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Review of current progress in Mid to Late Ordovician astrochronological studies exposes some important issues related to cyclostratigraphical studies, including the completeness and correlation of successions, and the connection between inferred astronomical cycles and geological events recorded in the sedimentary record. While bulk, low-field, mass specific magnetic susceptibility methods are widely applied in studies of high resolution cyclostratigraphy, they require close support from sequence stratigraphy and biostratigraphy, and should be linked back to outcrop patterns. Otherwise they risk distortion in the calibration against geological time, through lack of anchoring to well-defined biostratigraphical horizons and unrecognised condensed intervals and larger hiatuses. A significant limitation currently is that few high-resolution radio-isotope ages are linked to well-defined biostratigraphical boundaries. Nevertheless, fourth order sedimentary sequences linked to 405 ky orbital eccentricity cycles, and longer orbital cyclicity impressed in third-order sequences, represent good grounds for development of a reliable astrochronological scale. The astrochronologically calibrated sequence-stratigraphical record documented from high latitude Gondwana shows significant impact from orbital forcing on the Mid to Late Ordovician global climate.

One of the main concerns of today's world is the reduction of non-renewable energies and environmental pollution caused by them in buildings, which can be controlled by saving and optimizing energy consumption. On the other hand, global climate change and its local and regional effects are important in buildings energy management policies. To this end, identifying and exploiting passive systems and climate-friendly design strategies are one of the cheap and sustainable solutions in this regard. The present study examined the use of soil thermal potentials and earth-sheltered design as one of the practical solutions for providing thermal comfort and reducing energy consumption in hot and dry climates and case studied “Shahdad Desert”. Various active and passive techniques are currently used throughout the world to reduce energy consumption, some of which have been common from the past to the present such as the construction of buildings in the shelter of earth, like the Iranian native architecture. This study empirically and practically investigated the effect of the depth of a building in the soil on the rate of cooling and heating energy consumption. The information required for the construction site of the earth-sheltered building was obtained by conducting a field survey in the Shahdad Desert. It was further suggested to build a tourist residence by taking refuge in the heart of the Kaluts in the hot and dry climates of Shahdad. By moving the designed building inside Kalut, the rate of cooling and heating energy consumption of the building during the year was calculated and the results showed that changing the depth of the earth-sheltered building did not have much effect on heating energy, but as it approached the earth edges, its cooling energy increased. As the building left the earth, the total cooling and heating energy consumption increased dramatically.