ALBERT

Description: Biophotonic nanostructures rarely withstand fossilization processes occurring after burial over geologic time. Even more distinctive is a change introduced to the optical properties during diagenetic processes resulting in a different optical appearance. Here, we report and explain the optical appearance of centric diatom frustules obtained from ash-bearing carbonate-cemented concretions on the Greifswalder Oie island (Pomeranian Bay, Germany, southern Baltic Sea). The ultrastructural and mineralogical analysis of the fossil frustules were carried out using electron microscopy techniques and were correlated to the macroscopic and microscopic optical appearance of the frustules before and after acid etching. The unique optical properties of the fossil diatoms were associated with diagenetic nanocrystalline calcite filling the frustules’ areolae. This fill created the macroscopic pale-yellow colour of many frustules, a microscopic iridescence probably associated with diffraction grating behaviour, and microscopic colour rings. The results highlight the unique permineralization process of diatom frustules and might be an addition to the emerging studies on frustule optics and photonics.

Description: Most of in-situ stress data in the Australian continent comes from wellbore stress analysis in deep hydrocarbon reservoirs, and earthquake focal mechanism solutions near the Australian plate boundaries, where geophysical tools facilitate understanding of the present-day stress patterns. This resulted in a paucity of stress information in many other regions such as the northern Bowen Basin, which is an active mining province, but with low seismicity rates and limited deep petroleum exploration. The mining industry runs several hundred kilometres of image logs annually to characterise geotechnical attributes. These logs provide an image from the borehole wall, which facilitates analysis of stress-related borehole deformations for in-situ stress characterisation. This paper examines the orientation of horizontal in-situ stress using different types of image logs in mine boreholes across the northern Bowen Basin. Analyses of 128 km of image logs in 680 vertical boreholes resulted in the interpretation of 9046 pairs of stress-related indicators including 735 drilling induced fractures and 8311 borehole breakouts. Our comprehensive database comprises 890 quality-ranked data records for the orientation of maximum horizontal stress (SHmax), which makes the Bowen Basin as a basin with the highest data density in the world in terms of quality-ranked stress information according to the World Stress Map. Statistical analysis of SHmax orientation reveals that the mean SHmax orientation in northern Bowen Basin is N018◦ ± 16◦. The results show that this orientation is consistent over long distances, which is in contrast with several eastern Australian basins. This uniform stress pattern agrees well with plate-scale geomechanical model predictions, which further highlights the impact of plate boundary forces in the contemporary stress pattern of this region. Detailed image log investigation did not show any systematic rotation of stress; however, some small-scale stress perturbations were observed in the vicinity of sharp stiffness contrasts and geological structures.

Description: The microbiota is attributed to be important for initial soil formation under extreme climate conditions, but experimental evidence for its relevance is scarce. To fill this gap, we investigated the impact of in situ microbial communities and their interrelationship with biocrust and plants compared to abiotic controls on soil formation in initial arid and semiarid soils. Additionally, we assessed the response of bacterial communities to climate change. Topsoil and subsoil samples from arid and semiarid sites in the Chilean Coastal Cordillera were incubated for 16 weeks under diurnal temperature and moisture variations to simulate humid climate conditions as part of a climate change scenario. Our findings indicate that microorganism-plant interaction intensified aggregate formation and stabilized soil structure, facilitating initial soil formation. Interestingly, microorganisms alone or in conjunction with biocrust showed no discernible patterns compared to abiotic controls, potentially due to watermasking effects. Arid soils displayed reduced bacterial diversity and developed a new community structure dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteriota, and Planctomycetota, while semiarid soils maintained a consistently dominant community of Acidobacteriota and Proteobacteria. This highlighted a sensitive and specialized bacterial community in arid soils, while semiarid soils exhibited a more complex and stable community. We conclude that microorganism-plant interaction has measurable impacts on initial soil formation in arid and semiarid regions on short time scales under climate change. Additionally, we propose that soil and climate legacies are decisive for the present soil microbial community structure and interactions, future soil development, and microbial responses.

Description: Inland water bodies play a vital role at all scales in the terrestrial water balance and Earth’s climate variability. Thus, an inventory of inland waters is crucially important for hydrologic and ecological studies and management. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to develop a deep learning-based method for inventorying and mapping inland water bodies using the RGB band of high-resolution satellite imagery automatically and accurately. The Sentinel-2 Harmonized dataset, together with ZABAGED-validated ground truth, was used as the main dataset for the model training step. Three different deep learning algorithms based on U-Net architecture were employed to segment inland waters, including a simple U-Net, Residual Attention U-Net, and VGG16-U-Net. All three algorithms were trained using a combination of Sentinel-2 visible bands (Red [B04; 665nm], Green [B03; 560nm], and Blue [B02; 490 nm]) at a 10-meter spatial resolution. The Residual Attention U-Net achieved the highest computational cost due to the increased number of trainable parameters. The VGG16-U-Net had the shortest run time and the lowest number of trainable parameters, attributed to its architecture compared to the simple and Residual Attention U-Net architectures, respectively. As a result, the VGG16-U-Net provided the best segmentation results with a mean-IoU score of 0.9850, a slight improvement compared to other proposed U-Net-based architectures. Although the accuracy of the model based on VGG16-U-Net does not make a difference from Residual Attention U-Net, the computation costs for training VGG16-U-Net were dramatically lower than Residual Attention U-Net.

Description: Detecting phase arrivals and pinpointing the arrival times of seismic phases in seismograms is crucial for many seismological analysis workflows. For land station data, machine learning methods have already found widespread adoption. However, deep learning approaches are not yet commonly applied to ocean bottom data due to a lack of appropriate training data and models. Here, we compiled an extensive and labeled ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) data set from 15 deployments in different tectonic settings, comprising ∼90,000 P and ∼63,000 S manual picks from 13,190 events and 355 stations. We propose PickBlue, an adaptation of the two popular deep learning networks EQTransformer and PhaseNet. PickBlue joint processes three seismometer recordings in conjunction with a hydrophone component and is trained with the waveforms in the new database. The performance is enhanced by employing transfer learning, where initial weights are derived from models trained with land earthquake data. PickBlue significantly outperforms neural networks trained with land stations and models trained without hydrophone data. The model achieves a mean absolute deviation of 0.05 s for P-waves and 0.12 s for S-waves, and we apply the picker on the Hikurangi Ocean Bottom Tremor and Slow Slip OBS deployment offshore New Zealand. We integrate our data set and trained models into SeisBench to enable an easy and direct application in future deployments.

Description: Grain boundary networks of quartz, plagioclase and olivine crystal aggregates in metamorphic rocks have been investigated from the nanometer to the millimeter scale by polarized-light microscopy, SEM, and TEM. The studied materials show different grain sizes and experienced different retrograde P-T histories. The aggregates of quartz and plagioclase are traversed by networks of ∼90% continuously open boundaries with μm-sized cavities along the boundaries or at triple junctions. The boundaries are up to ∼500 nm wide open with typically parallel opposing grain faces. Olivine boundaries are filled with serpentine that does not replace olivine but fills the initially open space homogeneously and mostly with random orientation. For quartz there is no correlation between the crystallographic orientation of grain boundaries and their widths. Amongst all samples analyzed, a weak positive correlation exists between grain size and width of open grain boundaries. The application of measured volume changes and elasticity data from the literature to the cooling-decompression paths of the analyzed materials suggests that fracturing with subsequent widening of the grain boundaries starts at temperatures recognizably below the transition from crystal-plastic to brittle behavior of quartz, plagioclase and olivine but not only under surface conditions. The high amount of open boundaries causes an extensive permeability.

Description: The Cretaceous provides us with an excellent case history of ocean-climate-biota system perturbations. Such perturbations occurred several times during the Cretaceous, such as oceanic anoxic events and the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, which have been the subject of an abundant literature. Other perturbations, such as the mid-Maastrichtian Event (MME) remain poorly understood. The MME was associated with global sea-level rise, changes in climate and deep-water circulation that were accompanied by biotic extinctions including ‘true inoceramids’ and the demise of the Caribbean-Tethyan rudist reef ecosystems. So far, the context and causes behind the MME remain poorly studied. We conducted high-resolution integrated biotic, petrological and geochemical studies in order to fill this knowledge gap. We studied, in particular, carbonate Nd and Os isotopes, whole-rock Hg, C and N content, C and N isotopes in organic matter, S isotopes in carbonate-associated sulfate, along with C and O isotopes in foraminifera from the European Chalk Sea: the Polanówka UW-1 core from Poland and the Stevns-1 core from Denmark. Our data showed that sea-level rise of ∼50–100 m lasted around ∼2 Ma and co-occurred with anomalously high mercury concentration in seawater. Along with previously published data, our results strongly suggest that the MME was driven by intense volcanic–tectonic activity, likely related to the production of vast oceanic plateaus (LIP, Large Igneous Province). The collapse of reef ecosystems could have been the consequence of LIP-related environmental stress factors, including climate warming, presumably caused by emission of greenhouse gases, modification of the oceanic circulation, oceanic acidification and/or toxic metal input. The disappearance of the foraminifer Stensioeina lineage on the European shelf was likely caused by the collapse of primary production triggered by sea-level rise and limited amount of nutrient input. Nd isotopes and foraminiferal assemblages attest for changes in sea-water circulation in the European Shelf and the increasing contribution of North Atlantic water masses

Description: The structural response to compression of the synthetic high-pressure hydroxide perovskite MgSi(OH)6, the so-called “3.65 Å phase,” has been determined to 8.4 GPa at room temperature using single-crystal XRD in the diamond-anvil cell. Two very similar structures have been determined in space groups P21 and P21/n, for which differences in oxygen donor-acceptor distances indicate that the non-centrosymmetric structure is likely the correct one. This structure has six nonequivalent H sites, of which two are fully occupied and four are half-occupied. Half-occupied sites are associated with a well-defined crankshaft of hydrogen-bonded donor-acceptor oxygens extending parallel to c. Half occupancy of these sites arises from the averaging of two orientations of the crankshaft H atoms (|| ±c) in equal proportions. The P21 and P21/n structures are compared. It is shown that the former is likely the correct space group, which is also consistent with recent spectroscopic studies that recognize six nonequivalent O-H. The structure of MgSi(OH)6 at pressures up to 8.4 GPa was refined in both space groups to see how divergent the two models are. There is a very close correspondence between the responses of the two structures implying that, at least to 8.4 GPa, non-centrosymmetry does not affect compressional behavior. The very different compressional behavior of MgO6 and SiO6 octahedra observed in this study suggests that structural phase transformations or discontinuities likely occur in MgSi(OH)6 above 9 GPa.

Description: The Combination Service for Time-variable Gravity fields (COST-G) operationally provides combinations of monthly Earth gravity field models derived from observations of the microwave ranging instrument of the GRACE Follow-on (GRACE-FO) satellite mission, applying the quality control and combination methodology originally developed by the Horizon 2020 project European Gravity Service for Improved Emergency Management for the data of the GRACE satellites. In the frame of the follow-up Horizon 2020 project Global Gravity-based Groundwater Product (G3P), the GRACE-FO combination is used to derive global grids of groundwater storage anomalies. To meet the user requirements and achieve optimal signal-to-noise ratio, the combination has been further developed and extended to incorporate: • new time-series based on the alternative accelerometer transplant product generated in the frame of the project by the Institute of Geodesy at the Graz University of Technology, which specifically improves the estimation of the C30 coefficient and also reduces the noise at medium to short wavelengths, and • the new time-series AIUB–GRACE-FO–RL02 of monthly GRACE-FO gravity fields, which is derived at the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern by applying empirical noise modelling techniques. The COST-G quality control confirms the consistency of the contributing GRACE-FO time-series concerning the signal amplitude of seasonal hydrology in large river basins and the secular mass change in polar regions, but it also indicates rather diverse noise characteristics. The difference in the noise levels is taken into account in the combination process by relative weights derived by variance component estimation on the solution level. The weights are expected to be inverse proportional to the noise levels of the individual gravity field solutions. However, this expectation is violated when applying the weighting scheme as developed for the GRACE combination. The reason is found in the high-order coefficients of the gravity field, which are poorly determined from the low–low range-rate observations due to the observation geometry and suffer from aliasing due to the malfunctioning accelerometer onboard one of the GRACE-FO satellites. Hence, for the final G3P-combination a revised weighting scheme is applied where the gravity field coefficients beyond order 60 are excluded from the determination of the weights. The quality of the combined gravity fields is assessed by comparison of the noise content and the signal-to-noise ratio with the individual time-series. Independent validation is provided by the COST-G validation centre at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, where orbit fits of the low-flying Gravity and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite are performed that confirm the high quality of the combined GRACE-FO gravity fields. By the end of the G3P project, the new combination scheme is implemented by COST-G as the new COST-G–GRACE-FO–RL02 and continued to be used for the operational GRACE-FO combination.

Description: Beryllium isotopes have emerged as a quantitative tracer of continental weathering, but accurate and precise determination of the cosmogenic 10Be and stable 9Be in seawater is challenging, because seawater contains high concentrations of matrix elements but extremely low concentrations of 9Be and 10Be. In this study, we develop a new, time-efficient procedure for the simultaneous preconcentration of 9Be and 10Be from (coastal) seawater based on the iron co-precipitation method. The concentrations of 9Be, 10Be, and the resulting 10Be/9Be ratio for Changjiang Estuary water derived from the new procedure agree well with those obtained from the conventional procedure requiring separate preconcentration for 9Be and 10Be determinations. By avoiding the separate preconcentration, our newly developed procedure contributes toward more time-efficient handling of samples, less sample cross-contamination, and a more reliable 10Be/9Be ratio. Prior to this, we validated the iron co-precipitation method using artificial seawater and natural water samples from the Amazon Estuary regarding: (1) the “matrix effect” for Be analysis, (2) its extraction efficiency for pg g−1 levels Be in the presence and absence of organic matter, and (3) the data comparability with another preconcentration method. We calculated that for the determination of 9Be and 10Be in most open ocean seawater with typical 10Be concentrations of 〉 500 atoms g−1, good precisions (〈 5%) can be achieved using less than 3 liters of seawater compared to more than 20 liters routinely used previously. Even for coastal seawater with extremely low 10Be concentration (e.g., 100 atoms g−1), we estimate a maximum amount of 10 liters to be adequate.

Description: Accurate age estimates are crucial for assessing the life-histories of fish and providing management advice, but validation studies are rare for many species. We corroborated age estimates with annual cycles of oxygen isotopes (δ18O) in otoliths of 86 northern pike (Esox lucius) from the southern Baltic Sea, compared results with visual age estimates from scales and otoliths, and assessed bias introduced by different age-estimation structures on von Bertalanffy growth models and age-structured population models. Age estimates from otoliths were accurate, while age estimates from scales significantly underestimated the age of pike older than 6 years compared to the corroborated reference age. Asymptotic length () was larger, and the growth coefficient was lower for scale ages than for corroborated age and otolith age estimates. Consequentially, scale-informed population models overestimated maximum sustainable yield (), biomass at (), relative frequency of trophy fish (), and optimal minimum length limit but underestimated fishing mortality at (). Using scale-based ages to inform management regulations for pike may therefore result in conservative management and lost yield. The overestimated asymptotic length may instill unrealistic expectations of trophy potential in recreational anglers targeting large pike, while the overestimation in MSY would cause unrealistic expectations of yield potential in commercial fishers.

