ALBERT

Description: The Tasman Sea is unique - characterised by a strong seasonal western boundary current that breaks down into a complicated field of mesoscale eddies almost immediately after separating from the coast. Through a 16-year analysis of Tasman Sea eddies, we identify a region along the southeast Australian coast which we name ‘Eddy Avenue’ where eddies have higher sea level anomalies, faster rotation and greater sea surface temperature and chlorophyll a anomalies. The density of cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies within Eddy Avenue is 23% and 16% higher respectively than the broader Tasman Sea. We find that Eddy Avenue cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies have more strongly differentiated biological properties than those of the broader Tasman Sea, as a result of larger anticyclonic eddies formed from Coral Sea water depressing chl. a concentrations, and for coastal cyclonic eddies due to the entrainment of nutrient-rich shelf waters. Cyclonic eddies within Eddy Avenue have almost double the chlorophyll a (0.35 mg m−3) of anticyclonic eddies (0.18 mg m−3). The average chlorophyll a concentration for cyclonic eddies is 16% higher in Eddy Avenue and 28% lower for anticyclonic eddies when compared to the Tasman Sea. With a strengthening East Australian Current, the propagation of these eddies will have significant implications for heat transport and the entrainment and connectivity of plankton and larval fish populations.

Description: Swarms of the salp Thalia democratica periodically occur off southeast Australia following the austral spring bloom of phytoplankton. In October 2008 a filament of upwelled water was advected south by the adjacent East Australian Current and formed a 30 km diameter cold-core eddy (CCE). The three-dimensional structure of a subsurface swarm of T. democratica within the eddy was examined using both oblique and vertical hauls and an optical plankton counter (OPC) deployed on a towed body. The CCE displayed distinct uplift of the nutricline and elevated fluorescence. Net samples show the zooplankton community was dominated by T. democratica, comprising 73%–88% of zooplankton abundance. The size distribution of T. democratica measured from net samples was 0.5–5 mm and was used to interpret the OPC transects, which showed the swarm formed a 15 km diameter disc located 20–40 m deep in the center of the eddy. The maximum salp abundance was in the pycnocline and coincided with the subsurface fluorescence maximum. The mean abundance of T. democratica size particles within the disc was 5003 individuals m−3 (ind. m−3), contrasted with only 604 ind. m−3 at the outer edge of the eddy. The vertically concentrated and horizontally constrained disc-shaped salp swarm occurred at the interface of salp-bearing inner shelf water and nutrient-rich upwelled water in a CCE. The physical processes that formed the CCE on the inshore edge of the western boundary current led to the largest density of salps recorded.

Description: The detection and localization of statistically significant spatial clustering of buried metal artifacts for applications, including archaeological, environmental site assessment, and civil infrastructure mapping, can be performed reliably, inexpensively, and noninvasively using transient electromagnetic (EM) geophysics. The local Gi*(d) statistic based on a weighted spatial autocorrelation were used to detect and localize statistically significant clustering of buried metal objects from gridded electromagnetic responses acquired at a seeded control site and at an active historical archaeological site in Paint Rock, Texas. This statistic compares the local EM millivolt response values about point i radially to the global mean and variance to calculate the Gi* statistic as a standard variate at various length scales, which can therefore be assessed for significance. Because the local Gi*(d) statistic compares local to global averages, it spatially compacts the amplitude response signal of the EM data. The resulting spatial cluster maps conformed well to the known distribution of metal targets buried at the control site, and enabled a successful excavation strategy with a significant reduction in false positives encountered at the archaeological site, when compared with more traditional methods.

Description: In recent years, marine controlled source electromagnetics (CSEM) has found increasing use in hydrocarbon exploration due to its ability to detect thin resistive zones beneath the seafloor. It is the purpose of this paper to evaluate the physics of CSEM for an ocean whose electrical thickness is comparable to or much thinner than that of the overburden using the in-line configuration through examination of the elliptically polarized seafloor electric field, the time-averaged energy flow depicted by the real part of the complex Poynting vector, energy dissipation through Joule heating and the Fréchet derivatives of the seafloor field with respect to the subseafloor conductivity that is assumed to be isotropic. The deep water (ocean layer electrically much thicker than the overburden) seafloor EM response for a model containing a resistive reservoir layer has a greater amplitude and reduced phase as a function of offset compared to that for a half-space, or a stronger and faster response. For an ocean whose electrical thickness is comparable to or much smaller than that of the overburden, the electric field displays a greater amplitude and reduced phase at small offsets, shifting to a stronger amplitude and increased phase at intermediate offsets and a weaker amplitude and enhanced phase at long offsets, or a stronger and faster response that first changes to stronger and slower, and then transitions to weaker and slower. These transitions can be understood by visualizing the energy flow throughout the structure caused by the competing influences of the dipole source and guided energy flow in the reservoir layer, and the air interaction caused by coupling of the entire subseafloor resistivity structure with the sea surface. A stronger and faster response occurs when guided energy flow is dominant, while a weaker and slower response occurs when the air interaction is dominant. However, at intermediate offsets for some models, the air interaction can partially or fully reverse the direction of energy flux in the reservoir layer toward rather than away from the source, resulting in a stronger and slower response. The Fréchet derivatives are dominated by preferential sensitivity to the reservoir layer conductivity for all water depths except at high frequencies, but also display a shift with offset from the galvanic to the inductive mode in the underburden and overburden due to the interplay of guided energy flow and the air interaction. This means that the sensitivity to the horizontal conductivity is almost as strong as to the vertical component in the shallow parts of the subsurface, and in fact is stronger than the vertical sensitivity deeper down. However, the sensitivity to horizontal conductivity is still weak compared to the vertical component within thin resistive regions. The horizontal sensitivity is gradually decreased when the water becomes deep. These observations in part explain the success of shallow towed CSEM using only measurements of the in-line component of the electric field.

Description: Electromagnetic responses reflect the interaction between applied electromagnetic fields and heterogeneous geoelectrical structures. Quantifying the relationship between multiscale electrical properties and the observed electromagnetic response is therefore important for meaningful geologic interpretation. We present here examples of near-surface electromagnetic responses whose spatial fluctuations appear on all length scales, are repeatable and fractally distributed, supporting the notion of a ‘rough geology’ exhibiting multiscale hierarchical structure. Bounded by end member cases from homogenized isotropic and anisotropic media, we present numerical modelling results of the electromagnetic responses of textured and spatially correlated, stochastic geologic media, demonstrating that the electromagnetic response is a power law distribution, rather than a smooth response polluted with random, incoherent noise as commonly assumed. Our modelling results show that these electromagnetic responses due to spatially correlated geologic textures are examples of fractional Brownian motion. Furthermore, our results suggest that the fractal behaviour of the electromagnetic responses is correlated with degree of the spatial correlation, the contrasts in ground conductivity, and the preferred orientation of small-scale heterogeneity. In addition, the EM responses acquired across a fault zone comprising different lithological units and varying wavelengths of geologic heterogeneity also support our inferences from numerical modelling.