Regular monitoring of s-IgA and s-Lys may be useful in the assessment of exercise stress and URI risk status in elite team sport athletes. A combination of alterations in training intensity and seasonal influence is a likely contributor to observed peaks in URI incidence. It is probable that stress-induced increases in cortisol release contribute to reductions in mucosal immunity, which, when lowered, predispose rugby players to increased risk of illness.

Fault activity within the Lebanese transpression zone, one of the classic examples of restraining bend development on a continental transform, is here investigated using dated geomorphological features. The northern part of the Yammouneh Fault, commonly considered to be the principal active strand on this part of the Dead Sea Transform, has been inactive for the past 5 Ma. Field observations show that basalts, dated as late Pliocene in age, apparently offset by the Yammouneh fault, unconformably overlie it. The active transcurrent structure is principally, perhaps exclusively, the Roum Fault. The Lebanese transpressive zone has evolved through time, with migration of fault activity. These results confirm the overlapping transform hypothesis for the Dead Sea system, require the active triple junction between the transform and the Tethyan collision belt to lie offshore SE Cyprus, and have profound implications for assessing seismic hazard in the Levant.

Structural evolution along continental transform faults may be related to fault zone geometry and to regional variations in plate kinematics. Using a case study of the Lebanese sector of the Dead Sea Transform, the finite geometry of transpression at a restraining bend can be shown to have evolved in time. Relative structural chronologies, calibrated against dated landscape features such as lava-covered palaeosurfaces, coastal erosion surfaces and their incised drainage basins, are used to establish the timing of displacement activity on the major transcurrent faults. The early part of the region’s structural history, up to late Miocene times, was controlled by the geometry of the through-going Yammouneh Fault. Transpression on this right-trending left-lateral structure was accommodated by strike-slip and distributed crustal shortening represented by the initial uplift of Mount Lebanon. For the past 6 Ma the principal active strand of the transform has been the Roum Fault. For much of this period it is presumed to have been a through-going fault which accommodated about 30 km left-lateral displacement. During the Quaternary, the fault zone has become strongly segmented. Although the location of active transcurrent faulting has migrated during the history of the transform, the major site of crustal shortening, the Mount Lebanon-Jabel Barouk structure, has remained broadly fixed. However, the rates of amplification of this structure and the coastal flexure appear to have varied. Continuing uplift of Mount Lebanon and local Plio-Quaternary folding suggest that the offshore continuation of the Roum Fault contains a rightwards, transpressive bend. We relate this multistage history for the Lebanese sector of the transform to an evolving plate tectonic setting: the rotation pole for relative plate motion between Africa and Arabia has migrated through time and the triple junction between the transform and the Tethyan destructive plate margin to the north has moved from onshore SE Turkey to now lie in the NE Mediterranean. Our case study illustrates the transient and evolving nature of deformation in continental restraining bends.

Analysis of Earth Observation (EO) data, often combined with Geographical Information Systems (GIS), allows monitoring of changing land cover dynamics which may occur after a natural hazard such as a wildfire. In the present study, the vegetation recovery dynamics of one such area are evaluated by exploiting freely distributed EO data and GIS techniques. The relationships of re-growth dynamics to the exposure under topographical characteristics of the burn scar are also explored. As a case study, a typical Mediterranean ecosystem in which a wildfire occurred during 2007 is used. Vegetation recovery dynamics of the whole area under the burn scar were investigated based on chronosequence analysis of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from anniversary Landsat TM images. The spatio-temporal patterns of post-fire NDVI on each image date were statistically compared to the pre-fire pattern to determine the extent to which the pre-fire spatial pattern was re-established and the recovery rate. The relationships between NDVI as an expression of recovery rates and aspect were also statistically investigated and quantified using a series of statistical metrics. Results suggested a generally low to moderate vegetation recovery of the local ecosystem five years after the fire event, with the post-fire NDVI spatial pattern generally showing a gradual but systematic return to pre-fire conditions. Re-growth rates appeared to be somewhat higher in northfacing slopes in comparison to south facing ones, in common with other similar studies in Mediterranean type ecosystems. All in all, this study provides an important contribution to the understanding of Mediterranean landscape dynamics, and corroborates the usefulness particularly of NDVI in post-fire regeneration assessment via a well-established methodology presented herein which can also be transferable to other regions. It also provides further evidence that use of EO technology which combined with GIS techniques can offer an effective practical tool for mapping wildfire vegetation dynamics and ecosystem recovery after wildfire.

Foulds, S. A., Griffiths, H., Macklin, M., Brewer, P. (2014). Geomorphological records of extreme floods and their relationship to decadal-scale climate change. Geomorphology, 216, 193-207Extreme rainfall and flood events in steep upland catchments leave geomorphological traces of their occurrence in the form of boulder berms, debris cones, and alluvial fans. Constraining the age of these features is critical to understanding (i) landscape evolution in response to past, present, and future climate changes; and (ii) the magnitude?frequency of extreme, ungauged floods in small upland catchments. This research focuses on the Cambrian Mountains of Wales, UK, where lichenometric dating of geomorphological features and palaeohydrological reconstructions is combined with climatological data and documentary flood records. Our new data from Wales highlight a distinct flood-rich period between 1900 and 1960, similar to many other UK lichen-dated records. However, this study sheds new light on the underlying climatic controls on upland flooding in small catchments. Although floods can occur in any season, their timing is best explained by the Summer North Atlantic Oscillation (SNAO) and shifts between negative (wetter than average conditions with regular cyclonic flow and flooding) and positive phases (drier than average conditions with less frequent cyclonic flow and flooding), which vary from individual summers to decadal and multidecadal periods. Recent wet summer weather, flooding, and boulder-berm deposition in the UK (2007?2012) are related to a pronounced negative phase shift of the SNAO. There is also increasing evidence that recent summer weather extremes in the mid-latitudes may be related to Arctic amplification and rapid sea ice loss. If this is the case, continuing and future climate change is likely to mean that (i) unusual weather patterns become more frequent; and (ii) upland UK catchments will experience heightened flood risk and significant geomorphological changes.authorsversionPeer reviewe