Description: Accurate assessment of the rate and state friction parameters of rocks is essential for producing realistic earthquake rupture scenarios and, in turn, for seismic hazard analysis. Those parameters can be directly measured on samples, or indirectly based on inversion of coseismic or postseismic slip evolution. However, both direct and indirect approaches require assumptions that might bias the results. Aiming to reduce the potential sources of bias, we take advantage of a downscaled analog model reproducing megathrust earthquakes. We couple the simulated annealing algorithm with quasi-dynamic numerical models to retrieve rate and state parameters reproducing the recurrence time, rupture duration and slip of the analog model, in the ensemble. Then, we focus on how the asperity size and the neighboring segments' properties control the seismic cycle characteristics and the corresponding variability of rate and state parameters. We identify a tradeoff between (a–b) of the asperity and (a–b) of neighboring creeping segments, with multiple parameter combinations that allow mimicking the analog model behavior. Tuning of rate and state parameters is required to fit laboratory experiments with different asperity lengths. Poorly constrained frictional properties of neighboring segments are responsible for uncertainties of (a–b) of the asperity in the order of per mille. Roughly one order of magnitude larger uncertainties derive from asperity size. Those results provide a glimpse of the variability that rate and state friction estimates might have when used as a constraint to model fault slip behavior in nature.

Description: The evolution of the local stress field of faults under tectonic stresses is crucial to predict earthquakes. In this study, we investigated the stress sensitivity of an analogue fault model with dimensions of 2 m × 1 m × 1 m, prepared from cement, gypsum, river sand, putty powder, and borax mixture. The angle between the fault strike and the maximum stress direction was varied, and the variation in the stress near the analogue fault (area 1200 × 400 mm; width 5 mm) was determined. The crack growth law of the analogue fault was found to be consistent with a simple Riedel shear model. A main strike-displacement zone was formed, and its direction was parallel to that of the analogue fault. Fault development was described by three stages based on stress–strain relationships: a nucleus stage, a stable growth, and an unstable growth stage. The deflection angle (the deflection angle of the local principal stresses) range of the local stress field was (− 45°, 45°), and it varied most significantly in the nucleus stage. The closer to the fault, the greater the variation range in the deflection angle. The variation range was greater in the fault compression quadrants than in the dilatation quadrants. The correlation between the deflection angle and the relative deformation velocity of the fault was stronger in the stable growth stage than in the other stages. In this stage, the angle–deformation–velocity correlation could be well fitted using a logistic trend model. These findings can be of importance to better understand the nucleation and mechanisms of fault slip-induced earthquakes under varying fault-strike-stress conditions.

Description: The yield and composition of tar depending on coal rank and pressure during underground coal gasification (UCG) were studied. Two coals were used in a series of ex-situ UCG experiments: a Welsh semi-anthracite (Six Feet) and a Polish bituminous coal (Wesoła). Four high-pressure gasification trials under two distinct pressure regimes (20 and 40 bar) were conducted. The tar samples were collected directly from the reactor outlet. The following groups of compounds were analysed by use of gas chromatography (GC-MS): light monoaromatic hydrocarbons (BTEX – benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and phenols. A series of gasification experiments revealed significant differences in tar yields and composition depending on the coal rank and gasification pressure. Significant decreases in tar contents were observed with the increase in gasification pressure from 20 to 40 bar for both coals. The total yields of the analysed tar components per kg of gasified coal were 2.58 g and 0.41 g for the experiments conducted on the Six Feet samples at 20 bar and 40 bar, respectively. The corresponding values for the Wesoła coal amounted to 5.48 g and 0.95 g. In all experiments, BTEX was a dominant group of tar components, constituting 69–86 % of the total tar yield within the tested range of compounds. The present study further proves that gasification pressure has a significant effect on the chemical composition of the produced UCG tars for both coal samples under study.

Description: In this article, a high-resolution acoustic emission sensor, accelerometer, and broadband seismometer array data set is made available and described in detail from in situ experiments performed at Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory in May and June 2015. The main goal of the hydraulic stimulation tests in a horizontal borehole at 410m depth in naturally fractured granitic rock mass is to demonstrate the technical feasibility of generating multi-stage heat exchangers in a controlled way superiorly to former massive stimulations applied in enhanced geothermal projects. A set of six, sub-parallel hydraulic fractures is propagated from an injection borehole drilled parallel to minimum horizontal in situ stress and is monitored by an extensive complementary sensor array implemented in three inclined monitoring boreholes and the nearby tunnel system. Three different fluid injection protocols are tested: constant water injection, progressive cyclic injection, and cyclic injection with a hydraulic hammer operating at 5 Hz frequency to stimulate a crystalline rock volume of size 30m30m30m at depth. We collected geological data from core and borehole logs, fracture inspection data from an impression packer, and acoustic emission hypocenter tracking and tilt data, as well as quantified the permeability enhancement process. The data and interpretation provided through this publication are important steps in both upscaling laboratory tests and downscaling field tests in granitic rock in the framework of enhanced geothermal system research. Data described in this paper can be accessed at GFZ Data Services under https://doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.2.6.2023.004 (Zang et al., 2023).

Description: In space geodetic techniques, the mapping functions (MFs) provide the relationship between zenith and slant tropospheric delays. The MFs are determined under the assumption of spherically layered atmosphere. However, the atmosphere is not spherically layered, and the asymmetry should be considered. Therefore, tropospheric gradients are taken into account. Nevertheless, tropospheric gradients alone can not fully represent the deviation from a spherically layered atmosphere, and hence cm level errors arise especially for low elevation angles. In this study, we present new approaches to modify the wet MF to reduce mismodelling of tropospheric delays. The delays in the study were calculated using ray-tracing algorithm based on ECMWF’s ERA5 dataset. We first analyzed the performances of the new approaches. Then, two Precise Point Positioning (PPP) simulation studies and a real case study were carried out for two different regions namely Germany and Türkiye. According to the results, the proposed approaches reduce the modelling errors up to by a factor 6 for both regions. Besides, simulation studies show that the approaches improve the accuracies of the ZTDs and heights. In the practical application however, we could not find a clear improvement in the PPP analyze and this might be related to the ERA5 which can not be regarded error-free.

Description: This article summarizes the ground-motion characterization (GMC) model component of the 2022 New Zealand National Seismic Hazard Model (2022 NZ NSHM). The model development process included establishing a NZ-specific context through the creation of a new ground-motion database, and consideration of alternative ground-motion models (GMMs) that have been historically used in NZ or have been recently developed for global application with or without NZ-specific regionalizations. Explicit attention was given to models employing state-of-the-art approaches in terms of their ability to provide robust predictions when extrapolated beyond the predictor variable scenarios that are well constrained by empirical data alone. We adopted a “hybrid” logic tree that combined both a “weightson- models” approach along with backbone models (i.e., metamodels), the former being the conventional approach to GMC logic tree modeling for NSHM applications using published models, and the latter being increasingly used in research literature and site-specific studies. In this vein, two NZ-specific GMMs were developed employing the backbone model construct. All of the adopted subduction GMMs in the logic tree were further modified from their published versions to include the effects of increased attenuation in the back-arc region; and, all but one model was modified to account for the reduction in ground-motion standard deviations as a result of nonlinear surficial site response. As well as being based on theoretical arguments, these adjustments were implemented as a result of hazard sensitivity analyses using models without these effects, which we consider gave unrealistically high hazard estimates.

Description: Seismicity usually exhibits a non-Poisson spatiotemporal distribution and could undergo nonstationary processes. However, the Poisson assumption is still deeply rooted in current probabilistic seismic hazard analysis models, especially when input catalogs must be declustered to obtain a Poisson background rate. In addition, nonstationary behavior and scarce earthquake records in regions of low seismicity can bias hazard estimates that use stationary or spatially precise forecasts. In this work, we implement hazard formulations using forecasts that trade-off spatial precision to account for overdispersion and nonstationarity of seismicity in the form of uniform rate zones (URZs), which describe rate variability using non-Poisson probabilistic distributions of earthquake numbers. The impact of these forecasts in the hazard space is investigated by implementing a negative- binomial formulation in the OpenQuake hazard software suite, which is adopted by the 2022 Aotearoa New Zealand National Seismic Hazard Model. For a 10% exceedance probability of peak ground acceleration (PGA) in 50 yr, forecasts that only reduce the spatial precision, that is, stationary Poisson URZ models, cause up to a twofold increase in hazard for low-seismicity regions compared to spatially precise forecasts. Furthermore, the inclusion of non-Poisson temporal processes in URZ models increases the expected PGA by up to three times in low-seismicity regions, whereas the effect on high-seismicity is minimal (∼5%). The hazard estimates presented here highlight the relevance, as well as the feasibility, of incorporating analytical formulations of seismicity that go beyond the inadequate stationary Poisson description of seismicity.

Description: The distribution of earthquakes in time and space is seldom stationary, which could hinder a robust statistical analysis, particularly in low-seismicity regions with limited data. This work investigates the performance of stationary Poisson and spatially precise forecasts, such as smoothed seismicity models (SSMs), in terms of the available training data. Catalog bootstrap experiments are conducted to: (1) identify the number of training data necessary for SSMs to perform spatially better than the least-informative Uniform Rate Zone (URZ) models; and (2) describe the rate temporal variability accounting for the overdispersion and nonstationarity of seismicity. Formally, the strict-stationarity assumption used in traditional forecasts is relaxed into local and incremental stationarity (i.e., a catalog is only stationary in the vicinity of a given time point t) along with self-similar behavior described by a power law. The results reveal rate dispersion up to 10 times higher than predicted by Poisson models and highlight the impact of nonstationarity in assuming a constant mean rate within training-forecast intervals. The temporal rate variability is translated into a reduction of spatial precision by means of URZmodels. First, counting processes are devised to capture rate distributions, considering the rate as a random variable. Second, we devise a data-driven method based on geodetic strain rate to spatially delimit the precision of URZs, assuming that strain/stress rate is related to the timescales of earthquake interactions. Finally, rate distributions are inferred from the available data within each URZ. We provide forecasts for the New Zealand National Seismic Hazard Model update,which can exhibit rates up to ten times higher in low-seismicity regions compared with SSMs. This study highlights the need to consider nonstationarity in seismicity models and underscores the importance of appropriate statistical descriptions of rate variability in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis.

Description: National-scale seismic hazard models with large logic trees can be difficult to calculate using traditional seismic hazard software. To calculate the complete 2022 revision of the New Zealand National Seismic Hazard Model—Te Tauira Matapae Pūmate Rū i Aotearoa, including epistemic uncertainty, we have developed a method in which the calculation is broken into two separate stages. This method takes advantage of logic tree structures that comprise multiple, independent logic trees from which complete realizations are formed by combination. In the first stage, we precalculate the independent realizations of the logic trees. In the second stage, we assemble the full ensemble of logic tree realizations by combining components from the first stage. Once all realizations of the full logic tree have been calculated, we can compute aggregate statistics for the model. This method benefits both from the reduction in the amount of computation necessary and its parallelism. In addition to facilitating the computation of a large seismic hazard model, the method described can also be used for sensitivity testing of model components and to speed up experimentation with logic tree structure and weights.

Description: Central America is a seismically active region where six tectonic plates (North America, Caribbean, Cocos, Nazca, Panama, and South America) interact in a subduction zone with transform faults and two triple points. This complex tectonic setting makes the maximum magnitude—Mmax—estimation a challenging task, with the crustal fault earthquakes being the most damaging in the seismic history of Central America. The empirical source scaling relations (ESSR) allow the Mmax of faults to be determined from rupture parameters. In this study, we use a dataset of well-characterized earthquakes in the region, comprising 64 events from 1972 to 2021 with magnitudes between Mw 4.1 and 7.7. The dataset incorporates records of rupture parameters (length, width, area, slip, and magnitude) and information on the faults and aftershocks associated. This database is an important product in itself, and through its use we determine which global relations fit best to our data via a residual analysis. Moreover, based on the best-quality records, we develop scaling relations for Central America (CA-ESSR) for rupture length, width, and area. These new relations were tested and compared with recent earthquakes, and logic trees are proposed to combine the CA-ESSR and the best-fit global relations. Therefore, we estimate the Mmax for 30 faults using the logic tree for rupture length, considering a total rupture of the fault andmultifault scenarios. Our results suggest that in CentralAmerica rupture areas larger than other regions are required to generate the samemagnitudes.We associate this with the shear modulus (μ), which seems to be lower (∼ 30% less) than the global mean values for crustal rocks. Furthermore, considering multifault ruptures, we found several fault systems with potential Mmax ≥Mw 7.0. These findings contribute to a better understanding of regional seismotectonics and to the efficient characterization of fault rupture models for seismic hazards.

Description: In near-Earth space, a large population of high-energy electrons are trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. These energetic electrons are trapped in the regions called Earth’s ring current and radiation belts. They are very dynamic and show a very strong dependence on solar wind and geomagnetic conditions. These energetic electrons can be dangerous to satellites in the near-Earth space. Therefore, it is very important to understand the mechanisms which drive the dynamics of these energetic electrons. Wave-particle interaction is one of the most important mechanisms. Among the waves that can be encountered by the energetic electrons when they move around our Earth, whistler mode chorus waves can cause both acceleration and the loss of energetic electrons in the Earth's radiation belts and ring current. Using more than 5 years of wave measurements from NASA’s Van Allen Probe mission, Wang et al (2019) developed chorus wave models which depend on magnetic local time (MLT), Magnetic Latitude (MLat), L-shell, and geomagnetic condition index Kp. To quantify the effect of chorus waves on energetic electrons, we calculated the bounce-averaged quasi-linear diffusion coefficients using the chorus wave model developed by Wang et al (2019) and extended to higher latitudes according to Wang and Shprits (2019). Using these diffusion coefficients, we calculated the lifetime of the electrons with an energy range from 1 keV to 2 MeV. In each MLT, we calculate the lifetime for each energy and L-shell using two different methods according to Shprits et al (2007) and Albert and Shprits (2009). We make the calculated electron lifetime database available here. Please notice that the chorus wave model by Wang et al (2019) is valid when Kp 〈= 6. If the user wants to use this lifetime database for Kp 〉6, please be careful and contact the authors.

