used to solve the formed system of linear equations. Divergence correction for the magnetic field is applied. We also present a comparison of the stability and convergence of these iterative solvers if divergence correction is used. Model tests show that divergence correction improves the convergence of iterative solvers and the accuracy of numerical results. Divergence correction can also decrease the number of iterations for fast convergence without changing the stability of linear solvers. For consideration of the computation time and memory requirements, the multigrid solver combined with divergence correction is preferred for 3D MT field simulation.