Variation in the chemical composition of fish otoliths has been used in recent years to address a range of ecological questions, including levels of stock mixing, variation in habitat use, and rates of larval exchange. While some of these questions have been answered with varying success, the degree to which discrete populations are connected via larval exchange remains unknown. To identify larval sources using natural variation in otolith chemistry, we must distinguish and measure the chemical composition of the otolith core, the portion of the otolith formed at the spawning site. Using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS), we found that the core regions of otoliths from 6 different species of fishes were highly enriched in manganese (Mn), and elevated in magnesium (Mg) and barium (Ba), relative to adjacent regions of the otolith. These patterns were consistent for species drawn from different taxonomic groups, which inhabit temperate and tropical regions, are found in marine and freshwater, and utilize a variety of spawning modes. Variation among species in Mn concentration in the core also corresponds to maternal investment, measured by egg size. These data suggest that core enrichment may be a general characteristic of otoliths, and that the chemical composition of the otolith core is fundamentally different from other regions of the otolith. The localized elemental enrichment of the core underscores the importance of methods that analyze the core region in small, discrete samples if otolith chemistry is used to address questions of larval exchange among populations.

We show that chemical differences found along the open coast are sufficiently strong to leave a readable natal signature in fish otoliths. Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometric (LA-ICPMS) analysis of individual larval otoliths taken from near-term females of the primitively viviparous rockfish Sebastes atrovirens indicates detectable levels of several trace elements. Although these larvae show considerable between-brood differences in elemental concentrations for females taken at the same site, there was significant between-site discrimination of natal signatures for regions only tens of kilometers apart in the waters off of Santa Barbara, California. For several (but not all) elements, differences between regions were consistent between 2 yr. We also explore three different possible proxies (edges of otoliths of adult fishes, resin-based elemental accumulators, and samples of seawater) that might be used to predict geographic differences in natal signatures. Although these proxies all showed significant regional differences in the concentration of some elements, only manganese showed some congruency in the spatial patterns seen in the larval otoliths. Consequently, currently available proxy measures cannot accurately predict the elemental composition of otolith cores.One of the least understood and most fundamental processes in the determination of population abundance and community structure in marine ecosystems is dispersal, or transport, of pelagic larvae. To what extent are local adult population dynamics influenced by the dispersal of larvae from neighboring source populations? Do self-recruiting populations exist? How far do larvae disperse? The sources and destinations of larvae have been unknown, and are seemingly unknowable, for nearly all commercially important species, and yet any model of resource management or biodiversity preservation depends on certain assumptions about transport and connectivity between marine populations.The small size and long development time of the larvae of most marine animals have made studies of dispersal difficult. Small animals usually cannot be burdened with tags, and high mortality and potentially widespread dispersal of 1 Corresponding author (warner@lifesci.ucsb.edu). AcknowledgmentsThis work was supported by the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO, funded by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation) and by the Coastal Environmental Quality Initiative (CEQI, funded by the University of California). We thank N. Kashef, D. Stafford, J. Standish, and D. Zacherl for technical assistance and advice, and three anonymous reviewers for their insight. This is PISCO publication 174.