Description: Dynamic rupture simulations generate synthetic waveforms that account for nonlinear source and path complexity. Here, we analyze millions of spatially dense waveforms from 3D dynamic rupture simulations in a novel way to illuminate the spectral fingerprints of earthquake physics. We define a Brune-type equivalent near-field corner frequency (f c ) to analyze the spatial variability of ground-motion spectra and unravel their link to source complexity. We first investigate a simple 3D strike-slip setup, including an asper- ity and a barrier, and illustrate basic relations between source properties and f c varia- tions. Next, we analyze 〉 13,000,000 synthetic near-field strong-motion waveforms generated in three high-resolution dynamic rupture simulations of real earthquakes, the 2019 Mw 7.1 Ridgecrest mainshock, the Mw 6.4 Searles Valley foreshock, and the 1992 Mw 7.3 Landers earthquake. All scenarios consider 3D fault geometries, topography, off-fault plasticity, viscoelastic attenuation, and 3D velocity structure and resolve frequencies up to 1–2 Hz. Our analysis reveals pronounced and localized patterns of elevated f c , specifically in the vertical components. We validate such f c variability with observed near-fault spectra. Using isochrone analysis, we identify the complex dynamic mechanisms that explain rays of elevated f c and cause unexpectedly impulsive, localized, vertical ground motions. Although the high vertical frequencies are also associated with path effects, rupture directivity, and coalescence of multiple rupture fronts, we show that they are dominantly caused by rake-rotated surface-breaking rupture fronts that decel- erate due to fault heterogeneities or geometric complexity. Our findings highlight the potential of spatially dense ground-motion observations to further our understanding of earthquake physics directly from near-field data. Observed near-field f c variability may inform on directivity, surface rupture, and slip segmentation. Physics-based models can identify “what to look for,” for example, in the potentially vast amount of near-field large array or distributed acoustic sensing data.

Description: Garnet is a prominent mineral in skarn deposits and its rare earth elements (REE) geochemistry is pivotal for understanding skarn mineralization and fluid evolution. In contrast to magmatic and metamorphic garnets, skarn garnets are mainly grossular-andradite in composition. They exhibit variable REE patterns, spanning from notable heavy (H)-REE enrichment to significant light (L)-REE enrichment, accompanied by negative to positive europium (Eu) anomalies. However, the key factors governing REE fractionation in skarn garnets remain uncertain. This study applies the lattice-strain theory (LST) to investigate the influence of crystal chemistry and structure on REE fractionation in garnets from the Lazhushan Fe skarn deposit in eastern China. Our results demonstrate that the garnet-liquid partition coefficient ratios of DLa/DYb significantly increase (up to 5–7 orders of magnitude) with rising andradite content in garnet. This variation underscores the pivotal role of garnet structure in controlling LREE/HREE fractionation. The results further show that partition coefficient ratios of DLa/DSm are strongly dependent on andradite content in garnets, whereas the DGd/DYb ratios only show a weak correlation to the garnet composition. This contrast suggests that fractionation of LREE in garnet is more sensitive to variations of andradite content than HREE. Data compilation of major elements and REE for garnet from the Lazhushan Fe skarn deposit and other skarn deposits worldwide shows that the garnet REE patterns vary from positive through concave to negative shapes with the garnet ranging from grossularitic to andraditic compositions. Such variations in garnet REE patterns are consistent with the results of geochemical modeling based on the LST. This study demonstrates that, through LST equations, the shape of fluid REE patterns can be predicted from garnet REE patterns, and vice versa. Furthermore, the Eu anomaly (Eu/Eu*Grt) in skarn garnet depends mainly on fluid Eu anomaly (Eu/Eu*fluid) and garnet-fluid partition coefficient ratio of D(Eu2+)/D(Eu3+) with the latter being influenced by garnet composition. These findings highlight the critical role of crystal chemistry and structure in garnet REE fractionation, enhancing our ability to utilize garnet REE in tracing the origin and evolution of skarn-forming fluids.

Description: Tsunamigenic earthquakes pose considerable risks, both economically and socially, yet earthquake and tsunami hazard assessments are typically conducted separately. Earthquakes associated with unexpected tsunamis, such as the 2018 Mw  7.5 strike-slip Sulawesi earthquake, emphasize the need to study the tsunami potential of active submarine faults in different tectonic settings. Here, we investigate physics-based scenarios combining simulations of 3D earthquake dynamic rupture and seismic wave propagation with tsunami generation and propagation. We present time-dependent modeling of one-way linked and 3D fully coupled earthquakes and tsunamis for the ∼ 100 km long Húsavík–Flatey Fault Zone (HFFZ) in North Iceland. Our analysis shows that the HFFZ has the potential to generate sizable tsunamis. The six dynamic rupture models sourcing our tsunami scenarios vary regarding hypocenter location, spatiotemporal evolution, fault slip, and fault structure complexity but coincide with historical earthquake magnitudes. Earthquake dynamic rupture scenarios on a less segmented fault system, particularly with a hypocenter location in the eastern part of the fault system, have a larger potential for local tsunami generation. Here, dynamically evolving large shallow fault slip (∼ 8 m), near-surface rake rotation (± 20∘), and significant coseismic vertical displacements of the local bathymetry (± 1 m) facilitate strike-slip faulting tsunami generation. We model tsunami crest to trough differences (total wave heights) of up to ∼ 0.9 m near the town Ólafsfjörður. In contrast, none of our scenarios endanger the town of Akureyri, which is shielded by multiple reflections within the narrow Eyjafjörður bay and by Hrísey island. We compare the modeled one-way linked tsunami waveforms with simulation results using a 3D fully coupled approach. We find good agreement in the tsunami arrival times and location of maximum tsunami heights. While seismic waves result in transient motions of the sea surface and affect the ocean response, they do not appear to contribute to tsunami generation. However, complex source effects arise in the fully coupled simulations, such as tsunami dispersion effects and the complex superposition of seismic and acoustic waves within the shallow continental shelf of North Iceland. We find that the vertical velocity amplitudes of near-source acoustic waves are unexpectedly high – larger than those corresponding to the actual tsunami – which may serve as a rapid indicator of surface dynamic rupture. Our results have important implications for understanding the tsunamigenic potential of strike-slip fault systems worldwide and the coseismic acoustic wave excitation during tsunami generation and may help to inform future tsunami early warning systems.

Description: The ocean basins contain numerous volcanic ridges, seamounts and large igneous provinces (LIPs). Numerous studies have focused on the origin of seamount chains and LIPs but much less focus has been applied to understanding the genesis of large volcanic structures formed from a combination or series of volcanic drivers. Here we propose the term Oceanic Mid-plate Superstructures (OMS) to describe independent bathymetric swells or volcanic structures that are constructed through superimposing pulses of volcanism, over long time periods and from multiple sources. These sources can represent periods when the lithosphere drifted over different mantle plumes and/or experienced pulses of volcanism associated with shallow tectonic drivers (e.g. plate flexure; lithospheric extension). Here we focus on the Melanesian Border Plateau (MBP), one example of an OMS that has a complex and enigmatic origin. The MBP is a region of shallow Pacific lithosphere consisting of high volumes of volcanic guyots, ridges and seamounts that resides on the northern edge of the Vitiaz Lineament. Here we reconcile recently published constraints to build a comprehensive volcanic history of the MBP. The MBP was built through four distinct episodes: (1) Volcanism associated with the Louisville hotspot likely generating Robbie Ridge and some Cretaceous seamounts near the MBP. (2) Construction of oceanic islands and seamounts during the Eocene when the lithosphere passed over the Rurutu-Arago hotspot. (3) Reactivation of previous oceanic islands/seamounts and construction of new volcanos in the Miocene when the lithosphere passed over the Samoa hotspot. (4) Miocene to modern volcanism driven by lithospheric deformation and/or westward entrainment of enriched plume mantle due to toroidal mantle flow driven by the rollback of the Pacific plate beneath the Tonga trench. The combination of these processes is responsible for ∼222,000 km2 of intraplate volcanism in the MBP and indicates that this OMS was constructed from multiple volcanic drivers.

Description: We compared the performance of DREAM3D simulations in reproducing the long‐term radiation belt dynamics observed by Van Allen Probes over the entire year of 2017 with various boundary conditions (BCs) and model inputs. Specifically, we investigated the effects of three different outer boundary conditions, two different low‐energy boundary conditions for seed electrons, four different radial diffusion (RD) coefficients (DLL), four hiss wave models, and two chorus wave models from the literature. Using the outer boundary condition driven by GOES data, our benchmark simulation generally well reproduces the observed radiation belt dynamics inside L* = 6, with a better model performance at lower μ than higher μ, where μ is the first adiabatic invariant. By varying the boundary conditions and inputs, we find that: (a) The data‐driven outer boundary condition is critical to the model performance, while adding in the data‐driven seed population doesn't further improve the performance. (b) The model shows comparable performance with DLL from Brautigam and Albert (2000, https://doi.org/10.1029/1999ja900344), Ozeke et al. (2014, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013ja019204), and Liu et al. (2016, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015gl067398), while with DLL from Ali et al. (2016, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016ja023002) the model shows less RD compared to data. (c) The model performance is similar with data‐based hiss models, but the results show faster loss is still needed inside the plasmasphere. (d) The model performs similarly with the two different chorus models, but better capturing the electron enhancement at higher μ using the Wang et al. (2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018ja026183) model due to its stronger wave power, since local heating for higher energy electrons is under‐reproduced in the current model.

Description: Rare metals (Nb, Ta, Y, Zr, Sn, U, W and REE) are economically important and new supplies need to be found. In order to understand Neoproterozoic rare metal granites of the Arabian–Nubian Shield (ANS), six samples from five rare-metal mineralized alkali feldspar granites, syenogranites and granodiorite from the Central and SE Desert of Egypt were studied for zircon U–Pb ages and O-isotopic compositions as well as whole-rock Sr- and Nd- and alkali feldspar Pb-isotopic compositions. These are transitional between I-type and A-type granites, mostly high-K calc-alkaline, peraluminous granites with gullwing-shaped REE patterns and strongly negative Eu anomalies. Four granites gave mantle-like zircon 18OV-SMOW between 4.2 and 5.96‰ and yielded ages of 628–633 Ma. This is about when subduction-related magmatism began to be replaced by collision-related magmatism. Igla Ahmr granites are older, formed at 691.7–678.9 Ma with 18OV-SMOW c. 5.95‰. All have positive initial Nd values (+3.3 to +6.9) typical for mantle and juvenile crust. Pb isotopic compositions are unusually radiogenic compared with unmineralized ANS granitic rocks. The data indicate similar magmatic sources for ANS mineralized and unmineralized granites. Exploration for other rare-metal mineralized granites in the ANS should focus on bodies with similar characteristics

Description: The Tieshajie Cu deposit, located in the northeastern part of the Qin-Hang Metallogenic Belt (QHMB), South China, has long been regarded as a representative Meso-Neoproterozoic volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposit. Here we present a hydrothermal titanite U-Pb age, Re-Os and in-situ S-Cu isotope data for chalcopyrite to constrain the timing and ore genesis of the Tieshajie deposit. Laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) U-Pb dating of titanite from the disseminated Cu ore yielded a weighted mean 206Pb/238U age of 160.1 ± 4.4 Ma. Chalcopyrite from different ore types has low 187Os/188Os (0.85–3.60) and 187Re/188Os (46.1–614.0) ratios, combined with initial 187Os/188Os (0.74–2.00), excluding a mantle source. A Re-Os isochron age (188 ± 30 Ma) for five chalcopyrite samples is consistent with the titanite U-Pb age within errors. Moreover, the variations in Cu isotope compositions (δ65Cu: −1.13 to +0.12 ‰) and δ34S values (+3.8 to +7.7 ‰) of chalcopyrite are inconsistent with those reported from the ancient VMS deposits in previous studies. Therefore, our results are indicative of a Late Jurassic magmatic-hydrothermal origin instead of a VMS origin for the Tieshajie deposit. In combination with previous studies, we propose that the Tieshajie Cu deposit belongs to the distal part of the Mid-Late Jurassic (170–150 Ma) porphyry-skarn Cu mineralization event in the QHMB, likely triggered by the subduction of the Paleo-Pacific plate during the Late Mesozoic. This study also has new insights into the genesis of Cu mineralization in the QHMB and further provides implications for future exploration.

Description: This study conducts mineralogical and chemical investigations on the oldest achondrite, Erg Chech 002 (∼4565 million yr old). This meteorite exhibits a disequilibrium igneous texture characterized by high-Mg-number (atomic Mg/(Mg + Fe2+)) orthopyroxene xenocrysts (Mg number = 60–80) embedded in an andesitic groundmass. Our research reveals that these xenocrysts were early formed crystals, loosely accumulated or scattered in the short-period magma ocean on the parent body. Subsequently, these crystals underwent agitation due to the influx of external materials. The assimilation of these materials enriched the 16O component of the magma ocean and induced a relatively reduced state. Furthermore, this process significantly cooled the magma ocean and inhibited the evaporation of alkali elements, leading to elevated concentrations of Na and K within the meteorite. Our findings suggest that the introduced materials are probably sourced from the reservoirs of CR clan meteorites, indicating extensive transport and mixing of materials within the early solar system.

Description: Low Earth Orbit satellites offer extensive data of the radiation belt region, but utilizing these observations is challenging due to potential contamination and difficulty of intercalibration with spacecraft measurements at Highly Elliptic Orbit that can observe all equatorial pitch-angles. This study introduces a new intercalibration method for satellite measurements of energetic electrons in the radiation belts using a Data assimilation (DA) approach. We demonstrate our technique by intercalibrating the electron flux measurements of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) NOAA-15,-16,-17,-18,-19, and MetOp-02 against Van Allen Probes observations from October 2012 to September 2013. We use a reanalysis of the radiation belts obtained by assimilating Van Allen Probes and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites observations into 3-D Versatile Electron Radiation Belt (VERB-3D) code simulations via a standard Kalman filter. We compare the reanalysis to the POES data set and estimate the flux ratios at each time, location, and energy. From these ratios, we derive energy and L* dependent recalibration coefficients. To validate our results, we analyze on-orbit conjunctions between POES and Van Allen Probes. The conjunction recalibration coefficients and the data-assimilative estimated coefficients show strong agreement, indicating that the differences between POES and Van Allen Probes observations remain within a factor of two. Additionally, the use of DA allows for improved statistics, as the possible comparisons are increased 10-fold. Data-assimilative intercalibration of satellite observations is an efficient approach that enables intercalibration of large data sets using short periods of data.

Description: Primary granitic melt inclusions are trapped in garnets of eclogites in the garnet peridotite body of Pfaffenberg, Granulitgebirge (Bohemian Massif, Germany). These polycrystalline inclusions, based on their nature and composition, can be called nanogranitoids and contain mainly phlogopite/biotite, kumdykolite, quartz/rare cristobalite, a phase with the main Raman peak at 412 cm-1, a phase with the main Raman peak at 430 cm-1, osumilite and plagioclase. The melt is hydrous, peraluminous and granitic and significantly enriched in large ion lithophile elements (LILE), Th, U, Li, B and Pb. The melt major element composition resembles that of melts produced by the partial melting of metasediments, as also supported by its trace element signature characterized by elements (LILE, Pb, Li and B) typical of the continental crust. These microstructural and geochemical features suggest that the investigated melt originated in the subducted continental crust and interacted with the mantle to produce the Pfaffenberg eclogite. Moreover, in situ analyses and calculations based on partition coefficients between apatite and melt show that the melt was also enriched in Cl and F, pointing toward the presence of a brine during melting. The melt preserved in inclusions can thus be regarded as an example of a metasomatizing agent present at depth and responsible for the interaction between the crust and the mantle. Chemical similarities between this melt and other metasomatizing melts measured in other eclogites from the Granulitgebirge and Erzgebirge, in addition to the overall similar enrichment in trace elements observed in other metasomatized mantle rocks from central Europe, suggest an extended crustal contamination of the mantle beneath the Bohemian Massif during the Variscan orogeny.

