Descripción: Large landslides of different types not previously recorded are located in the left bank of the Río Curri Leuvú valley, north of the Tricao Malal village. There are situated among the Cerro Palao and the Palao pond and Riscos Negros site to the north. The largest landslides (Malal Cura and Arroyo Mogolillo landslides) correspond to the multiple rotational progressive type. They are developed on Mesozoic sedimentary rocks, covered by Cenozoic basalt flows. The debris and earth flows are developed in areas covered by the volcanic rocks of the Charilehue Formation (Middle Miocene) and continue north of study reaching the latitudes of the Grande and Medio streams and also the Colimamil stream valley southeast of Cerro Domuyo. The impact of these phenomena in the fluvial system was important and produced ephemeral and permanent blocking as seen in the La Turbia stream with coeval ponding. It is hypothesized that the landslide occurrence is related to excess or long-lasting periods of rain in postglacial times. It is also indicated the presence of rock glaciers in the Cerro Palao.

Descripción: This paper deals with the sedimentological characteristics of piedmont deposits exposed in intramontane basins of the Precordillera. Detailed studies carried out along the upper Jáchal river and in the Gualilán area allowed identifying and characterizing six major types of piedmont accumulations: 1) talus, 2) colluvial fans dominated by gravity flows, 3) colluvial fans dominated by fluid flows, 4) collector-conoid fluvial system, 5) piedmonts dominated by channalized flows and 6) alluvial fans. The talus deposits are characterized by the dominance of clast-supported breccias (bearing minimum matrix amounts) that commonly exhibit massive bedding, planar or high angle imbricated clasts fabric. Colluvial fans dominated by gravity flows are formed by massive matrix-supported breccias with minor percentages of clast-supported breccias. On the contrary, colluvial fans dominated by fluid flows are composed of amalgamated channels infilled by both clast- and matrix-supported breccias together with intercalation of graded breccias. Accumulations of the collector-conoid fluvial systems are the most diverse in composition, including from massive matrix-supported breccias to cross-bedded conglomerates and scarce mudstones. In relation to the piedmont dominated by channalized flows, they comprise massive clast-supported breccias and less amounts of imbricated or cross-bedded ones. The alluvial fan deposits are mostly composed of cross-bedded clast-supported conglomerates, though matrix-supported conglomerates and breccias also appear as proximal deposits. Different from the previously mentioned deposits, the clast of alluvial fan accumulations shows more varied lithologic composition. The comparative analysis of the piedmonts found in the studied valleys permits to propone a conceptual model for classification of piedmont, on the basis of the extension of the basins and vertical space of accommodation.

Descripción: The nonlinear conditions for the development of helical vortex filaments in a circular tube are considered. The helical flow is assumed to be irrotational, except in a vortex filament of infinitesimal core area. By introducing an appropriate image for this helical vortex filament, the boundary condition on the material frontier is satisfied. By assuming an axisymmetric flow upstream and imposing the conservation laws, a dependence between the helix pitch and the nonlinear amplitude of the helical vortex developed downstream is obtained. Our results show that only helical flows with the pitch in a certain range of values are allowed. The dependence of this range on the swirl ratio and on the tube cross section is considered. We discuss the usefulness of the nonlinear analysis of the allowed flows to explain experimental results and to complement the usual linear study of stability. © 1999 American Institute of Physics.

Descripción: We present a parametric space study of the decay of turbulence in rotating flows combining direct numerical simulations, large eddy simulations, and phenomenological theory. Several cases are considered: (1) the effect of varying the characteristic scale of the initial conditions when compared with the size of the box, to mimic "bounded" and "unbounded" flows; (2) the effect of helicity (correlation between the velocity and vorticity); (3) the effect of Rossby and Reynolds numbers; and (4) the effect of anisotropy in the initial conditions. Initial conditions include the Taylor-Green vortex, the Arn'old-Beltrami-Childress flow, and random flows with large-scale energy spectrum proportional to k4. The decay laws obtained in the simulations for the energy, helicity, and enstrophy in each case can be explained with phenomenological arguments that consider separate decays for two-dimensional and three-dimensional modes and that take into account the role of helicity and rotation in slowing down the energy decay. The time evolution of the energy spectrum and development of anisotropies in the simulations are also discussed. Finally, the effect of rotation and helicity in the skewness and kurtosis of the flow is considered. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.

