Research highlights — 2015 – Earth Science Institute SAS

Mountain environment is sensitive receptor to long range transport of pollutants in the troposphere. Over the last century, anthropogenic emissions of acidifying components disturbing the acid-base balance of precipitation and affected water quality and biodiversity in mountain lake in the High Tatras. The ionic composition of lake water reflected progress in their acidification until the late 1980s, and then a rapid recovery. The response of lake water chemistry to changes in precipitation chemistry differed among lakes, predominantly reflecting the proportions of soil in their catchments. In-lake concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and total organic nitrogen (TON) exhibited inverse patterns to nitrate. DOC and TON were higher in lakes with a higher proportion of soil in the catchments, and increased in many lakes during recovery from acidification, while nitrate concentrations were higher and decreased most steeply in the catchments with sparse soils.

Fluids are resposible for the origin of raw materials, minerals and metals, which stimulated revolutionary industrial changes in the history of mankind. The knowledge on how, from which fluid, and in what conditions minerals originate help us to improve exploration strategies and effectiveness of exploitation. The research on geofluids is an interdisciplinary research lying on the boundaries between geology, physics and chemistry. Short history, rapid development and complexity of the interdisciplinary research are the main reasons that comprehensive textbooks on geofluids are rare or outdated. The book consisting of 489 pages fills this gap. The expected readership are graduate and postgraduate students, as well as professional academic and industrial geoscience researchers specialising in fluids and fluid flow in the Earth´s crust and mantle, fluid-rock interactions, hydrothermal geochemistry and mineral, oil and gas exploration.

Monazite and zircon from sodic metasomatites of siderite hydrothermal veins of the Rožňava-Nadabula deposit have been studied using electron probe micro-analysis and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Age of the monazite determined using laser ablation ICP-MS projected within a narrow interval of 139±1 Ma, thus corroborating the Alpine age of the mineralization and formation of the veins within an arcuate deformation front originated as a response to Early-Cretaceous orogenic shortening, folding and thrusting. Neoproterozoic zircon in the hydrothermal veins represents Pan-African magmatic detritus extracted from subjacent rocks by buoyant hydrothermal fluids.

A complexity analysis (Kolmogorov complexity and integral Kolmogorov complexity) was applied on time series measured for the period June 2010–June 2011 in the Domica cave to establish the possible dependence of radon on cave environmental parameters. Although the 222Rn concentration and the wind speed inside the cave time series show some kind of dependence (the same periodicity 27.5 weeks), both series have different behaviors in sense of the Kolmogorov complexity. The randomness of the wind speed inside the cave data does not cause randomness and scatter of radon data.

It is frequently assumed that the causes of the increasing biological diversity from high to low latitudes during the geological history as well as today are driven by higher carrying capacity of tropical environments, with ecologically and geographically more specialized species in the tropics. In a paper published in Global Ecology and Macroecology with collaborators from the University of Chicago, we have found that the geographic range size increases towars the tropics in benthic organisms (on the basis of global distribution of Mollusca). Tropical species attain 5,000-6,000 km (black circles in the top row) even when they thermal tolerances are quite narrow (black circles in the bottom row) . This trend is contrast to the so-called Rapoport's pattern observed in terrestrial organisms (species at temperate latitudes attain the broadest geographic ranges). This finding implies that geographic gradients in range size do not explain latitudinal diversity gradients, which are rather underlain by tropical peaks in diversification rates.

Squamate faunas from the time interval covering the latest Oligocene–earliest Miocene (MP 29–MN 2) were poorly known, and this age was labelled the ‘Dark Period'. We brings the first report on a complete squamate fauna from the MN 2 zone in Europe, from the locality Wiesbaden-Amöneburg (Germany). Unexpectedly, a high diversity of squamates was discovered here, representing the first true beginnings of the modern fauna. The new finds are also important for another reason. The Early Miocene was marked by the collision of Eurasia with Africa, an event that potentially allowed immigration of African squamates into Europe. Since taxa with African affinities such as Chamaeleonidae and Cordylidae are missing here, this suggests that African taxa did not reach Europe in MN 2, but were able to enter it during MN 3. One new species, Blanus thomaskelleri sp. nov., is described.

Research highlights — 2015

Basic research

Applied research

Research related to international collaboration