Description: Watershed management requires an understanding of key hydrochemical processes. The Pra Basin is one of the five major river basins in Ghana with a population of over 4.2 million people. Currently, water resources management faces challenges due to surface water pollution caused by the unregulated release of untreated household and industrial waste into aquatic ecosystems and illegal mining activities. This has increased the need for groundwater as the most reliable water supply. Our understanding of groundwater recharge mechanisms and chemical evolution in the basin has been inadequate, making effective management difficult. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to gain insight into the processes that determine the hydrogeochemical evolution of groundwater quality in the Pra Basin. The combined use of stable isotope, hydrochemistry, and water level data provides the basis for conceptualizing the chemical evolution of groundwater in the Pra Basin. For this purpose, the origin and evaporation rates of water infiltrating into the unsaturated zone were evaluated. In addition, Chloride Mass Balance (CMB) and Water Table Fluctuations (WTF) were considered to quantify groundwater recharge for the basin. Indices such as water quality index (WQI), sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), Wilcox diagram, and salinity (USSL) were used in this study to determine the quality of the resource for use as drinking water and for irrigation purposes. Due to the heterogeneity of the hydrochemical data, the statistical techniques of hierarchical cluster and factor analysis were applied to subdivide the data according to their spatial correlation. A conceptual hydrogeochemical model was developed and subsequently validated by applying combinatorial inverse and reaction pathway-based geochemical models to determine plausible mineral assemblages that control the chemical composition of the groundwater. The interactions between water and rock determine the groundwater quality in the Pra Basin. The results underline that the groundwater is of good quality and can be used for drinking water and irrigation purposes. It was demonstrated that there is a large groundwater potential to meet the entire Pra Basin’s current and future water demands. The main recharge area was identified as the northern zone, while the southern zone is the discharge area. The predominant influence of weathering of silicate minerals plays a key role in the chemical evolution of the groundwater. The work presented here provides fundamental insights into the hydrochemistry of the Pra Basin and provides data important to water managers for informed decision-making in planning and allocating water resources for various purposes. A novel inverse modelling approach was used in this study to identify different mineral compositions that determine the chemical evolution of groundwater in the Pra Basin. This modelling technique has the potential to simulate the composition of groundwater at the basin scale with large hydrochemical heterogeneity, using average water composition to represent established spatial groupings of water chemistry.

Description: Die Bewirtschaftung von Wassereinzugsgebieten erfordert ein Verständnis der wichtigsten hydrochemischen Prozesse. Das Pra-Becken ist eines der fünf großen Flusseinzugsgebiete Ghanas mit einer Bevölkerung von über 4,2 Millionen Menschen. Die Bewirtschaftung der Wasserressourcen wird derzeit durch die Verschmutzung der Oberflächengewässer erschwert, die durch die unkontrollierte Einleitung von unbehandelten Haushalts- und Industrieabfällen in die aquatischen Ökosysteme und durch illegale Bergbauaktivitäten entsteht. Dies hat den Bedarf an Grundwasser als zuverlässigste Wasserversorgung erhöht. Unser Verständnis der Mechanismen der Grundwasserneubildung und der chemischen Entwicklung im Einzugsgebiet ist bislang unzureichend, was eine wirksame Bewirtschaftung erschwert. Daher ist das Hauptziel dieser Arbeit Einblicke in die Prozesse zu bekommen, welche die hydrogeochemische Entwicklung der Grundwasserqualität im Pra-Becken bestimmen. Die kombinierte Verwendung von Daten stabiler Isotope, der Hydrochemie und von Wasserständen bildet die Grundlage für die Konzeption der chemischen Entwicklung des Grundwassers im Pra-Becken. Dafür wurden die Herkunft und die Verdunstungsraten des in die ungesättigte Zone infiltrierenden Wassers bewertet. Darüber hinaus wurden die Chlorid-Massenbilanz und die Wasserspiegelschwankungen betrachtet, um die Grundwasserneubildung für das Einzugsgebiet zu quantifizieren. Indizes wie der Wasserqualitätsindex (WQI), das Natriumadsorptionsverhältnis (SAR), das Wilcox-Diagramm und der Salzgehalt (USSL) wurden in dieser Studie verwendet, um die Qualität der Ressource für die Verwendung als Trinkwasser und zu Bewässerungszwecken zu bestimmen. Aufgrund der Heterogenität der hydrochemischen Daten wurden die statistischen Verfahren der hierarchischen Cluster- und Faktorenanalyse angewandt, um die Daten entsprechend ihrer räumlichen Korrelation zu unterteilen. Ein konzeptionelles hydrogeochemisches Modell wurde entwickelt und anschließend durch Anwendung kombinatorischer inverser und reaktionspfadbasierter geochemischer Modelle validiert, um plausible mineralische Assemblagen zu bestimmen, welche die chemische Zusammensetzung des Grundwassers kontrollieren. Die Wechselwirkungen zwischen Wasser und Gestein bestimmen die Grundwasserqualität im Pra-Becken. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen, dass das Grundwasser eine gute Qualität aufweist und als Trinkwasser und für Bewässerungszwecke genutzt werden kann. Es wurde nachgewiesen, dass ein großes Grundwasserpotenzial vorhanden ist, um den derzeitigen und künftigen Wasserbedarf des gesamten Pra-Beckens zu decken. Als Hauptneubildungsgebiet wurde die nördliche Zone im Gebiet identifiziert, während die südliche Zone das Abflussgebiet ist. Der vorherrschende Einfluss der Verwitterung von Silikatmineralen spielt bei der chemischen Entwicklung des Grundwassers eine zentrale Rolle. Die hier vorgestellte Arbeit gibt grundlegende Einblicke in die Hydrochemie des Pra-Beckens und liefert für das Wassermanagement wichtige Daten für eine fundierte Entscheidungsfindung bei der Planung und Zuweisung von Wasserressourcen für verschiedene Zwecke. Ein neuartiger Ansatz zur inversen Modellierungwurde in dieser Studie eingesetzt, um unterschiedliche Mineralzusammensetzungen zu ermitteln, welche die chemische Entwicklung des Grundwassers im Pra-Becken bestimmen. Diese Modellierungstechnik hat das Potenzial, die Zusammensetzung eines Grundwassers auf der Skala eines Beckens mit großer hydrochemischer Heterogenität zu simulieren, wobei die durchschnittliche Wasserzusammensetzung zur Darstellung der etablierten räumlichen Gruppierungen der Wasserchemie verwendet wird.

Description: Watershed management requires an understanding of key hydrochemical processes. The Pra Basin is one of the five major river basins in Ghana with a population of over 4.2 million people. Currently, water resources management faces challenges due to surface water pollution caused by the unregulated release of untreated household and industrial waste into aquatic ecosystems and illegal mining activities. This has increased the need for groundwater as the most reliable water supply. Our understanding of groundwater recharge mechanisms and chemical evolution in the basin has been inadequate, making effective management difficult. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to gain insight into the processes that determine the hydrogeochemical evolution of groundwater quality in the Pra Basin. The combined use of stable isotope, hydrochemistry, and water level data provides the basis for conceptualizing the chemical evolution of groundwater in the Pra Basin. For this purpose, the origin and evaporation rates of water infiltrating into the unsaturated zone were evaluated. In addition, Chloride Mass Balance (CMB) and Water Table Fluctuations (WTF) were considered to quantify groundwater recharge for the basin. Indices such as water quality index (WQI), sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), Wilcox diagram, and salinity (USSL) were used in this study to determine the quality of the resource for use as drinking water and for irrigation purposes. Due to the heterogeneity of the hydrochemical data, the statistical techniques of hierarchical cluster and factor analysis were applied to subdivide the data according to their spatial correlation. A conceptual hydrogeochemical model was developed and subsequently validated by applying combinatorial inverse and reaction pathway-based geochemical models to determine plausible mineral assemblages that control the chemical composition of the groundwater. The interactions between water and rock determine the groundwater quality in the Pra Basin. The results underline that the groundwater is of good quality and can be used for drinking water and irrigation purposes. It was demonstrated that there is a large groundwater potential to meet the entire Pra Basin’s current and future water demands. The main recharge area was identified as the northern zone, while the southern zone is the discharge area. The predominant influence of weathering of silicate minerals plays a key role in the chemical evolution of the groundwater. The work presented here provides fundamental insights into the hydrochemistry of the Pra Basin and provides data important to water managers for informed decision-making in planning and allocating water resources for various purposes. A novel inverse modelling approach was used in this study to identify different mineral compositions that determine the chemical evolution of groundwater in the Pra Basin. This modelling technique has the potential to simulate the composition of groundwater at the basin scale with large hydrochemical heterogeneity, using average water composition to represent established spatial groupings of water chemistry.

Description: Seafloor massive sulfides are modern analogues to ancient volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits, which are particularly enriched in volatile and precious metals (e.g., Te, Au, Ag, Cu, Bi, Se) in subduction-related settings. However, the sources of metals are still poorly constrained, and it remains elusive, whether magmatic volatile influx controls their distribution in submarine hydrothermal systems on the plate tectonic-scale. Here, we demonstrate, for the first time, that Te, As, and Sb contents as well as related Te/As and Te/Sb ratios vary systematically with the δ34S composition of pyrite and native S, as reported by high-resolution coupled SIMS δ34S and trace element LA-ICP-MS micro-analysis. The better correlation of element ratios (Te/As, Te/Sb) opposed to trace element contents (e.g., Te) with δ34S in pyrite demonstrates that element ratios provide a more robust record of magmatic volatile influx than their absolute contents. On this basis, we define a quantitative threshold of high Te/As (〉0.004) and Te/Sb (〉0.6) ratios in pyrite that are indicative of magmatic volatile influx to submarine subduction-related hydrothermal systems. Two-component fluid mixing simulations further revealed that 〈5 % of magmatic volatile influx drastically changes the Te/As (and Te/Sb) ratio of the modelled fluid, but only slightly changes its δ34S composition. This suggests that Te/As and Te/Sb ratios are more sensitive to a magmatic volatile influx into seawater-dominated hydrothermal systems than δ34S signatures if the magmatic volatile influx was low. Beyond this, our results demonstrate that magma-derived fluid mixing with seawater only has a negligible effect on the magmatic volatile record of Te/As and Te/Sb, while the S isotope system is prone for seawater overprinting leading to commonly ambiguous source signatures. Thus, Te/As and Te/Sb systematics in pyrite provide a robust proxy to evaluate the contribution of magmatic volatiles to submarine hydrothermal systems from the grain- to plate tectonic-scale.

Description: Present day system Earth research utilizes the tool ‘Scientific Drilling’ to access samples and to monitor deep Earth processes that cannot be tackled by other scientific means. Unlike most laboratory experiments or computer modelling, drilling projects are massive field endeavours requiring intense collaboration of researchers with engineers and service providers. In the framework of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, ICDP, more than seventy drilling projects have been conducted, from multiyear big research programs to short, smallscale deployments such as lake drilling projects. ICDP has supported these projects not only through grants covering field-related costs, but also through a variety of scientific-technical services and support, as well as active help in data management, outreach and publication. These services are described in this booklet. Due to its instructional character, we call it the ICDP Primer.

Description: Earlier experiments have shown that cyclic hydraulic fracturing (CHF) systematically reduces the monotonic breakdown pressure (MBP). However, cyclic injection also causes a significantly longer injection time to failure as compared to the monotonic injection tests and complex fracture propagation that is hard to predict. In this study, a different injection scheme employing rock fatigue behavior, named creep injection, was tested on granite cylinders. The creep injection creates continuous pressurization under a constant borehole pressure (CBP) with a pre-defined maximum value below the MBP. Three different pressure ratios (CBP/MBP) of 0.85, 0.9 and 0.95 were tested. We found that both the CHF and hydraulic fracturing with creep injection can reduce the breakdown pressure by ca. 15 ~ 20% without confining pressure. Two mechanisms could explain the reduction: the influence of fluid infiltration within the theory of linear poroelasticity and stress corrosion within the subcritical crack growth theory. The lifetime of the granite cores subjected to creep injection is comparable with previous CHF experiments employing the same pressure ratio. In addition, the lifetime increases logarithmically when the ratio of CBP/MBP is decreased. This relationship has a high regression coefficient of R2 = 0.97, and the lifetime can be well predicted using a stress corrosion index of 70. On the contrary, CHF shows a significantly larger variance in the lifetime with a regression coefficient of R2 = 0.19 and, therefore, is hard to predict. Our results also point out that the injection scheme can modify hydraulic fracture patterns, in terms of fracture aperture, branching, and fracture propagation.

Description: Qongjiagang pegmatite-type Li deposit in Tibet is the first discovered pegmatite-type deposit with economic value in the Himalayan region, which confirms that the Himalayan region has the potential to become a strategic base of rare metal in China, and provide indications to find pegmatite-type Li deposit in the Himalayan region. In this study, we use SEM to identify the type, frequency and occurrence (relationship with cracks) of mineral inclusions in the three main accessory minerals, monazite, apatite and zircon from granite and pegmatite of Qongjiagang Li deposit, combining with the EPMA analysis of feldspar inclusions in apatite to comprehensively trace the property and evolution of the melts and fluids. Our study indicates that: (1) the main mineral inclusions in monazite, apatite and zircon from Qongjiagang Li deposit include silicate, oxide, phosphates and a small amount of sulfide, not only the REE-rich monazite and apatite filling or intersecting cracks are formed by hydrothermal alteration, but also the uraninite and thorianite isolated from cracks occur in the self-irradiation region of zircon are related to fluids; (2) the appearances of columbite and pyrochlore inclusions in the apatite from tourmaline-muscovite granite demonstrate that the initial melt is enriched in Nb and Ta, the amount and type of rare metal mineral inclusions can be used as an indicator for rare metal mineralization in highly evolved granite and pegmatite; (3) the plagioclase inclusions with high and a large range of An values in apatite from spodumene pegmatite represent the capture of less-differentiated melt and continuously fractional crystallization. Our results indicate that the types and compositions of mineral inclusions in accessory minerals can be good tracers for the characteristics and evolution of melts and fluids in the highly evolved granite-pegmatite system

Description: This publication provides the codes produced for the article "Temporally dynamic carbon dioxide and methane emission factors for rewetted peatlands. Nature Communications Earth and Environment" by Aram Kalhori, Christian Wille, Pia Gottschalk, Zhan Li, Josh Hashemi, Karl Kemper, and Torsten Sachs (https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01226-9). In the article, the authors estimate the cumulative GHG emissions of a rewetted peatland in Germany using the long-term ecosystem flux measurements. They observe a source-to-sink transition of annual carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes and decreasing trend of methane (CH4) emissions. This software is written in R and MATLAB. Running the codes ([R files and .m files](Code)) and loading the data files ([CSV files and .mat files](Data)) requires the pre-installation of [R and RStudio] (https://posit.co/downloads/) and ([MATLAB]. The RStudio 2022.07.2 Build 576 version has been used for the R scripts. The land cover classification work was performed in QGIS, v.3.16.11-Hannover. Data were analyzed in both MATLAB and R and plots created with R (R Core Development Team 2020) in RStudio®.