Descripción: The effect of rotation is considered to become important when the Rossby number is sufficiently small, as is the case in many geophysical and astrophysical flows. Here we present direct numerical simulations to study the effect of rotation in flows with moderate Rossby numbers (down to Ro ≈ 0.03) but at Reynolds numbers large enough to observe the beginning of a turbulent scaling at scales smaller than the energy injection scale. We use coherent forcing at intermediate scales, leaving enough room in the spectral space for an inverse cascade of energy to also develop. We analyze the spectral behavior of the simulations, the shell-to-shell energy transfer, scaling laws and intermittency, as well as the geometry and the anisotropy of the structures in the flow. At late times, the direct transfer of energy at small scales is mediated by interactions with the largest scale in the system, the energy containing eddies with k⊥ ≈ 1, where ⊥ refers to wavevectors perpendicular the axis of rotation. The transfer between modes with wavevector parallel to the rotation is strongly quenched. The inverse cascade of energy at scales larger than the energy injection scale is nonlocal, and energy is transferred directly from small scales to the largest available scale. We observe both a direct and inverse cascade of energy at high rotation rate, indicative that these cascades can take place simultaneously. Also, as time evolves and the energy piles up at the large scales, the intermittency of the direct cascade of energy is preserved while corrections due to intermittency are found to be the same (within error bars) as in homogeneous nonrotating turbulence. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.

Descripción: We examine the decomposition of forced Taylor-Green and Arn'old-Beltrami-Childress (ABC) flows into coherent and incoherent components using an orthonormal wavelet decomposition. We ask whether wavelet coefficient thresholding based on the Donoho-Johnstone criterion can extract a coherent vortex signal while leaving behind Gaussian random noise. We find that no threshold yields a strictly Gaussian incoherent component, and that the most Gaussian incoherent flow is found for data compression lower than that achieved with the fully iterated Donoho-Johnstone threshold. Moreover, even at such low compression, the incoherent component shows clear signs of large-scale spatial correlations that are signatures of the forcings used to drive the flows. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.

Descripción: In the northern side of the extra andean Patagonia, in portions of Rio Negro and Chubut provinces, extensive basaltic lava flows plateaux type are exposed. On the southern side of the plateaux, in the Ranquil Huau stream valley, close to Telsen locality, a large succesion of volcanic and vocaniclastic rocks is exposed. The basaltic lava flows of Somuncura Formation and the Basalto La Mesada (Quin̄elaf Superunit) and the volcanisclastic deposits of the Sarmiento Group are exposed in the area. The different groups of basalts are identified by petrographyc and geochemical distinctive features. In the upper level of Somún Curá Formation a basic pyroclastic flow is interbedded. The basic rocks exposed in the medium level of the valley have distinctive characteristics and they are named as Basanitas Ranquil Huao. The analized units have geochemical parameters consistent with the evolution of melt showing that were produced by differents degree of partial melting.

Descripción: We have computed all the orbit-forcing implications, up to period 8, in horseshoe-type flows or maps that generate strange attractors. The results are presented in a horseshoe implication diagram. We describe how this diagram was computed, and show how it can be used to construct a minimal (basis) set of periodic orbits which force the existence of all the periodic orbits associated with a strange attractor, up to any given period. © 1993 The American Physical Society.

Descripción: A regression approach was used to quantitatively estimate the attribution of the notable growth in the river flows of the Plata Basin during 1960-1999. The study was conducted in seven large basins that account for most of the Plata River discharge. Annual rainfall integrated over each basin and annual river flows at their closing points were used for the analysis. The contribution of rainfall changes during each of the three phases of El Niño-Southern Oscillation to total rainfall change in these basins was also calculated. The two main drivers for the generalized growth of the river flows were the increased precipitation and the decreased evaporation attributable to land use change, including deforestation of natural forest and crop switch from sugarcane and coffee trees to soybean. Other evaporation changes played a minor role. There was a north-south gradient in the respective importance of each driver, with land use change having greater weight in the northern basins and the precipitation increase in the southern ones. Thus, in the northern part of the Upper Paraná Basdespite the negative trend in precipitation there was a strong augment of the river flow caused by land use change. The contribution to the positive trend of the stream flows in the middle of the Plata Basin came from both land use change and increased precipitation. Finally, in the south, the Uruguay River flow change was basically due to the precipitation trend that was not only observed during the El Niño phase, but also during the Neutral phase. Only in the Middle Paraguay Basin was the shift to more frequent and intense El Niño events that took place in the 1970s an important factor in the contribution of precipitation to streamflow trends. © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society.

Descripción: We define the beltramized flow as the sum of an uniform translation and an uniform rotation with a Beltrami flow. Some of their features are studied by solving the Euler equations, for different geometries, taking into account the boundary conditions, and for different symmetries. We show that the Kelvin waves are beltramized flows. Finally, we show that the variational principle found in a previous work, remains valid for the beltramized flow.

