Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The influence of basin settings and flow properties on the dimensions of submarine lobe elements
Published: 2019-05-23
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
Submarine lobes have been identified within various deep-water settings, including the basin-floor, the base of slope and the continental slope. Their dimensions and geometries are postulated to be controlled by the topographical configuration of the seabed, sediment supply system and slope maturity. While confinement has been suggested as a main control factor for lobe dimensions, it does not [...]
Dark carbon fixation contributes to sedimentary organic carbon in the Arabian Sea oxygen minimum zone
Published: 2019-05-18
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
In response to rising CO2 concentrations and increasing global sea surface temperatures, oxygen minimum zones (OMZ), or “dead zones”, are expected to expand. OMZs are fueled by high primary productivity, resulting in enhanced biological oxygen demand at depth, subsequent oxygen depletion, and attenuation of remineralization. This results in the deposition of organic carbon-rich sediments. Carbon [...]
Using nano-XRM and high-contrast imaging to inform micro-porosity permeability during Stokes-Brinkman single and two-phase flow simulations on micro-CT images
Published: 2019-05-17
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Carbonate rocks have particularly complex and multiscale pore systems which are weakly understood. In this study we use combined experimental, modelling, and pore space generation methods to tackle the impact of micro-porosity on the bulk flow properties of Estaillades limestone. First, a nano-core from a microporous grain of Estaillades Limestone was scanned using x-ray nano tomography [...]
Well-being loss: a comprehensive metric for household disaster resilience
Published: 2019-05-16
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Natural disaster risk assessments typically consider environmental hazard and physical damage, neglecting to quantify how asset losses affect households’ well-being. However, for a given asset loss, a wealthy household might easily recover, while a poor household might suffer from major, long-lasting impacts. Ignoring such differential impacts can lead to inequitable interventions and exacerbate [...]
Shallow slow slip events along the Nankai Trough detected by the GNSS-A
Published: 2019-05-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Various slow earthquakes (SEQs), including tremors, very-low-frequency events, and slow slip events (SSEs), occur along megathrust zones. In a shallow plate boundary region, although many SEQs have been observed along pan-Pacific subduction zones, SSEs with a duration on the order of a year or with a large slip have not yet been detected due to difficulty in offshore observation. We try to [...]
Pleistocene coastal evolution in the Makran subduction zone
Published: 2019-05-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Along the coast of the Makran subduction zone (SE Iran and SW Pakistan), active uplift combined with efficient erosion and vigorous sediment transport have led to marine terraces with unique morphology and sedimentology. These terraces are characterized by the systematic presence of an extensive 1–10Cm thick sandstone layer capping their wave-cut base. Our investigation of thirty-six sedimentary [...]
Forced folding and fracturing induced by differential compaction during post-depositional inflation of sandbodies: insights from numerical modelling
Published: 2019-05-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Three series of numerical models based on the discrete element method were constructed to simulate forced folding and fracturing triggered by postdepositional inflation of fludised sandbody. The models consist of numerous particles that have relatively low to high interparticle bonds to represent overburden sediments with a relatively low to high cohesion, and cohesionless, frictionless particles [...]
Low-temperature thermochronology as a control on vertical movements for semi-quantitative Source-to-Sink analysis: A case study for the Permian to Neogene of Morocco and surroundings
Published: 2019-05-15
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Continental passive margins and their hinterlands in the Atlantic realm are the locus of a significant amount of studies that evidence pre-, syn-, and post-rift episodic km-scale exhumation and burial episodes. We submit a 3-steps workflow to obtain 1) exhumation/burial rates, 2) eroded material flux, and 3) paleoreconstructions of source and sink domains. We apply this workflow in onshore [...]
Extension at the coast of the Makran subduction zone (Iran)
Published: 2019-05-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
In the Makran subduction zone, earthquake focal mechanisms and geodetic data indicate that the deforming prism currently experiences N-S compression. However, paleostress inversions performed on normal faults observed along the coast reveal local stress components consistent with N-S extension. Previously proposed mechanisms such as gravitational collapse are not in line with N-S compression and [...]
Representation of European hydroclimatic patterns with Self-Organizing Maps
Published: 2019-05-14
Subjects: Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Planetary Sciences
Self-Organizing Maps provide a powerful, non-linear technique of dimensionality reduction that can be used to identify clusters with similar attributes. Here, they were constructed from a 1000-year-long gridded palaeoclimatic dataset, namely the Old World Drought Atlas, to detect regions of homogeneous hydroclimatic variability across the European continent. A classification scheme of 10 regions [...]
Holocene sedimentary record and coastal evolution in the Makran subduction zone (Iran)
Published: 2019-05-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
The Makran coast displays evidence of surface uplift since at least the Late Pleistocene, but it remains uncertain whether this displacement is accommodated by creep on the subduction interface, or in a series of large earthquakes. Here, we address this problem by looking at the short term (Holocene) history of continental vertical displacements recorded in the geomorphology and sedimentary [...]
A Novel Hybrid Finite Element-Spectral Boundary Integral Scheme for Modeling Earthquake Cycles: Application to Rate and State Faults with Low-Velocity Zones
Published: 2019-05-14
Subjects: Applied Mechanics, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geophysics and Seismology, Mechanical Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present a novel hybrid finite element (FE) - spectral boundary integral (SBI) scheme that enables efficient simulation of earthquake cycles. This combined FE-SBI approach captures the benefits of finite elements in modelling problems with nonlinearities, as well as the computational superiority of SBI. The domain truncation enabled by this scheme allows us to utilize high-resolution finite [...]
Mechanisms of fault mirror formation and fault healing in carbonate rocks
Published: 2019-05-14
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The development of smooth, mirror-like surfaces provides insight into the mechanical behaviour of crustal faults during the seismic cycle. To determine the thermo-chemical mechanisms of fault mirror formation, we investigated carbonate fault systems in seismically active areas of central Greece. Using multi-scale electron microscopy combined with Raman and electron energy loss spectroscopy, we [...]
Using a Superconducting Gravimeter in Support of Absolute Gravity Campaigning — A feasibility study
Published: 2019-05-13
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Preparing for joint analysis of absolute gravity (AG) campaigns, this report investigates whether a stationary superconducting gravimeter (SCG) can provide a long-term stable measurement of site-dependent perturbations that help in reduction to the local value of little-$g$ and its secular rate of change. The crucial element concerns the discrimination of instrumental drift components from trends [...]
Overburden deformation induced by dyke-fed conical sandstone intrusions: insights from numerical experiments
Published: 2019-05-10
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Conical sandstone intrusions, as a distinct type of hydrocarbon reservoirs and carbon sequestration sites, remain poorly understood regarding their emplacement mechanics. Here, we report a numerical modelling study of conical sandstone intrusions using the two-dimensional discrete element method. We built simplified numerical models that contain bonded elastic particles with predefined mechanical [...]