Description: The data provided here is an exemplary dataset for the flux site Zarnekow from one year (2018). The complete dataset that is needed to run the codes for all the years can be obtained from the European Fluxes Database Cluster under site ID DE-Zrk (Sachs et al., 2016) or provided upon request. This repository is intended to provide the necessary MATLAB and R code to reproduce the results by Kalhori et al. (2024). The data are provided as zip folder containing (1) a csv file with associated definition of variables and units (file: 2023-004_Kalhori-et-al_README_2018_units.txt), (2) a shapefile (file: 2023-004_Kalhori-et-al_2018_LAiV_DOP.shp) and (3) a Geotiff (file: 2023-004_Kalhori-et-al_2018_LAiV_DOP.tiff).

Description: Hydrothermal alteration is crucial in the formation of many ore deposits, with potassium (K) mobilization and cycling being prevalent. Potassic metasomatism of wall rocks generally forms K-bearing minerals, such as hydrothermal feldspar and mica. However, determining the source and redistribution of K (and other elements transported by the same fluid) in hydrothermal systems is challenging. K isotopes offer a potential solution to this problem. This study presents new K isotope data from two K-rich alteration assemblages — K-feldspar and sericite-quartz-pyrite — in the Jiaodong gold province of China. The data covers a compositional range from unaltered granites to syn-magmatic potassic alteration (formation of K-feldspar) and post-magmatic syn-mineralization phyllic alteration (formation of sericite). Potassic alteration in granite correlates with significant K addition, whereas phyllic alteration of earlier phases of magmatic and hydrothermal K-feldspar resulted in K loss. K-feldspar altered granites display similar δ41K values (–0.55 to –0.42 ‰ for whole-rocks and –0.56 to –0.48 ‰ for K-feldspar separates) as unaltered granite (–0.52 to –0.47 ‰). The narrow δ41K range suggests that magmatic fluid exsolution and magmatic-hydrothermal alteration have a minor effect on δ41K of the altered rock. Phyllic alteration of K-feldspar altered precursor rock leads to K loss and elevated δ41K values ranging from –0.36 to –0.19 ‰ for whole-rocks and –0.34 to –0.17 ‰ for sericite mineral separates. As sericite preferentially incorporates 41K, sericite will have higher δ41K values than the precursor K-feldspar, whereas the fluids will have lower δ41K values. Our study demonstrates that hydrothermal alteration may affect the K isotope composition of altered rocks in several ways, contingent on the nature of the involved phases, making K isotopes a promising tool for studying hydrothermal alteration and associated mineralization.

Description: Significant progress in permafrost carbon science made over the past decades include the identification of vast permafrost carbon stocks, the development of new pan-Arctic permafrost maps, an increase in terrestrial measurement sites for CO2 and methane fluxes, and important factors affecting carbon cycling, including vegetation changes, periods of soil freezing and thawing, wildfire, and other disturbance events. Process-based modeling studies now include key elements of permafrost carbon cycling and advances in statistical modeling and inverse modeling enhance understanding of permafrost region C budgets. By combining existing data syntheses and model outputs, the permafrost region is likely a wetland methane source and small terrestrial ecosystem CO2 sink with lower net CO2 uptake toward higher latitudes, excluding wildfire emissions. For 2002–2014, the strongest CO2 sink was located in western Canada (median: −52 g C m−2 y−1) and smallest sinks in Alaska, Canadian tundra, and Siberian tundra (medians: −5 to −9 g C m−2 y−1). Eurasian regions had the largest median wetland methane fluxes (16–18 g CH4 m−2 y−1). Quantifying the regional scale carbon balance remains challenging because of high spatial and temporal variability and relatively low density of observations. More accurate permafrost region carbon fluxes require: (a) the development of better maps characterizing wetlands and dynamics of vegetation and disturbances, including abrupt permafrost thaw; (b) the establishment of new year-round CO2 and methane flux sites in underrepresented areas; and (c) improved models that better represent important permafrost carbon cycle dynamics, including non-growing season emissions and disturbance effects.

Description: This data set includes the results of high-resolution digital elevation models (DEM) and digital image correlation (DIC) analysis applied to analogue modelling experiments. Twenty generic analogue models are extended on top of a rubber sheet. Two benchmark experiments are also reported. Detailed descriptions of the experiments can be found in Liu et al. (submitted) to which this data set is supplement. The data presented here are visualized as topography and the horizontal cumulative surface strain (principal strain and slip rake).

Description: Rapidly growing seismic and macroseismic databases and simplified access to advanced machine learning methods have in recent years opened up vast opportunities to address challenges in engineering and strong motion seismology from novel, datacentric perspectives. In this thesis, I explore the opportunities of such perspectives for the tasks of ground motion modeling and rapid earthquake impact assessment, tasks with major implications for long-term earthquake disaster mitigation. In my first study, I utilize the rich strong motion database from the Kanto basin, Japan, and apply the U-Net artificial neural network architecture to develop a deep learning based ground motion model. The operational prototype provides statistical estimates of expected ground shaking, given descriptions of a specific earthquake source, wave propagation paths, and geophysical site conditions. The U-Net interprets ground motion data in its spatial context, potentially taking into account, for example, the geological properties in the vicinity of observation sites. Predictions of ground motion intensity are thereby calibrated to individual observation sites and earthquake locations. The second study addresses the explicit incorporation of rupture forward directivity into ground motion modeling. Incorporation of this phenomenon, causing strong, pulse like ground shaking in the vicinity of earthquake sources, is usually associated with an intolerable increase in computational demand during probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) calculations. I suggest an approach in which I utilize an artificial neural network to efficiently approximate the average, directivity-related adjustment to ground motion predictions for earthquake ruptures from the 2022 New Zealand National Seismic Hazard Model. The practical implementation in an actual PSHA calculation demonstrates the efficiency and operational readiness of my model. In a follow-up study, I present a proof of concept for an alternative strategy in which I target the generalizing applicability to ruptures other than those from the New Zealand National Seismic Hazard Model. In the third study, I address the usability of pseudo-intensity reports obtained from macroseismic observations by non-expert citizens for rapid impact assessment. I demonstrate that the statistical properties of pseudo-intensity collections describing the intensity of shaking are correlated with the societal impact of earthquakes. In a second step, I develop a probabilistic model that, within minutes of an event, quantifies the probability of an earthquake to cause considerable societal impact. Under certain conditions, such a quick and preliminary method might be useful to support decision makers in their efforts to organize auxiliary measures for earthquake disaster response while results from more elaborate impact assessment frameworks are not yet available. The application of machine learning methods to datasets that only partially reveal characteristics of Big Data, qualify the majority of results obtained in this thesis as explorative insights rather than ready-to-use solutions to real world problems. The practical usefulness of this work will be better assessed in the future by applying the approaches developed to growing and increasingly complex data sets.

Description: Das rapide Wachstum seismischer und makroseismischer Datenbanken und der vereinfachte Zugang zu fortschrittlichen Methoden aus dem Bereich des maschinellen Lernens haben in den letzen Jahren die datenfokussierte Betrachtung von Fragestellungen in der Seismologie ermöglicht. In dieser Arbeit erforsche ich das Potenzial solcher Betrachtungsweisen im Hinblick auf die Modellierung erdbebenbedingter Bodenerschütterungen und der raschen Einschätzung von gesellschaftlichen Erdbebenauswirkungen, Disziplinen von erheblicher Bedeutung für den langfristigen Erdbebenkatastrophenschutz in seismisch aktiven Regionen. In meiner ersten Studie nutze ich die Vielzahl an Bodenbewegungsdaten aus der Kanto Region in Japan, sowie eine spezielle neuronale Netzwerkarchitektur (U-Net) um ein Bodenbewegungsmodell zu entwickeln. Der einsatzbereite Prototyp liefert auf Basis der Charakterisierung von Erdbebenherden, Wellenausbreitungspfaden und Bodenbeschaffenheiten statistische Schätzungen der zu erwartenden Bodenerschütterungen. Das U-Net interpretiert Bodenbewegungsdaten im räumlichen Kontext, sodass etwa die geologischen Beschaffenheiten in der Umgebung von Messstationen mit einbezogen werden können. Auch die absoluten Koordinaten von Erdbebenherden und Messstationen werden berücksichtigt. Die zweite Studie behandelt die explizite Berücksichtigung richtungsabhängiger Verstärkungseffekte in der Bodenbewegungsmodellierung. Obwohl solche Effekte starke, impulsartige Erschütterungen in der Nähe von Erdbebenherden erzeugen, die eine erhebliche seismische Beanspruchung von Gebäuden darstellen, wird deren explizite Modellierung in der seismischen Gefährdungsabschätzung aufgrund des nicht vertretbaren Rechenaufwandes ausgelassen. Mit meinem, auf einem neuronalen Netzwerk basierenden, Ansatz schlage ich eine Methode vor, umdieses Vorhaben effizient für Erdbebenszenarien aus dem neuseeländischen seismischen Gefährdungsmodell für 2022 (NSHM) umzusetzen. Die Implementierung in einer seismischen Gefährdungsrechnung unterstreicht die Praktikabilität meines Modells. In einer anschließenden Machbarkeitsstudie untersuche ich einen alternativen Ansatz der auf die Anwendbarkeit auf beliebige Erdbebeszenarien abzielt. Die abschließende dritte Studie befasst sich mit dem potenziellen Nutzen der von makroseismischen Beobachtungen abgeleiteten pseudo-Erschütterungsintensitäten für die rasche Abschätzung von gesellschaftlichen Erdbebenauswirkungen. Ich zeige, dass sich aus den Merkmalen solcher Daten Schlussfolgerungen über die gesellschaftlichen Folgen eines Erdbebens ableiten lassen. Basierend darauf formuliere ich ein statistisches Modell, welches innerhalb weniger Minuten nach einem Erdbeben die Wahrscheinlichkeit für das Auftreten beachtlicher gesellschaftlicher Auswirkungen liefert. Ich komme zu dem Schluss, dass ein solches Modell, unter bestimmten Bedingungen, hilfreich sein könnte, um EntscheidungsträgerInnen in ihren Bestrebungen Hilfsmaßnahmen zu organisieren zu unterstützen. Die Anwendung von Methoden des maschinellen Lernens auf Datensätze die sich nur begrenzt als Big Data charakterisieren lassen, qualifizieren die Mehrheit der Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit als explorative Einblicke und weniger als einsatzbereite Lösungen für praktische Fragestellungen. Der praktische Nutzen dieser Arbeit wird sich in erst in Zukunft an der Anwendung der erarbeiteten Ansätze auf wachsende und zunehmend komplexe Datensätze final abschätzen lassen.

Description: Enhanced knowledge of the Pamir salient formation can contribute to comprehending the tectonic evolution of Himalaya-Tibetan orogen. However, whether the Pamir salient formed along a linear or a curved southern Asian margin between the Tarim and Tajik cratons remains controversial. Likewise, the role of the two craton blocks during the evolution of the Pamir salient is unclear. Here we present three sandbox experiments exploring the effect of the geometry of the southern Asian margin, as well as the presence of Tarim and Tajik cratons. The results show that the highly curved shape of the Pamir salient, transpressional faults in its wings and strike-slip faults within its interior only form along a curved southern Asian margin. A westward-deflecting arcuate thrust wedge formed along the asymmetric curved southern Asian margin. Together with the Tarim craton and the Tajik craton, this wedge facilitated the westward transfer of materials in the Pamir, and resulted in the westward deflection of the velocity field in Pamir and the formation of the Tajik fold-thrust belt. The oblique slip of arcuate thrust wedge along the western edge of the Tarim craton generated the Kongur extensional system. Moreover, the Tarim and Tajik cratons concentrated deformation mainly along the non-cratonic continental margin and promoted the formation of transpressional faults surrounding the Pamir and the strike-slip faults within the Pamir.

Description: The European Geosciences Union (EGU) brings together geoscientists from all over Europe and the rest of the world, covering all disciplines of Earth, planetary and space sciences. The Division on Energy, Resources and the Environment (ERE), as part of the EGU, follows an interdisciplinary approach to serve society and provide solutions to challenges of our time and in the future. One task for humankind, for example, is to provide adequate and reliable supplies of affordable energy and other resources, obtained in environmentally sustainable ways, which will be essential for economic prosperity, environmental quality and political stability around the world. This volume of Advances in Geosciences spans the range of topics of the division and continues a series of ten ERE special issues over the course of the last ten years. We incorporate emerging topics into the division ERE along the line and we advocate that every idea and opportunity should be studied and tested.

Description: The European Geosciences Union (EGU) brings together geoscientists from all over Europe and the rest of the world, covering all disciplines of Earth, planetary and space sciences. The Division on Energy, Resources and the Environment (ERE), as part of the EGU, follows an interdisciplinary approach to serve society and provide solutions to challenges of our time and in the future. One task for humankind, for example, is to provide adequate and reliable supplies of affordable energy and other resources, obtained in environmentally sustainable ways, which will be essential for economic prosperity, environmental quality and political stability around the world. This volume of Advances in Geosciences spans the range of topics of the division and continues a series of ten ERE special issues over the course of the last ten years. We incorporate emerging topics into the division ERE along the line and we advocate that every idea and opportunity should be studied and tested.

Description: Several studies investigated changes in microbial community composition in thawing permafrost landscapes, but microbial assemblages in the transient ecosystems of the Arctic coastline remain poorly understood. Thermokarst lakes, abrupt permafrost thaw features, are widespread along the pan-Arctic coast and transform into thermokarst lagoons upon coastal erosion and sea-level rise. This study looks at the effect of marine water inundation (imposing a sulfate-rich, saline environment on top of former thermokarst lake sediments) on microbial community composition and the processes potentially driving microbial community assembly. In the uppermost lagoon sediment influenced from marine water inflow, the microbial structures were significantly different from those deeper in the lagoon sediment and from those of the lakes. In addition, they became more similar along depth compared with lake communities. At the same time, the diversity of core microbial consortia community decreased compared with the lake sediments. This work provides initial observational evidence that Arctic thermokarst lake to lagoon transitions do not only substantially alter microbial communities but also that this transition has a larger effect than permafrost thaw and lake formation history.