Descripción: Invariance properties of physical systems govern their behaviour: energy conservation in turbulence drives a wide distribution of energy among modes, as observed in geophysical or astrophysical flows. In ideal hydrodynamics, the role of the invariance of helicity (correlation between velocity and its curl, measuring departures from mirror symmetry) remains unclear since it does not alter the energy spectrum. However, in the presence of rotation, significant differences emerge between helical and non-helical turbulent flows. We first briefly outline some of the issues such as the partition of energy and helicity among modes. Using massive numerical simulations, we then show that smallscale structures and their intermittency properties differ according to whether helicity is present or not, in particular with respect to the emergence of Beltrami core vortices that are laminar helical vertical updraft vortices. These results point to the discovery of a small parameter besides the Rossby number, a fact that would relate the problem of rotating helical turbulence to that of critical phenomena, through the renormalization group and weak-turbulence theory. This parameter can be associated with the adimensionalized ratio of the energy to helicity flux to small scales, the three-dimensional energy cascade being weak and self-similar. copy; 2010 The Royal Society.

Descripción: The Oligo-Miocene Somuncura province is the largest (∼55 000 km2) back-arc mafic volcanic field in Patagonia, and one of Earth's largest with no clear link to a hotspot or major extension. Major and trace element and Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic data suggest involvement of a plume-like component in the mantle magma source mixed with hydrous, but not high field strength element (HFSE)-depleted components, from a disintegrating subducting plate. Magmatism is attributed to mantle upwelling related to disturbances during plate reorganization, possibly at a time when the South America plate was nearly stationary over the underlying mantle. Melting was enhanced by hydration of the mantle during Paleogene subduction. Crustal contamination was minimal in a refractory crust that had been extensively melted in the Jurassic. Eruption began with low-volume intraplate alkaline mafic flows with depleted Nd-Sr isotopic signatures. These were followed by voluminous ∼29-25 Ma tholeiitic mafic flows with flat light and steep heavy rare earth element (REE) patterns, intraplate-like La/Ta ratios, arc-like Ba/La ratios and enriched Sr-Nd isotopic signatures. Their source can be explained by mixing EM1-Tristan da Cunha-like and depleted mantle components with subduction-related components. Post-plateau ∼24-17 Ma alkaline flows with steep REE patterns, high incompatible element abundances, and depleted Sr-Nd isotopic signatures mark the ebbing of the mantle upwelling. Copyright © 2007 Oxford University Press.

Descripción: An information theory description of finite systems explicitly evolving in time is presented. We impose a MaxEnt variational principle on the Shannon entropy at a given time while the constraints are set at a former time. The resulting density matrix contains explicit time odd components in the form of collective flows. As a specific application we consider the dynamics of the expansion in connection with heavy ion experiments. Lattice gas and classical molecular dynamics simulations are shown. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.

Descripción: We review some of the recent results obtained in MHD turbulence, as encountered in many astrophysical objects.We focus attention on the lack of universality in such flows, including in the simplest case (no externally imposed magnetic field, no forcing, unit magnetic Prandtl number). Several parameters can foster such a breakdown of classical Kolmogorov scaling, such as the presence of velocity-magnetic field correlations, or of magnetic helicity and the role of the interplay between nonlinear eddies and Alfven waves. A link with avalanche processes is also discussed. These findings have led to the conjecture of the emergence of a new paradigm for MHD turbulence, as a possibly unsettled competition between several dynamical phenomena. © International Astronomical Union 2011.

Descripción: Turbulent flows take place in a large variety of astrophysical objects, and often times are the source of dynamo generated magnetic fields. Much of the progress in our understanding of dynamo mechanisms, has been made within the theoretical framework of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). However, for sufficiently diffuse media, the Hall effect eventually becomes non-negligible. We present results from simulations of the Hall-MHD equations. The simulations are performed with a pseudospectral code to achieve exponentially fast convergence. We study the role of the Hall effect in the dynamo efficiency for different values of the Hall parameter. © 2011 International Astronomical Union.

