At surface behaviour data of juvenile southern elephant seals from Marion Island between 2001 and 2006 with links to datasets

Marine mammals forage in dynamic environments characterized by variables that are continuously changing in relation to large-scale oceanographic processes. In the present study, behavioural states of satellite-tagged juvenile southern elephant seals (n = 16) from Marion Island were assessed for each reliable location, using variation in turning angle and speed in a state-space modelling framework. A mixed modelling approach was used to analyse the behavioural response of juvenile southern elephant seals to sea-surface temperature and proximity to frontal and bathymetric features. The findings emphasised the importance of frontal features as potentially rewarding areas for foraging juvenile southern elephant seals and provided further evidence of the importance of the area west of Marion Island for higher trophic-level predators. The importance of bathymetric features during the transit phase of juvenile southern elephant seal migrations indicates the use of these features as possible navigational cues.

Current meter data from mooring stations in the English Channel (Table 1)

A new technique for the harmonic analysis of current observations is described. It consists in applying a linear band pass filter which separates the various species and removes the contribution of non-tidal effects at intertidal frequencies. The tidal constituents are then evaluated through the method of least squares. In spite of the narrowness of the filter, only three days of data are lost through the filtering procedure and the only requirement on the data is that the time interval between samples be an integer fraction of one day. This technique is illustrated through the analysis of a few French current observations from the English Channel within the framework of INOUT. The characteristics of the main tidal constituents are given.

Stable Water Isotopologue data collected during HCCT-2010

Cloud samples for the isotopic analysis were collected in the framework of the Hill Cap Cloud Thuringia 2010 (HCCT-2010) campaign on Schmücke (50° 39'N/ 10° 46'E, 937 m a.s.l.; Germany) in September and October 2010 with a three-stage Caltech Active Strand Cloudwater Collector (CASCC) during 13 different cloud events with a temporal resolution of 1 to 3 hours. In a first step, we ensured that no additional fractionation occurred during sampling with the CASCC. The d values of the three sizes classes of the CASCC (4 µm to 16 µm, 16 µm to 22 µm and >22 µm) did not differ significantly, revealing that the cloud droplets of different sizes quickly equilibrate their delta value with the one of the surrounding vapor. delta values in the cloud droplets varied from -77 per mil to -15 per mil in d2H and from -12.1 per mil to -3.9 per mil in d18O and were fitted by d2H =7.8*d18O +13*10**-3. delta values decreased with temperature as well as towards the end of the campaign, representing a seasonal trend which is known from d values in precipitation. The deuterium excess of the cloud samples was generally higher than the Local Meteoric Water Line of the closest GNIP (Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation) station. Rain decreases its deuterium excess during falling through an unsaturated air column, while the cloud droplets conserve the deuterium excess of the initial evaporation and thus have been found to be a good indicator for the airmass source region: higher deuterium excess was measured for polar air masses and lower deuterium excess for Mediterranean air masses. Changes in d values during one cloud event were up to 3.6 per mil (d2H) and 0.23 per mil (d18O), except for frontal passages, which were associated with increases of ~6 per mil per hour (d2H) and ~0.6 per mil per hour (d18O). Using a box model, we showed that the influence of condensation only was able to explain the variation in the isotope signal of two cloud passages. Consequently, we deduced that the water vapor "feeding" the cloud advected the measured changes. A trajectory analysis and moisture source diagnostic revealed that it is very likely that the variations were either related to rain out along the trajectories or to meteorological changes in the moisture source region. This was the first study using stable water isotopologues in cloud water manifesting their potential in the context of atmospheric water vapor circulation.

Framework for risk assessment for maritime transportation systems

Maritime accidents involving ships carrying passengers may pose a high risk with respect to human casualties. For effective risk mitigation, an insight into the process of risk escalation is needed. This requires a proactive approach when it comes to risk modelling for maritime transportation systems. Most of the existing models are based on historical data on maritime accidents, and thus they can be considered reactive instead of proactive. This paper introduces a systematic, transferable and proactive framework estimating the risk for maritime transportation systems, meeting the requirements stemming from the adopted formal definition of risk. The framework focuses on ship-ship collisions in the open sea, with a RoRo/Passenger ship (RoPax) being considered as the struck ship. First, it covers an identification of the events that follow a collision between two ships in the open sea, and, second, it evaluates the probabilities of these events, concluding by determining the severity of a collision. The risk framework is developed with the use of Bayesian Belief Networks and utilizes a set of analytical methods for the estimation of the risk model parameters. The model can be run with the use of GeNIe software package. Finally, a case study is presented, in which the risk framework developed here is applied to a maritime transportation system operating in the Gulf of Finland (GoF). The results obtained are compared to the historical data and available models, in which a RoPax was involved in a collision, and good agreement with the available records is found.