Description: High-resolution flood maps are needed for more effective flood risk assessment and management. Producing these directly with hydrodynamic models is slow and computationally prohibitive at large scales. Here we demonstrate a new algorithm for post-processing low-resolution inundation layers by using high-resolution terrain models to disaggregate or downscale. The new algorithm is roughly 8 times faster than state-of-the-art algorithms and shows a slight improvement in accuracy when evaluated against observations of a recent flood using standard performance metrics. Qualitatively, the algorithm generates more physically coherent flood maps in some hydraulically challenging regions compared to the state of the art. The algorithm developed here is open source and can be applied in conjunction with a low-resolution hydrodynamic model and a high-resolution DEM to rapidly produce high-resolution inundation maps. For example, in our case study with a river reach of 20 km, the proposed algorithm generated a 4 m resolution inundation map from 32 m hydrodynamic model outputs in 33 s compared to a 4 m hydrodynamic model runtime of 34 min. This 60-fold improvement in runtime is associated with a 25 % increase in RMSE when compared against the 4 m hydrodynamic model results and observations of a recent flood. Substituting downscaling into flood risk model chains for high-resolution modelling has the potential to drastically improve the efficiency of inundation map production and increase the lead time of impact-based forecasts, helping more at-risk communities prepare for and mitigate flood damages.

Description: To design user-centred and scientifically high-quality outreach products to inform about earthquake-related hazards and the associated risk, a close collaboration between the model developers and communication experts is needed. In this contribution, we present the communication strategy developed to support the public release of the first openly available European Seismic Risk Model and the updated European Seismic Hazard Model. The backbone of the strategy was the communication concept in which the overall vision, communication principles, target audiences (including personas), key messages, and products were defined. To fulfil the end-users' needs, we conducted two user testing surveys: one for the interactive risk map viewer and one for the risk poster with a special emphasis on the European earthquake risk map. To further ensure that the outreach products are not only understandable and attractive for different target groups but also adequate from a scientific point of view, a two-fold feedback mechanism involving experts in the field was implemented. Through a close collaboration with a network of communication specialists from other institutions supporting the release, additional feedback and exchange of knowledge was enabled. Our insights, gained as part of the release process, can support others in developing user-centred products reviewed by experts in the field to inform about hazard and risk models.

Description: Large parts of the Earth’s interior are inaccessible to direct observation, yet global geodynamic processes are governed by the physical material properties under extreme pressure and temperature conditions. It is therefore essential to investigate the deep Earth’s physical properties through in-situ laboratory experiments. With this goal in mind, the optical properties of mantle minerals at high pressure offer a unique way to determine a variety of physical properties, in a straight-forward, reproducible, and time-effective manner, thus providing valuable insights into the physical processes of the deep Earth. This thesis focusses on the system Mg-Fe-O, specifically on the optical properties of periclase (MgO) and its iron-bearing variant ferropericlase ((Mg,Fe)O), forming a major planetary building block. The primary objective is to establish links between physical material properties and optical properties. In particular the spin transition in ferropericlase, the second-most abundant phase of the lower mantle, is known to change the physical material properties. Although the spin transition region likely extends down to the core-mantle boundary, the ef-fects of the mixed-spin state, where both high- and low-spin state are present, remains poorly constrained. In the studies presented herein, we show how optical properties are linked to physical properties such as electrical conductivity, radiative thermal conductivity and viscosity. We also show how the optical properties reveal changes in the chemical bonding. Furthermore, we unveil how the chemical bonding, the optical and other physical properties are affected by the iron spin transition. We find opposing trends in the pres-sure dependence of the refractive index of MgO and (Mg,Fe)O. From 1 atm to ~140 GPa, the refractive index of MgO decreases by ~2.4% from 1.737 to 1.696 (±0.017). In contrast, the refractive index of (Mg0.87Fe0.13)O (Fp13) and (Mg0.76Fe0.24)O (Fp24) ferropericlase increases with pressure, likely because Fe Fe interactions between adjacent iron sites hinder a strong decrease of polarizability, as it is observed with increasing density in the case of pure MgO. An analysis of the index dispersion in MgO (decreasing by ~23% from 1 atm to ~103 GPa) reflects a widening of the band gap from ~7.4 eV at 1 atm to ~8.5 (±0.6) eV at ~103 GPa. The index dispersion (between 550 and 870 nm) of Fp13 reveals a decrease by a factor of ~3 over the spin transition range (~44–100 GPa). We show that the electrical band gap of ferropericlase significantly widens up to ~4.7 eV in the mixed spin region, equivalent to an increase by a factor of ~1.7. We propose that this is due to a lower electron mobility between adjacent Fe2+ sites of opposite spin, explaining the previously observed low electrical conductivity in the mixed spin region. From the study of absorbance spectra in Fp13, we show an increasing covalency of the Fe-O bond with pressure for high-spin ferropericlase, whereas in the low-spin state a trend to a more ionic nature of the Fe-O bond is observed, indicating a bond weakening effect of the spin transition. We found that the spin transition is ultimately caused by both an increase of the ligand field-splitting energy and a decreasing spin-pairing energy of high-spin Fe2+.

Description: Geodynamische Prozesse werden von den physikalischen Materialeigenschaften unter den extremen Druck- und Temperaturbedingungen des Erdinneren gesteuert, gerade diese Areale sind aber faktisch nicht für direkte Beobachtungen zugänglich. Umso wichtiger ist es, die physikalischen Eigenschaften unter Bedingungen des Erdinneren zu untersuchen. Mit diesem Ziel vor Augen erlaubt das Studium der optischen Eigenschaften von Mineralen des Erdmantels, eine große Bandbreite an physikalischen Materialeigenschaften, in einer einfachen, reproduzierbaren und effizienten Art und Weise zu bestimmen. Dadurch bieten sich wichtige Einblicke in die physikalischen Prozessen des Erdinneren. Die vorliegende Arbeit konzentriert sich auf das System Mg-Fe-O, im Speziellen auf Periklas (MgO) und seine Eisen-haltige Variante Ferroperiklas ((Mg,Fe)O), ein wichtiger Baustein planetarer Körper. Das Hauptziel der Arbeit besteht darin Verbindungen zwischen optischen Eigenschaften und physikalischen Materialeigenschaften zu finden. Gerade der Spin-Übergang in Ferroperiklas, der zweithäufigsten Phase des unteren Erdmantels, ist dabei von Bedeutung, da damit Veränderungen in den physikalischen Materialeigenschaften einhergehen. Obwohl sich der Spinübergangsbereich vermutlich bis zur Kern-Mantel-Grenze erstreckt, sind die Auswirkungen des gemischten Spin-Zustandes, bei dem sowohl Hoch- als auch Tief-Spin präsent sind, nur unzureichend untersucht. Die hier vorgestellten Studien zeigen, wie optische Eigenschaften mit anderen wichtigen physikalischen Eigenschaften wie elektrischer und thermischer Leitfähigkeit, Viskosität oder auch mit der chemischen Bindung verbunden sind. Daraus lässt sich auch ableiten wie der Spin-Übergang in Ferroperiklas diese Eigenschaften beeinflusst. Von Raumbedingungen bis zu ~140 GPa sinkt der Brechungsindex von MgO um ~2.4 % von 1.737 auf 1.696 (±0.017). Im Gegensatz dazu steigt der Brechungsindex von (Mg0.87Fe0.13)O (Fp13) und (Mg0.76Fe0.24)O (Fp24) Ferroperiklas mit dem Druck an. Dies ist auf Fe-Fe Wechselwirkungen zwischen benachbarten Eisenpositionen zurückzuführen, die eine starke Verringerung der Polarisierbarkeit, wie im Falle von reinem MgO mit zunehmender Dichte, behindern. Eine Analyse der Dispersion des Brechungsindexes von MgO (Abnahme um ~23 % von 1 Atm zu ~103 GPa) offenbart eine Verbreiterung der Bandlücke von ~7.4 eV bei 1 Atm zu ~8.5 (±0.6) eV bei ~103 GPa. Die Messung der Dispersion (zwischen 550 und 870 nm) in Fp13 zeigt eine starke Abnahme über den Bereich des Spin-Überganges (~44–100 GPa) bis zu einem Faktor von ~3. Die Bandlücke nimmt in der Region des gemischten Spin-Zustandes signifikant auf bis zu ~4.7 eV zu (entspricht einer Zunahme um den Faktor ~1.7). Dies deutet auf eine Verringerung der Elektronen-Mobilität zwischen benachbarten Fe2+-Positionen mit unterschiedlichem Spin-Zustand hin, was die bereits in früheren Arbeiten beobachtete Abnahme der elektrischen Leitfähigkeit im Bereich des gemischten Spin-Zustandes erklärt. Absorptionsspektren an Fp13 zeigen eine Druck-bedingte Zunahme der Kovalenz der Fe-O Bindung für Ferroperiklas im Hoch-Spin Zustand, wohingegen Tief-Spin Ferroperiklas einen Trend zu einer mehr ionischen Fe-O Bindung auf-weist, was auf einen Bindungs-schwächenden Effekt des Spin-Wechsels hinweist. Der Übergang von Hoch- zu Tiefspin ist letztlich auf eine Zunahme der Ligandenfeldaufspaltungsenergie sowie eine abnehmende Spinpaarungsenergie von Hoch-Spin Fe2+ zurückzuführen.

Description: The bacterial strains Brochothrix thermosphacta DH-B18 and Rathayibacter sp. DH-RSZ4 were isolated from raw sausage and escalope samples and grown in a CO2-rich modified atmosphere. Here, we present both circular genomes obtained by nanopore sequencing.

Description: Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is becoming a powerful tool for earthquake monitoring, providing continuous strain-rate records of seismic events along fiber optic cables. However, the use of standard seismological techniques for earthquake source characterization requires the conversion of data in ground motion quantities. In this study we provide a new formulation for far-field strain radiation emitted by a seismic rupture, which allows to directly analyze DAS data in their native physical quantity. This formulation naturally accounts for the complex directional sensitivity of the fiber to body waves and to the shallow layering beneath the cable. In this domain, we show that the spectral amplitude of the strain integral is related to the Fourier transform of the source time function, and its modeling allows to determine the source parameters. We demonstrate the validity of the technique on two case-studies, where source parameters are consistent with estimates from standard seismic instruments in magnitude range 2.0–4.3. When analyzing events from a 1-month DAS survey in Chile, moment-corner frequency distribution shows scale invariant stress drop estimates, with an average of Δσ = (0.8 ± 0.6) MPa. Analysis of DAS data acquired in the Southern Apennines shows a dominance of the local attenuation that masks the effective corner frequency of the events. After estimating the local attenuation coefficient, we were able to retrieve the corner frequencies for the largest magnitude events in the catalog. Overall, this approach shows the capability of DAS technology to depict the characteristic scales of seismic sources and the released moment.

Description: Northeastern Eurasia is one of the least explored regions in the world. Very little geophysical data is available for this inaccessible area. Even the exact location of the plate boundary between Eurasia and North America remains a subject of ongoing debate. The effective elastic thickness (EET) of the lithosphere is a proxy for lithospheric strength and can provide insight into the thermal regime and tectonic processes. We have computed a high-resolution map of the EET for northeastern Eurasia using the fan wavelet coherence technique applied to the Bouguer gravity anomalies and topography/bathymetry data, appropriately adjusted to account for the influence of density variations within sediments. The results obtained provide insights into different tectonic regimes within this predominantly understudied region. In particular, we identify the boundary between the Eurasian and North American plates in Siberia as a rheologically weak diffusive zone extending from the Verkhoyansk and Sette-Daban Ranges to the eastern boundary of the Chersky Range. Unlike the Sette-Daban and Verkhoyansk Ranges, which were formed by plate collision and have an EET of 30–50 km, other mountainous regions have much lower EET values, usually less than 15 km. These areas have recently experienced tectonic activity that has weakened the lithosphere.

Description: This study introduces a new approach for in situ Rb–Sr dating that utilizes rapid line scans instead of static spot ablation, enabling the creation of two-dimensional 87Rb/86Sr and 87Sr/86Sr isotope ratio and Rb–Sr age maps. The data acquisition is conducted utilizing an ICP-MS/MS instrument with N2O as the reaction gas, coupled to a 193 nm excimer laser via a low-aerosol-dispersion interface. This configuration allows for high repetition rates (〉100 Hz) and sensitivities, enabling data acquisition at a high scanning speed and small laser beam size (3–4 μm). Notably, this approach requires just about 1/30 of the sample volume typically utilized in conventional spot ablation mode, while achieving similar levels of precision and accuracy. Line scan ablation is tested and compared to spot ablation on age-homogeneous crystalline muscovite and biotite, for which reference Rb–Sr age data is acquired through ID-TIMS. Results show that a key requirement for accurate Rb–Sr ages based on line scan analyses is matrix correction using chemically matched crystalline mica. By presenting Rb–Sr age maps of three naturally deformed mica samples, we highlight the potential of Rb–Sr mapping for extracting age data from rocks that exhibit complex metamorphic-metasomatic histories and microscale dynamic recrystallization. Additionally, we show that quantitative elemental information (Al, Fe, Si, Li) can be collected alongside Rb–Sr isotope data. This advancement offers a distinctly more insightful assessment of isotope mobility in natural systems, the timing of element enrichment processes and enables, in high-Rb/Sr rock systems, precise and accurate isotopic dating of intricate geological processes at small scales.

Description: Correction to: Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-023-03714-4 In the original publication, the “Funding Information” and “Acknowledgements” were mistakenly swapped.