Descripción: The previous analysis of the prehistoric slide phenomena in the main Andes of Neuquén Province in Argentina (36o-38oS), triggered the study of those located south of this la-titude. Therefore a new set of mass wasting deposits has been identified, whose trigger factors and corresponding tectonic framework, where they are located, differ from the northern slides. Their study was performed in three specific areas: Aluminé, Chapelco and Arroyo Limay Chico. Earth flows predominate in relation to slumps. The only exception is the Chapelco rock avalanche. Their occurrence seems to be related to the presence of Limay Chico member of the Caleufú Formation, whose lithology (expanding clays), particular rheology before water saturation, and particular disposition underlying basaltic lava and conglomeradic plains were conditioning factors. The trigger factor of the Present and prehistoric earth flows has been intense orographic precipitations. Water saturation reduced friction and cohesion in materials, incrementing water pore pressure and producing slope instabilities. Rotational slides are related to the slope basal erosion produced by lateral river migration and additionally to precipitations. Slope orientation has been important in determining location of main slides. Lateral slope release through the flanks of glacial valleys due to debutressing because of the glacial retire in the area, has produced instability and rock fracturation that led to slide phenomena. The Chapelco rock avalanche is particularly related to copious precipitations during postglacial times. Thus sliding main trigger factors south of 38oS differ from those pro-posed for the northern area where earthquakes dominated. Their specific age is still unknown, although their geomorphologic analysis allow to constraint a postglacial age for all these occurrences. However, temporal relationships are lacking for the specific case of the arroyo Limay Chico, beyond the glaciated area.

Descripción: The large-scale dynamics of plasmas is well described within the framework of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). However, whenever the ion density of the plasma becomes sufficiently low, the Hall effect is likely to become important. The role of the Hall effect has been studied in several astrophysical plasma processes, such as magnetic reconnection, magnetic dynamo, MHD turbulence, or MHD instabilities. In particular, the development of small-scale instabilities is essential to understand the transport properties in a number of astrophysical plasmas. The magneto-rotational instability (MRI), which takes place in differentially rotating accretion disks embedded in relatively weak magnetic fields, is just one example. The influence of the large-scale velocity flows on small-scale instabilities is often approximated by a linear shear flow. In this paper, we quantitatively study the role of the Hall effect on plasmas embedded in large-scale shear flows. More precisely, we show that an instability develops when the Hall effect is present, which we therefore term as the Hall magneto-shear instability. As a particular case, we recover the so-called MRI and quantitatively assess the role of the Hall effect on its development and evolution. © 2011 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Descripción: In a previous paper [R. González, L. G. Sarasua, and A. Costa, "Kelvin waves with helical Beltrami flow structure," Phys. Fluids20, 024106 (2008)] we analyzed the formation of Kelvin waves with a Beltrami flow structure in an ideal fluid. Here, taking into account the results of this paper, the topological analogy between the role of the magnetic field in Woltjer's theorem [L. Woltjer, "A theorem on force-free magnetic fields," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.44, 489 (1958)] and the role of the vorticity in the equivalent theorem is revisited. Via this analogy we identify the force-free equilibrium of the magnetohydrodynamics with the Beltrami flow equilibrium of the hydrodynamic. The stability of the last one is studied applying Arnold's theorem. We analyze the role of the enstrophy in the determination of the equilibrium and its stability. We show examples where the Beltrami flow equilibrium is stable under perturbations of the Beltrami flow type with the same eigenvalue as the basic flow one. The enstrophy variation results invariant with respect to a uniform rotating and translational frame and the stability is conserved when the flow experiences a transition from a Beltrami axisymmetric flow to a helical one of the same eigenvalue. These results are discussed in comparison with that given by Moffatt in 1986 [H. K. Moffatt, "Magnetostatic equilibria and analogous Euler flows of arbitrarily complex topology. Part 2. Stability considerations," J. Fluid Mech.166, 359 (1986)]. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.

Descripción: A subgrid-scale spectral model of rotating turbulent flows is tested against direct numerical simulations (DNSs). The case of Taylor-Green forcing is considered, a configuration that mimics the flow between two counter-rotating disks as often used in the laboratory. Computations are performed for moderate rotation down to Rossby numbers of 0.03, as can be encountered in the Earth's atmosphere. We provide several measures of the degree of anisotropy of the small scales and conclude that an isotropic model may suffice at moderate Rossby number. The model, developed previously [J. Baerenzung, H. Politano, Y. Ponty, and A. Pouquet, "Spectral modeling of turbulent flows and the role of helicity," Phys. Rev. E77, 046303 (2008)], incorporates eddy viscosity and eddy noise that depend dynamically on the index of the energy spectrum. We show that the model reproduces satisfactorily all large-scale properties of the DNS up to Reynolds numbers of ~104 and for long times after the onset of the inverse cascade of energy; it is also shown to behave better than either the Chollet-Lesieur eddy viscosity model [J. P. Chollet and M. Lesieur, "Parametrization of small scales of three-dimensional isotropic turbulence utilizing spectral closures," J. Atmos. Sci.38, 2747 (1981)] or an under-resolved DNS. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.