Mineral composition and 40Ar-39Ar data of samples from Garnet Point, Aurora Peak, Correll Nunatak, Penguin Point and Horn Bluffs, East Antarctica

George V Land (Antarctica) includes the boundary between Late Archean-Paleoproterozoic metamorphic terrains of the East Antarctic craton and the intrusive and metasedimentary rocks of the Early Paleozoic Ross-Delamerian Orogen. This therefore represents a key region for understanding the tectono-metamorphic evolution of the East Antarctic Craton and the Ross Orogen and for defining their structural relationship in East Antarctica, with potential implications for Gondwana reconstructions. In the East Antarctic Craton the outcrops closest to the Ross orogenic belt form the Mertz Shear Zone, a prominent ductile shear zone up to 5 km wide. Its deformation fabric includes a series of progressive, overprinting shear structures developed under different metamorphic conditions: from an early medium-P granulite-facies metamorphism, through amphibolite-facies to late greenschist-facies conditions. 40Ar-39Ar laserprobe data on biotite in mylonitic rocks from the Mertz Shear Zone indicate that the minimum age for ductile deformation under greenschist-facies conditions is 1502 ± 9 Ma and reveal no evidence of reactivation processes linked to the Ross Orogeny. 40Ar-39Ar laserprobe data on amphibole, although plagued by excess argon, suggest the presence of a ~1.7 Ga old phase of regional-scale retrogression under amphibolite-facies conditions. Results support the correlation between the East Antarctic Craton in the Mertz Glacier area and the Sleaford Complex of the Gawler Craton in southern Australia, and suggest that the Mertz Shear Zone may be considered a correlative of the Kalinjala Shear Zone. An erratic immature metasandstone collected east of Ninnis Glacier (~180 km east of the Mertz Glacier) and petrographically similar to metasedimentary rocks enclosed as xenoliths in Cambro-Ordovician granites cropping out along the western side of Ninnis Glacier, yielded detrital white-mica 40Ar-39Ar ages from ~530 to 640 Ma and a minimum age of 518 ± 5 Ma. This pattern compares remarkably well with those previously obtained for the Kanmantoo Group from the Adelaide Rift Complex of southern Australia, thereby suggesting that the segment of the Ross Orogen exposed east of the Mertz Glacier may represent a continuation of the eastern part of the Delamerian Orogen.

ERA-CLIM Historical Upper-Air Data 1900-1972

Historical, i.e. pre-1957, upper-air data are a valuable source of information on the state of the atmosphere, in some parts of the World back to the early 20th century. However, to date reanalyses have only partially made use of these data, and only of observations made after 1948. Even for the period between 1948 (the starting year of the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis) and the International Geophysical Year in 1957 (the starting year of the ERA-40 reanalysis), when the global upper-air coverage reached more or less its current status, many observations have not been digitised until now. The Comprehensive Historical Upper-Air Network (CHUAN) already compiled a large collection of pre-1957 upper-air data. In the framework of the European project ERA-CLIM, significant amounts of additional upper-air data have been catalogued (> 1.3 mio station days), imaged (> 200,000 images) and digitised (> 700,000 station days) in order to prepare a new input dataset for upcoming reanalyses. The records cover large parts of the globe, focussing on so far less well covered regions such as the Tropics, the polar regions and the Oceans, and on very early upper-air data from Europe and the US. The total number of digitised/inventoried records is 61/101 for moving upper-air data, i.e. data from ships etc., and 735/1,783 for fixed upper-air stations. Here, we give a detailed description of the resulting dataset including the metadata and the quality checking procedures applied. The data will be included in the next version of CHUAN.

A return-on-investment framework to identify conservation priorities in Africa

Environmental conservation activities must continue to become more efficient and effective, especially in Africa where development and population growth pressures continue to escalate. Recently, prioritization of conservation resources has focused on explicitly incorporating the economic costs of conservation along with better defining the outcomes of these expenditures. We demonstrate how new global and continental data that spans social, economic, and ecological sectors creates an opportunity to incorporate return-on-investment (ROI) principles into conservation priority setting for Africa. We suggest that combining conservation priorities that factor in biodiversity value, habitat quality, and conservation management investments across terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal marine environments provides a new lens for setting global conservation priorities. Using this approach we identified seven regions capturing interior and coastal resources that also have high ROI values that support further investment. We illustrate how spatially explicit, yet flexible ROI analysis can help to better address uncertainty, risk, and opportunities for conservation, while making values that guide prioritization more transparent. In one case the results of this prioritization process were used to support new conservation investments. Acknowledging a clear research need to improve cost information, we propose that adopting a flexible ROI framework to set conservation priorities in Africa has multiple potential benefits.

Contextual classification of full waveform lidar data in the Wadden Sea

The classification of airborne lidar data is a relevant task in different disciplines. The information about the geometry and the full waveform can be used in order to classify the 3D point cloud. In Wadden Sea areas the classification of lidar data is of main interest for the scientific monitoring of coastal morphology and habitats, but it becomes a challenging task due to flat areas with hardly any discriminative objects. For the classification we combine a Conditional Random Fields framework with a Random Forests approach. By classifying in this way, we benefit from the consideration of context on the one hand and from the opportunity to utilise a high number of classification features on the other hand. We investigate the relevance of different features for the lidar points in coastal areas as well as for the interaction of neighbouring points.