Description: With the ongoing deployment of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) ground stations and the modernization of satellite signal systems, the utilization of various augmentation technologies enables the realization of Precise Point Positioning (PPP) in real-time. Augmentation technology, which introduces precise atmospheric and signal-related delays, has become an essential component of high-precision real-time services and is attracting growing interest in scientific research, disaster monitoring, autopilot, etc. Previous studies have dedicated significant efforts to enhance the generation and dissemination of augmentation information on the service side and improve real-time positioning algorithms on the user side. The real-time atmosphere augmentation information with sufficient accuracy and proper constraint, and reliable Ambiguity Resolution (AR) for this purpose is the main focus of current GNSS research. However, these efforts have primarily been concentrated on small or medium-sized regions with the capability for transmitting massive data volumes. Alternatively, they have focused on larger areas, but with slow convergence due to the imprecise nature of atmosphere information. To address the challenge posed by the trade-offs among service area size, correction volume, and the precision of represented correction, a new augmentation strategy is proposed. This approach integrates the advantages of atmospheric delay fitting models, unmodeled residuals, and uncertainty information to achieve rapid and high-precision positioning, all while reducing data transmission volume for larger areas. It also allows users to implement different positioning modes depending on their communication capacity. Additionally, all deviations among different types of receivers and satellite signals are calibrated in this study for reliable AR can be achieved on all reference stations. The main contribution of this thesis is summarized as follows. With the real-time precise orbit, clock, and Uncalibrated Phase Delay (UPD) products, precise atmospheric delay corrections relying on reliable AR can be derived for large-areas augmentation services. To address the challenge of achieving reliable AR across different receiver types and various satellite signals, this thesis proposes a comprehensive method for calibrating receiver-type-related satellite-specific deviations and analyzes the impact of satellite signal bias corrections in data processing. The primary objective is to enhance the reliability of AR, enabling the utilization of all available signals and receiver types in large-area services. Subsequently, new tropospheric and ionospheric delay fitting models applied for large-area are carried out according to the properties of their propagation paths. In addition, the corresponding atmospheric delay uncertainty for large areas is introduced based on the fitting residuals. Finally, a hierarchical mode is developed for augmentation services, leveraging the advantages of the fitting model and uncertainty grid to reduce data volume and incorporating regional fitting residuals using the interpolation model and ionospheric delay error function, depending on the network capability. Based on hierarchical augmentation, positioning in large areas can not only achieve rapid/instantaneous high-precision convergence but also overcome the conflict among correction volume, represented precision, and coverage size. In order to derive precise atmospheric delay and accelerate positioning, implementing reliable and robust AR across all types of receivers and satellite signals is essential. It also demonstrates and discusses the advantages of calibrating satellite-signal and receiver-type-related satellite-specific deviations in AR solutions. The deviations related to receivers in terms of UPD products are assessed and calibrated, confirming that a 0.03 cycle consistency in wide lane UPD can be achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated using GPS satellite signals, which can improve the AR rate by at least 10% and produce more reliable results. In addition, the impact of different signal settings and corrections on orbit, clock, and UPD generation, as well as positioning and pseudo-range signal systematic and stochastic residuals, is analyzed. These processing strategies provide flexible observation selections, allowing the utilization of all available satellite signals and receiver types, thereby enabling reliable AR and a higher fixing rate. As a result, an AR fixing rate exceeding 95% is achievable across all stations in large-area services. For precise atmospheric delay modeling over large areas, new models are proposed, including a tropospheric Zenith Wet Delay (ZWD) model and a satellite-wise ionospheric slant delay fitting model. The tropospheric delay model takes the exponential function of water vapor vertical changes into consideration, addressing model anomalies in areas with large altitude differences. The new ionospheric delay fitting model introduces the trigonometric functions to describe differences in slant path delays between the optimal reference propagation path and others, achieving superior modeling performance in large areas. The precision of the fitting model, utilizing a 200 km station-spacing network, demonstrates tropospheric ZWD and ionospheric slant delays of 1.3 cm and 8.9 cm, respectively, with smaller standard deviations. These new fitting models overcome the challenge of handling massive information for providing station-wise corrections and avoid an increase in the number of coefficients. In addition to the function model, the stochastic model, i.e., uncertainty information, is essential for describing the quality of corrections. The atmospheric delay uncertainty for the large-area fitting model is generated based on the fitting residuals and represented in forms of grid-point. Additionally, regional ionosphere unmodeled residual uncertainty is represented by the form of liner function, which is established by the relationship between distance and interpolation precision through inter-satellite cross-verification among all reference stations. The differences between uncertainty value and real delays are 2.5 cm and 0.5 cm for grid and function forms, respectively. For real-time applications in large areas, the fitting model and grid-based atmosphere uncertainty serve as the essential information, satisfying the requirement of rapid positioning. By further incorporating unmodeled residuals and ionosphere error function, a hierarchical augmentation model is provided. Based on the fitting model established for large areas, unmodeled residuals are further introduced as optional compensation for specific areas, depending on the magnitude of fitting residuals. This approach results in a 97% reduction in tropospheric delay and a 65% reduction in ionospheric delay transmission volume. Furthermore, leveraging the regional high capability of communication, 85.3% of all solutions can achieve instantaneous convergence at the first epoch with the aid of corresponding regional compensation. This thesis proposes a large areas augmentation service to overcome the conflict among correction data volume, represented precision, and coverage size. It demonstrates the benefits of an augmentation mode that integrates regional information into large-area services. Under these conditions, a more reliable and rapid AR solution can be easily achieved based on precise atmospheric delay correction and uncertainty in large areas with fewer data volume requirements. This is beneficial for actual real-time services and applications.

Description: Mit der laufenden Bereitstellung von Bodenstationen für globale Navigationssatellitensysteme (GNSS) und der Modernisierung von Satellitensignal-Systemen ermöglicht die Nutzung verschiedener Augmentationstechnologien die Realisierung der Präzisen Punkt-Positionierung (PPP) in Echtzeit. Augmentationstechnologie, die präzise atmosphärische und signalbezogene Verzögerungen einführt, ist zu einem wesentlichen Bestandteil hochpräziser Echtzeitdienste geworden und findet wachsendes Interesse in wissenschaftlicher Forschung, Katastrophenüberwachung, Autopiloten usw. Frühere Studien haben erhebliche Anstrengungen darauf verwendet, die Erzeugung und Verbreitung von Augmentationsinformationen auf der Dienstseite zu verbessern und Echtzeit-Positionierungsalgorithmen auf der Benutzerseite zu optimieren. Die Echtzeit-Atmosphärenaugmentationsinformationen mit ausreichender Genauigkeit und angemessener Einschränkung sowie zuverlässige Ambiguitätsauflösung (AR) für diesen Zweck stehen im Mittelpunkt der aktuellen GNSS-Forschung. Diese Bemühungen konzentrierten sich jedoch hauptsächlich auf kleine oder mittelgroße Regionen mit der Fähigkeit zur Übertragung großer Datenmengen. Alternativ richteten sie sich auf größere Gebiete, jedoch mit langsamer Konvergenz aufgrund der ungenauen Natur der Atmosphäreninformation. Um der Herausforderung durch die Abwägung zwischen Größe des Dienstleistungsgebiets, Korrekturvolumen und Präzision der dargestellten Korrektur zu begegnen, wird eine neue Augmentationsstrategie vorgeschlagen. Dieser Ansatz integriert die Vorteile atmosphärischer Verzögerungsanpassungsmodelle, nicht modellierter Reste und Unsicherheitsinformationen, um eine schnelle und hochpräzise Positionierung zu erreichen, und das bei gleichzeitiger Reduzierung der Datenübertragungsvolumina für größere Gebiete. Es ermöglicht den Benutzern auch, verschiedene Positionierungsmodi je nach ihrer Kommunikationskapazität zu implementieren. Zusätzlich werden in dieser Studie alle Abweichungen zwischen verschiedenen Typen von Empfängern und Satellitensignalen kalibriert, um eine zuverlässige AR an allen Referenzstationen zu erreichen. Die Hauptbeiträge dieser Arbeit werden wie folgt zusammengefasst. Mit den Echtzeit-Präzbitbahnen, Uhren und Uncalibrated Phase Delay (UPD)-Produkten können präzise atmosphärische Verzögerungskorrekturen für großflächige Augmentationsdienste abgeleitet werden, die auf zuverlässiger AR basieren. Um die Herausforderung zu bewältigen, eine zuverlässige AR über verschiedene Empfängertypen und verschiedene Satellitensignale hinweg zu erreichen, schlägt diese Arbeit eine umfassende Methode zur Kalibrierung von empfängertypbezogenen satellspezifischen Abweichungen vor und analysiert die Auswirkungen von Korrekturen für Satellitensignalverzerrungen in der Datenverarbeitung. Das Hauptziel besteht darin, die Zuverlässigkeit der AR zu verbessern und die Nutzung aller verfügbaren Signale und Empfängertypen in großflächigen Diensten zu ermöglichen. Anschließend werden neue troposphärische und ionosphärische Verzögerungsanpassungsmodelle für großflächige Anwendungen gemäß den Eigenschaften ihrer Ausbreitungspfade durchgeführt. Darüber hinaus wird die entsprechende atmosphärische Verzögerungsunsicherheit für große Gebiete auf der Grundlage der Anpassungsreste eingeführt. Schließlich wird ein hierarchischer Modus für Augmentationsdienste entwickelt, der die Vorteile des Anpassungsmodells und des Unsicherheitsgitters nutzt, um das Datenvolumen zu reduzieren und regionale Anpassungsreste unter Verwendung des Interpolationsmodells und der ionosphärischen Verzögerungsfehlerfunktion, abhängig von der Netzwerkfähigkeit, zu integrieren. Basierend auf der hierarchischen Augmentation kann die Positionierung in großen Gebieten nicht nur eine schnelle/instantane hochpräzise Konvergenz erreichen, sondern auch den Konflikt zwischen Korrekturvolumen, dargestellter Präzision und Abdeckungsgröße überwinden. Um präzise atmosphärische Verzögerungen abzuleiten und die Positionierung zu beschleunigen, ist es entscheidend, eine zuverlässige und robuste AR über alle Arten von Empfängern und Satellitensignalen zu implementieren. Es zeigt auch die Vorteile der Kalibrierung von satellitensignal- und empfängertypbezogenen satellspezifischen Abweichungen in AR-Lösungen auf. Die Abweichungen im Zusammenhang mit Empfängern in Bezug auf UPD-Produkte werden bewertet und kalibriert, wobei bestätigt wird, dass eine Konsistenz von 0,03 Zyklen bei Wide-Lane-UPD erreicht werden kann. Die Wirksamkeit des vorgeschlagenen Ansatzes wird unter Verwendung von GPS-Satellitensignalen demonstriert, die die AR-Rate um mindestens 10% verbessern und zu zuverlässigeren Ergebnissen führen können. Darüber hinaus wird der Einfluss unterschiedlicher Signalparameter und Korrekturen auf die Erzeugung von Orbit, Uhr und UPD sowie auf die Positionierung und systematische und stochastische Reste der Pseudo-Range-Signale analysiert. Diese Verarbeitungsstrategien bieten flexible Auswahlmöglichkeiten bei der Beobachtung und ermöglichen die Nutzung aller verfügbaren Satellitensignale und Empfängertypen, wodurch eine zuverlässige AR und eine höhere Fixierungsrate ermöglicht wird. Als Ergebnis ist eine AR-Fixierungsrate von über 95% bei allen Stationen in großflächigen Diensten erreichbar. Für eine präzise Modellierung atmosphärischer Verzögerungen über großen Gebieten werden neue Modelle vorgeschlagen, darunter ein troposphärisches Zenith Wet Delay (ZWD)-Modell und ein satellitenweises ionosphärisches Schrägverzögerungsanpassungsmodell. Das troposphärische Verzögerungsmodell berücksichtigt die exponentielle Funktion der vertikalen Änderungen des Wasserdampfs und behebt Modellanomalien in Gebieten mit großen Höhendifferenzen. Das neue ionosphärische Verzögerungsanpassungsmodell verwendet trigonometrische Funktionen, um Unterschiede in den Schrägpfadverzögerungen zwischen dem optimalen Referenzausbreitungspfad und anderen zu beschreiben und erreicht so eine überlegene Modellierungsleistung in großen Gebieten. Die Präzision des Anpassungsmodells, unter Verwendung eines 200 km-Stationen-Netzwerks, zeigt troposphärische ZWD- und ionosphärische Schrägverzögerungen von jeweils 1,3 cm und 8,9 cm mit kleineren Standardabweichungen. Diese neuen Anpassungsmodelle überwinden die Herausforderung, massive Informationen für die Bereitstellung stationsspezifischer Korrekturen zu verarbeiten, und vermeiden eine Zunahme der Anzahl der Koeffizienten. Neben dem Funktionsmodell ist das stochastische Modell, d. h. Unsicherheitsinformationen, entscheidend für die Beschreibung der Qualität der Korrekturen. Die Unsicherheit der atmosphärischen Verzögerung für das großflächige Anpassungsmodell wird auf der Grundlage der Anpassungsreste generiert und in Form von Gitterpunkten dargestellt. Zusätzlich wird die regionale ionosphärische nicht modellierte Restunsicherheit durch die Form einer linearen Funktion repräsentiert, die durch die Beziehung zwischen Entfernung und Interpolationsgenauigkeit durch inter-satellitenkreuz-Verifikation zwischen allen Referenzstationen etabliert wird. Die Unterschiede zwischen Unsicherheitswert und realen Verzögerungen betragen 2,5 cm bzw. 0,5 cm für Gitter- und Funktionsformen. Für Echtzeitanwendungen in großen Gebieten dienen das Anpassungsmodell und die gitterbasierte Atmosphärenunsicherheit als wesentliche Informationen, die die Anforderungen an schnelle Positionierung erfüllen. Durch die weitere Integration von nicht modellierten Resten und Ionosphärenfehlerfunktion wird ein hierarchisches Augmentationsmodell bereitgestellt. Basierend auf dem für große Gebiete etablierten Anpassungsmodell werden nicht modellierte Reste zusätzlich als optionale Kompensation für spezifische Bereiche eingeführt, abhängig von der Größenordnung der Anpassungsreste. Dieser Ansatz führt zu einer Reduktion von 97% der troposphärischen Verzögerung und einer Reduktion von 65% des ionosphärischen Verzögerungsvolumens. Darüber hinaus können unter Nutzung der regionalen hohen Kommunikationsfähigkeit 85,3% aller Lösungen mit Hilfe entsprechender regionaler Kompensation eine sofortige Konvergenz beim ersten Epochenzeitpunkt erreichen. Diese Dissertation schlägt einen großflächigen Augmentationsdienst vor, um den Konflikt zwischen Korrekturvolumen, dargestellter Präzision und Abdeckungsgröße zu überwinden. Sie zeigt die Vorteile eines Augmentationsmodus, der regionale Informationen in großflächige Dienste integriert. Unter diesen Bedingungen kann eine zuverlässigere und schnellere AR-Lösung basierend auf präziser atmosphärischer Verzögerungskorrektur und Unsicherheit in großen Gebieten mit geringeren Anforderungen an das Datenvolumen leicht erreicht werden. Dies ist vorteilhaft für tatsächliche Echtzeitdienste und Anwendungen.

Description: Trawl-fishing is broadly considered to be one of the most destructive anthropogenic activities toward benthic ecosystems. In this study, we examine the effects of bottom-contact fishing by otter trawls on the geochemistry and macrofauna in sandy silt sediment in an area of the Baltic Sea where clear spatial patterns in trawling activity were previously identified by acoustic mapping. We calibrated an early diagenetic model to biogeochemical data from various coring locations. Fitting measured mercury profiles allowed for the determination of the sediment mixing and burial velocity. For all sites, independent of the trawl mark density, good fits were obtained by applying the model with the same organic matter loading and parameter values, while iron fluxes scaled linearly with the burial velocity. A sensitivity analysis revealed that the fitted sulfate reduction rate, solid sulfur contents, ammonium concentration, and both the isotopic composition and concentration of dissolved inorganic carbon provided reliable constraints for the total mineralization rate, which exhibited a narrow range of variability (around ±20 % from the mean) across the sites. Also, the trawling intensity did not significantly correlate with total organic carbon contents in surficial sediment, indicating limited loss of organic matter due to trawling. The fits to the reactive iron, acid volatile sulfur, chromium(II) reducible sulfur contents, and porewater composition demonstrate that sediment burial and mixing primarily determine the redox stratification. The mixing depth did not correlate with trawling intensity and is more likely the result of bioturbation, as the analyzed macrofaunal taxonomy and density showed a high potential for sediment reworking. The extraordinarily long-lived Arctica islandica bivalve dominated the infaunal biomass, despite the expectation that trawling leads to the succession from longer-lived to shorter-lived and bigger to smaller macrofauna. Our results further suggest that a clear geochemical footprint of bottom-trawling may not develop in sediments actively reworked by tenacious macrofauna.