During the last glaciation, most of the British Isles and the surrounding continental shelf were covered by the BritishIrish Ice Sheet (BIIS). An earlier compilation from the existing literature (BRITICE version 1) assembled the relevant glacial geomorphological evidence into a freely available GIS geodatabase and map (Clark et al. 2004: Boreas 33, 359). New high-resolution digital elevation models, of the land and seabed, have become available casting the glacial landform record of the British Isles in a new light and highlighting the shortcomings of the V.1 BRITICE compilation. Here we present awholesale revision of the evidence, onshore and offshore, to produce BRITICE version 2, which now also includes Ireland. All published geomorphological evidence pertinent to the behaviour of the ice sheet is included, up to the census date of December 2015. The revised GIS database contains over 170 000 geospatially referenced and attributed elements -an eightfold increase in information from the previous version. The compiled data include: drumlins, ribbed moraine, crag-and-tails, mega-scale glacial lineations, glacially streamlined bedrock (grooves, roches moutonn ees, whalebacks), glacial erratics, eskers, meltwater channels (subglacial, lateral, proglacial and tunnel valleys), moraines, trimlines, cirques, trough-mouth fans and evidence defining ice-dammed lakes. The increased volume of features necessitates different map/database products with varying levels of data generalization, namely: (i) an unfiltered GIS database containing all mapping; (ii) a filtered GIS database, resolving data conflicts and with edits to improve geo-locational accuracy (available as GIS data and PDF maps); and (iii) a cartographically generalized map to provide an overviewof the distribution and types of features at the ice-sheet scale that can be printed at A0 paper size at a 1:1 250 000 scale. All GIS data, the maps (as PDFs) and a bibliography of all published sources are available for download from: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/staff/clark_chris/britice. Palaeo-ice sheets provide the opportunity to study icesheet behaviour over a longer time period (10 000s of years) than can be achieved by studying current ice sheets (10s of years) thereby permitting exploration of the long-term role of ice sheets in the climate system. The extent, geometry and dynamics of palaeo-ice sheets can be reconstructed from the geomorphological and geological evidence they leave behind, with the mapping, logging and description of such evidence being the vital ingredients. For many palaeo-ice sheets, such as the British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS), the accumulation of evidence at individual field-sites has been ongoing for well over 100 years (e.g. Geikie 1894) yielding thousands of publications. Using such work to build local to regional reconstructions of ice dynamics is feasible, but at the ice-sheet scale the volume of information becomes unmanageable. Often the information is spread across so many publications and across many decades of work, where...

Landslides are one of the most widespread geohazards in Europe, producing significant social and economic impacts. Rapid population growth in urban areas throughout many countries in Europe and extreme climatic scenarios can considerably increase landslide risk in the near future. Variability exists between European countries in both the statutory treatment of landslide risk and the use of official assessment guidelines. This suggests that a European Landslides Directive that provides a common legal framework for dealing with landslides is necessary. With this long-term goal in mind, this work analyzes the landslide databases from the Geological Surveys of Europe focusing on their interoperability and completeness. The same landslide classification could be used for the 849,543 landslide records from the Geological Surveys, from which 36% are slides, 10% are falls, 20% are flows, 11% are complex slides, and 24% either remain unclassified or correspond to another typology. Most of them are mapped with the same symbol at a scale of 1:25,000 or greater, providing the necessary information to elaborate European-scale susceptibility maps for each landslide type. A landslide density map was produced for the available records from the Geological Surveys (LANDEN map) showing, for the first time, 210,544km 2 landslide-prone areas and 23,681 administrative areas where the Geological Surveys from Europe have recorded landslides. The comparison of this map with the European landslide susceptibility map (ELSUS 1000 v1) is successful for most of the territory (69.7%) showing certain variability between countries. This comparison also permitted the identification of 0.98Mkm 2 (28.9%) of landslide-susceptible areas without records from the Geological Surveys, which have been used to evaluate the landslide database completeness. The estimated completeness of the landslide databases (LDBs) from the Geological Surveys is 17%, varying between 1 and 55%. This variability is due to the different landslide strategies adopted by each country. In some of them, landslide mapping is systematic; others only record damaging landslides, whereas in others, landslide maps are only available for certain regions or local areas. Moreover, in most of the countries, LDBs from the Geological Surveys co-exist with others owned by a variety of public institutions producing LDBs at variable scales and formats. Hence, a greater coordination effort should be made by all the institutions working in landslide mapping to increase data integration and harmonization.

As with many marine species, the vast majority of coral-reef fishes have a bipartite life cycle consisting of a dispersive larval stage and a benthic adult stage. While the potentially far-reaching demographic and ecological consequences of marine dispersal are widely appreciated, little is known of the structure of the larval pool and of the dispersive process itself. Utilizing Palindrome Sequence Analysis of otolith micro-chemistry (PaSA;) we show that larvae of Neopomacentrus miryae (Pomacentridae) appear to remain in cohesive cohorts throughout their entire pelagic larval duration (PLD; ∼28 days). Genetically, we found cohort members to be maternally (mtDNA) unrelated. While physical forcing cannot be negated as contributing to initial cohort formation, the small scale of the observed spatial structure suggests that some behavioral modification may be involved from a very early age. This study contributes to our ongoing re-evaluation of the processes that structure marine populations and communities and the spatial scales at which they operate.