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    500,000 Years of Environmental History in Eastern Anatolia: The PALEOVAN Drilling Project
    (Sapporo : IODP, 2012) Litt, T.; Anselmetti, F.S.; Baumgarten, H.; Beer, J.; Cagatay, N.; Cukur, D.; Damci, E.; Glombitza, C.; Haug, G.; Heumann, G.; Kallmeyer, H.; Kipfer, R.; Krastel, S.; Kwiecien, O.; Meydan, A.F.; Orcen, S.; Pickarski, N.; Randlett, M.-E.; Schmincke, H.-U.; Schubert, C.J.; Sturm, M.; Sumita, M.; Stockhecke, M.; Tomonaga, Y.; Vigliotti, L.; Wonik, T.
    International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) drilled a complete succession of the lacustrine sediment sequence deposited during the last ~500,000 years in Lake Van, Eastern Anatolia (Turkey). Based on a detailed seismic site survey, two sites at a water depth of up to 360 m were drilled in summer 2010, and cores were retrieved from sub-lake-floor depths of 140 m (Northern Basin) and 220 m (Ahlat Ridge). To obtain a complete sedimentary section, the two sites were multiple-cored in order to investigate the paleoclimate history of a sensitive semi-arid region between the Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean seas. Further scientific goals of the PALEOVAN project are the reconstruction of earthquake activity, as well as the temporal, spatial, and compositional evolution of volcanism as reflected in the deposition of tephra layers. The sediments host organic matter from different sources and hence composition, which will be unravelled using biomarkers. Pathways for migration of continental and mantle-derived noble gases will be analyzed in pore waters. Preliminary 40Ar/39Ar single crystal dating of tephra layers and pollen analyses suggest that the Ahlat Ridge record encompasses more than half a million years of paleoclimate and volcanic/geodynamic history, providing the longest continental record in the entire Near East to date.
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    The SCOPSCO drilling project recovers more than 1.2 million years of history from Lake Ohrid
    (Sapporo : IODP, 2014) Wagner, B.; Wilke, T.; Krastel, S.; Zanchetta, G.; Sulpizio, R.; Reicherter, K.; Leng, M.J.; Grazhdani, A.; Trajanovski, S.; Francke, A.; Lindhorst, K.; Levkov, Z.; Cvetkoska, A.; Reed, J.M.; Zhang, X.; Lacey, J.H.; Wonik, T.; Baumgarten, H.; Vogel, H.
    The Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions in Lake Ohrid (SCOPSCO) project is an international research initiative to study the influence of major geological and environmental events on the biological evolution of lake taxa. SCOPSCO drilling campaigns were carried out in 2011 and 2013. In 2011 we used gravity and piston coring at one of the five proposed drill sites, and in 2013 we undertook deep drilling with the Deep Lake Drilling System (DLDS) of Drilling, Observation and Sampling of the Earth's Continental Crust (DOSECC). In April and May 2013, a total of 2100 m sediments were recovered from four drill sites with water depths ranging from 125 to 260 m. The maximum drill depth was 569 m below the lake floor in the centre of the lake. By retrieving overlapping sediment sequences, 95% of the sediment succession was recovered. Initial data from borehole logging, core logging and geochemical measurements indicate that the sediment succession covers >1.2 million years (Ma) in a quasi-continuous sequence. These early findings suggest that the record from Lake Ohrid will substantially improve the knowledge of long-term environmental change and short-term geological events in the northeastern Mediterranean region, which forms the basis for improving understanding of the influence of major geological and environmental events on the biological evolution of endemic species.