Description: Analyzing seismic data in a timely manner is essential for potential eruption forecasting and early warning in volcanology. Here, we demonstrate that unsupervised machine learning methods can automatically uncover hidden details from the continuous seismic signals recorded during Iceland’s 2021 Geldingadalir eruption. By pinpointing the eruption’s primary phases, including periods of unrest, ongoing lava extrusion, and varying lava fountaining intensities, we can effectively chart its temporal progress. We detect a volcanic tremor sequence three days before the eruption, which may signify impending eruptive activities. Moreover, the discerned seismicity patterns and their temporal changes offer insights into the shift from vigorous outflows to lava fountaining. Based on the extracted patterns of seismicity and their temporal variations we propose an explanation for this transition. We hypothesize that the emergence of episodic tremors in the seismic data in early May could be related to an increase in the discharge rate in late April.

Description: In modelling atmospheric loading effects for terrestrial gravimetry, state-of-the-art approaches take advantage of numerical weather models to account for the global 3-D distribution of air masses. Deformation effects are often computed assuming the Inverse Barometer (IB) hypothesis to be generally valid over the oceans. By a revision of the IB assumption and its consequences we show that although the seafloor is not deformed by atmospheric pressure changes, there exists a fraction of ocean mass that current modelling schemes are usually not accounting for. This causes an overestimation of the atmospheric attraction effect over oceans, even when the dynamic response of the ocean to atmospheric pressure and wind is accounted through dynamic ocean models. This signal can reach a root mean square variability of a few nm s−2, depending on the location of the station. We therefore test atmospheric and non-tidal ocean loading effects at five superconducting gravimeter (SG) stations, showing that a better representation of the residual gravity variations is found when Newtonian attraction effects due to the IB response of the ocean are correctly considered. A sliding window variance analysis shows that the main reduction takes place for periods between 5 and 10 d, even for stations far away from the oceans. Since periods of non-tidal ocean mass variability closely resemble atmospheric signals recorded by SGs, we recommend to directly incorporate both an ocean component together with the IB into services that provide weather-related corrections for terrestrial gravimetry.

Description: Ferropericlase (Mg,Fe)O is after bridgmanite the most abundant phase in the lower mantle. The ultralow velocity zones above the core-mantle boundary may contain very Fe-rich magnesiowüstite (Fe,Mg)O, possibly as result of the fractional crystallisation of a basal magma ocean. We have experimentally studied the solubility of nitrogen in the ferropericlase-magnesiowüstite solid solution series as function of iron content. Multi-anvil experiments were performed at 20–33 GPa and 1600–1800 °C in equilibrium with Fe metal. Nitrogen solubility increases from a few tens ppm (μg/g) for Mg-rich ferropericlase to more than 10 wt. % for nearly pure wüstite. Such high solubilities appear to be due to solid solution with NiAs-type FeN. Our data suggest that during fractional crystallisation of a magma ocean, the core-mantle boundary would have become extremely enriched with nitrogen, such that the deep mantle today could be the largest nitrogen reservoir on Earth. The often discussed “subchondritic N/C” ratio of the bulk silicate Earth may be an artefact of insufficient sampling of this deep reservoir.

Description: Assessing the potential and extent of earthquake-induced liquefaction is paramount for seismic hazard assessment, for the large ground deformations it causes can result in severe damage to infrastructure and pose a threat to human lives, as evidenced by many contemporary and historical case studies in various tectonic settings. In that regard, numerical modeling of case studies, using state-of-the-art soil constitutive models and numerical frameworks, has proven to be a tailored methodology for liquefaction assessment. Indeed, these simulations allow for the dynamic response of liquefiable soils in terms of effective stresses, large strains, and ground displacements to be captured in a consistent manner with experimental and in-situ observations. Additionally, the impact of soil properties spatial variability in liquefaction response can be assessed, because the system response to waves propagating are naturally incorporated within the model. Considering that, we highlight that the effect of shear-wave velocity Vs spatial variability has not been thoroughly assessed. In a case study in Metropolitan Concepción, Chile, our research addresses the influence of Vs spatial variability on the dynamic response to liquefaction. At the study site, the 2010 Maule Mw 8.8 megathrust Earthquake triggered liquefaction-induced damage in the form of ground cracking, soil ejecta, and building settlements. Using simulated 2D Vs profiles generated from real 1D profiles retrieved with ambient noise methods, along with a PressureDependentMultiYield03 sand constitutive model, we studied the effect of Vs spatial variability on pore pressure generation, vertical settlements, and shear and volumetric strains by performing effective stress site response analyses. Our findings indicate that increased Vs variability reduces the median settlements and strains for soil units that exhibit liquefaction-like responses. On the other hand, no significant changes in the dynamic response are observed in soil units that exhibit non-liquefaction behavior, implying that the triggering of liquefaction is not influenced by spatial variability in Vs. We infer that when liquefaction-like behavior is triggered, an increase of the damping at the shallowest part of the soil domain might be the explanation for the decrease in the amplitude of the strains and settlements as the degree of Vs variability increases.

Description: Public earthquake early warning systems (PEEWSs) have the potential to save lives by warning people of incoming seismic waves up to tens of seconds in advance. Given the scale and geographical extent of their impact, this potential is greatest for destructive earthquakes, such as the M7.8 Pazarcik (Türkiye) event of 6 February 2023, which killed almost 60,000 people. However, warning people of imminent strong shaking is particularly difficult for large-magnitude earthquakes because the warning must be given before the earthquake has reached its final size. Here, we show that the Earthquake Network (EQN), the first operational smartphone-based PEEWS and apparently the only one operating during this earthquake, issued a cross-border alert within 12 s of the beginning of the rupture. A comparison with accelerometer and macroseismic data reveals that, owing to the EQN alerting strategy, Turkish and Syrian EQN users exposed to intensity IX and above benefitted from a warning time of up to 58 s before the onset of strong ground shaking. If the alert had been extended to the entire population, approximately 2.7 million Turkish and Syrian people exposed to a lifethreatening earthquake would have received a warning ranging from 30 to 66 s in advance.

Description: The joint European Space Agency and Chinese Academy of Sciences Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) mission will explore global dynamics of the magnetosphere under varying solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field conditions, and simultaneously monitor the auroral response of the Northern Hemisphere ionosphere. Combining these large-scale responses with medium and fine-scale measurements at a variety of cadences by additional ground-based and space-based instruments will enable a much greater scientific impact beyond the original goals of the SMILE mission. Here, we describe current community efforts to prepare for SMILE, and the benefits and context various experiments that have explicitly expressed support for SMILE can offer. A dedicated group of international scientists representing many different experiment types and geographical locations, the Ground-based and Additional Science Working Group, is facilitating these efforts. Preparations include constructing an online SMILE Data Fusion Facility, the discussion of particular or special modes for experiments such as coherent and incoherent scatter radar, and the consideration of particular observing strategies and spacecraft conjunctions. We anticipate growing interest and community engagement with the SMILE mission, and we welcome novel ideas and insights from the solar-terrestrial community.

Description: Geothermal energy is one of the most viable sources of renewable heat. However, the potential risk of induced seismicity associated with geothermal operations may slow down the growth of the geothermal sector. Previous research has led to significant progress in understanding fluidinjection- induced seismicity in geothermal reservoirs. However, an in-depth assessment of thermal effects on the seismic risk was generally considered to be of secondary importance. This study aims to investigate the relative influence of temperature and key geological and operational parameters on the slip tendency of pre-existing faults. This is done through coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical simulations of the injection and production processes in synthetic geothermal reservoir models of the most utilized and potentially exploitable Dutch geothermal reservoir formations: Slochteren sandstone, Delft sandstone and Dinantian limestone. In our study, changes in the slip tendency of a fault can largely be attributed to thermo-elastic effects, which confirms the findings of recent studies linking thermal stresses to induced seismicity. While the direct pore pressure effect on slip tendency tends to dominate over the early phase of the operations, once pore pressure equilibrium is established in a doublet system, it is the additional stress change associated with the growing cold-water front around the injection well that has the greatest influence. Therefore, the most significant increase in the slip tendency was observed when this low-temperature front reached the fault zone. The distance between an injection well and a pre-existing fault thus plays a pivotal role in determining the mechanical stability of a fault. A careful selection of a suitable target formation together with an appropriate planning of the operational parameters is also crucial to mitigate the risk of induced seismicity. Besides the well-known relevance of the in situ stress field and local fault geometry, rock-mechanical properties and operation conditions exert a major influence on induced stress changes and therefore on the fault (re)activation potential during geothermal operations.

Description: The CNSC, the Canadian regulator for the nuclear industry, participated in DECOVALEX-2023 Task G that focuses on the thermo (T) - hydro (H)- mechanical (M) behaviour of rock joints. Joints are omnipresent in rock masses and are planes of weakness in the host rock. When deep geological repositories (DGRs) for radioactive waste are being considered in areas where rock joints are present, the joints could be preferential pathways for radionuclide migration. Therefore, their THM behaviour must be better understood to assess the safety of the DGR. Under different possible internal and external perturbations, a joint can move by shear and dilation. If the joint crosses the emplacement area of a waste container, the heat generated from the waste can itself induce shearing of the joint. Excessive shear movement can in turn lead to failure of the container, resulting in earlier release of radionuclides. Furthermore, dilation that might accompany shear, results in an increase in the joint aperture creating a faster flow path for radionuclide transport. Mathematical models are important tools that need to be developed and employed, in order to assess joint shear and dilation under different loading conditions, such as the heat generated from the emplaced waste. The authors have developed such a mathematical model based on a macroscopic formulation within the framework of elasto-plasticity. It is verified against analytical solutions and validated against shear under constant normal load tests and thermal shearing tests of joints in granite.

Description: Hydraulic fracturing has been widely used to enhance reservoir permeability during the extraction of shale gas. As one of the external input parameters, injection rate has a significant impact on formation breakdown pressure and the complexity of hydraulic fractures. To gain deeper insights into the effect of injection rate on breakdown pressure and fracture morphology, we conducted five hydraulic fracturing experiments on Changning shale in the laboratory. We used five different injection rates between 3 and 30 mL/min to fracture cylindrical core samples with 50 mm in diameter and 100 mm in length. We monitored acoustic emissions and surface displacements during the tests, and analyzed the fracture pattern post mortem by using a fluorescent tracer. We find a semi-logarithmic relationship between the breakdown pressure and the injection rates. Second, we find that it is the injection rate that dictates sample deformation and crack formation during breakdown rather than the fluid volume injected during the whole process. The analysis of amplitudes and frequency of acoustic signals indicates that hydraulic fracturing of Changning shale is overall dominated by tensile fractures (〉 60%). However, at low injection rates, shear events are facilitated before rock breakdown. On the other hand, high injection rates result in reducing fracture tortuosity and surface roughness due to limited fluid infiltration in the relatively short injection window. We close this study with a conceptual model to explain the difference between fluid infiltration (low injection rates) and the loading rate effect (high injection rate) in low-permeability shale rocks. The findings obtained in this study can help to adjust injection rates in the field to economically and safely produce gas from shale.

Description: Secondary ion mass spectrometry was used to test the d18O and d34S nanogram-scale homogeneity of a suite of candidate sulfate minerals, ultimately selecting three barite, two anhydrite, and two gypsum samples from the Royal Ontario Museum that have repeatabilities for their SIMS measurements of better than 0.39‰ and 0.37‰ (1s) for oxygen and sulfur isotope ratios, respectively. Metrological splits of each of the seven materials were sent to multiple gas source isotope ratio mass spectrometry laboratories in order to establish their absolute 18O/16O and 34S/32S ratios. The inter-laboratory results of GS-IRMS analyses yielded reasonably narrow ranges in d18OVSMOW, whereas larger variations in d34SVCDT values were found between the results from the gas source laboratories. All samples have good reproducibility within laboratories of GS-IRMS 103d18O values of between 0.24‰ and 0.44‰ (1s). The reproducibility within laboratories of GS-IRMS 103d34S values range from 0.07‰ to 0.99‰ (1s). Here we also discuss some of the current analytical limitations affecting these isotope-mineral systems. A total of 256 metrological splits have been prepared from each of these seven materials; these aliquots will be made available to the global geochemical community.

Description: The increasing demand for fertilizers and their rising prices has led to the search for new nutrient sources, especially in rural areas where family farming predominates. In this study, we assessed the potential of reusing sediment deposited in surface reservoirs as a soil conditioner in a semiarid region, focusing on two features: the characterization of sediment physicochemical properties at the regional scale and the effect of the substrate containing sediment on the growth and physiology of maize.

Description: The analysis of Coulomb stress changes has become an important tool for seismic hazard evaluation because such stress changes may trigger or delay subsequent earthquakes. Processes that can cause significant Coulomb stress changes include coseismic slip and transient postseismic processes such as poroelastic effects and viscoelastic relaxation. However, the combined influence of poroelastic effects and viscoelastic relaxation on co- and postseismic Coulomb stress changes has not been systematically studied so far. Here, we use three-dimensional finite-element models with arrays of normal and thrust faults to investigate how pore fluid pressure changes and viscoelastic relaxation overlap during the postseismic phase. In different experiments, we vary the permeability of the upper crust and the viscosity of the lower crust or lithospheric mantle while keeping the other parameters constant. In addition, we perform experiments in which we combine a high (low) permeability of the upper crust with a low (high) viscosity of the lower crust. Our results show that the coseismic (i.e., static) Coulomb stress changes are altered by the signal from poroelastic effects and viscoelastic relaxation during the first month after the earthquake. For sufficiently low viscosities, the Coulomb stress change patterns show a combined signal from poroelastic and viscoelastic effects already during the first postseismic year. For sufficiently low permeabilities, Coulomb stress changes induced by poroelastic effects overlap with the signals from viscoelastic relaxation and interseismic stress accumulation for decades. Our results imply that poroelastic and viscoelastic effects have a strong impact on postseismic Coulomb stress changes and should therefore be considered together when analyzing Coulomb stress transfer between faults.

Description: The impact of faults on the contemporary stress field in the upper crust has been discussed in various studies. Data and models clearly show that there is an effect, but so far, a systematic study quantifying the impact as a function of distance from the fault is lacking. In the absence of data, here we use a series of generic 3-D models to investigate which component of the stress tensor is affected at which distance from the fault. Our study concentrates on the far field, lo- cated hundreds of metres from the fault zone. The models assess various techniques to represent faults, different mate- rial properties, different boundary conditions, variable orien- tation, and the fault’s size. The study findings indicate that most of the factors tested do not have an influence on ei- ther the stress tensor orientation or principal stress magni- tudes in the far field beyond 1000 m from the fault. Only in the case of oblique faults with a low static friction coeffi- cient of μ = 0.1 can noteworthy stress perturbations be seen up to 2000 m from the fault. However, the changes that we detected are generally small and of the order of lateral stress variability due to rock property variability. Furthermore, only in the first hundreds of metres to the fault are variations large enough to be theoretically detected by borehole-based stress data when considering their inherent uncertainties. This find- ing agrees with robust stress magnitude measurements and stress orientation data. Thus, in areas where high-quality and high-resolution data show gradual and continuous stress ten- sor rotations of 〉 20◦ observed over lateral spatial scales of 10 km or more, we infer that these rotations cannot be at- tributed to faults. We hypothesize that most stress orienta- tion changes attributed to faults may originate from different sources such as density and strength contrasts.