Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer Verlag
Résumé : International audience
Standard microbial evolutionary ontology is organized according to a nested hierarchy of entities at various levels of biological organization. It typically detects and defines these entities in relation to the most stable aspects of evolutionary processes, by identifying lineages evolving by a process of vertical inheritance from an ancestral entity. However, recent advances in microbiology indicate that such an ontology has important limitations. The various dynamics detected within microbiological systems reveal that a focus on the most stable entities (or features of entities) over time inevitably underestimates the extent and nature of microbial diversity. These dynamics are not the outcome of the process of vertical descent alone. Other processes, often involving causal interactions between entities from distinct levels of biological organisation, or operating at different time scales, are responsible not only for the destabilisation of pre-existing entities, but also for the emergence and stabilisation of novel entities in the microbial world. In this article we consider microbial entities as more or less stabilised functional wholes, and sketch a network-based ontology that can represent a diverse set of processes including, for example, as well as phylogenetic relations, interactions that stabilise or destabilise the interacting entities, spatial relations, ecological connections, and genetic exchanges. We use this pluralistic framework for evaluating (i) the existing ontological assumptions in evolution (e.g. whether currently recognized entities are adequate for understanding the causes of change and stabilisation in the microbial world), and (ii) for identifying hidden ontological kinds, essentially invisible from within a more limited perspective. We propose to recognize additional classes of entities that provide new insights into the structure of the microbial world, namely ``processually equivalent'' entities, ``processually versatile'' entities, and ``stabilized'' entities.
ISSN: 0169-3867

hal-01544796
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01544796
DOI : 10.1007/s10539-012-9350-2

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
Numerical programs for simulating flow and reactive transport in porous media are essential tools for predicting reservoir properties changes triggered by CO2 underground injection. At reservoir scale, meshed models in which equations are solved assuming that constant macroscopic properties can be defined in each cells, are widely used. However, the parameterization of the dissolution-precipitation problem and of the feedback effects of these processes on the flow field is still challenging. The problem arises from the mismatch between the scales at which averaged parameters are defined in the meshed model and the scale at which chemical reactions occur and modify the pore network geometry. In this paper we investigate the links between the dissolution mechanisms that control the porosity changes and the related changes of the reactive surface area and of the permeability. First, the reactive surface area is computed from X-ray microtomography data obtained before and after a set of dissolution experiments of pure calcite rock samples using distinctly different brine-CO2 mixtures characterizing homogeneous to heterogeneous dissolution regimes. The results are used to validate the power law empirical model relating the reactive surface area to porosity proposed by Luquot and Gauze (2009). Second, we investigate the spatial distribution of the effective hydraulic radius and of the tortuosity, two structural parameters that control permeability, in order to explain the different porosity-permeability relationships observed for heterogeneous and homogeneous dissolution regimes. It is shown that the increase of permeability is due to the decrease of the tortuosity for homogeneous dissolution, whereas it is due to the combination of tortuosity decrease and hydraulic radius increase for heterogeneous dissolution. For the intermediate dissolution regime, identified to be the optimal regime for increasing permeability with small changes in porosity, the increase of permeability results from a large increase in the mean effective hydraulic radius of the sample.
ISSN: 0169-7722

hal-00617671
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00617671
DOI : 10.1016/j.jconhyd.2010.07.004