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ICDP workshop on scientific drilling of Nam Co on the Tibetan Plateau: 1 million years of paleoenvironmental history, geomicrobiology, tectonics and paleomagnetism derived from sediments of a high-altitude lake
2019, Haberzettl, Torsten, Daut, Gerhard, Schulze, Nora, Spiess, Volkhard, Wang, Junbo, Zhu, Liping
The Tibetan Plateau is of peculiar societal relevance as it provides freshwater from the so-called “Water Tower of Asia” to a large portion of the Asian population. However, future climate change will affect the hydrological cycle in this area. To define parameters for future climate change scenarios it is necessary to improve the knowledge about thresholds, timing, pace and intensity of past climatic changes and associated environmental impacts. Sedimentary archives reaching far back in time and spanning several glacial–interglacial cycles such as Nam Co provide the unique possibility to extract such information. In order to explore the scientific opportunities that an ICDP drilling effort at Nam Co would provide, 40 scientists from 13 countries representing various scientific disciplines met in Beijing from 22 to 24 May 2018. Besides paleoclimatic investigations, opportunities for paleomagnetic, deep biosphere, tectonic and paleobiological studies were discussed. After having explored the technical and logistical challenges and the scientific opportunities all participants agreed on the great value and need to drill this extraordinary archive, which has a sediment thickness of more than 1 km, likely covering more than 1 Ma.
ICDP workshop on the Lake Tanganyika Scientific Drilling Project: a late Miocene–present record of climate, rifting, and ecosystem evolution from the world's oldest tropical lake
2020, Russell, James M., Barker, Philip, Cohen, Andrew, Ivory, Sarah, Kimirei, Ishmael, Lane, Christine, Leng, Melanie, Maganza, Neema, McGlue, Michael, Msaky, Emma, Noren, Anders, Park Boush, Lisa, Salzburger, Walter, Scholz, Christopher, Tiedemann, Ralph, Nuru, Shaidu
The Neogene and Quaternary are characterized by enormous changes in global climate and environments, including global cooling and the establishment of northern high-latitude glaciers. These changes reshaped global ecosystems, including the emergence of tropical dry forests and savannahs that are found in Africa today, which in turn may have influenced the evolution of humans and their ancestors. However, despite decades of research we lack long, continuous, well-resolved records of tropical climate, ecosystem changes, and surface processes necessary to understand their interactions and influences on evolutionary processes. Lake Tanganyika, Africa, contains the most continuous, long continental climate record from the mid-Miocene (∼10 Ma) to the present anywhere in the tropics and has long been recognized as a top-priority site for scientific drilling. The lake is surrounded by the Miombo woodlands, part of the largest dry tropical biome on Earth. Lake Tanganyika also harbors incredibly diverse endemic biota and an entirely unexplored deep microbial biosphere, and it provides textbook examples of rift segmentation, fault behavior, and associated surface processes. To evaluate the interdisciplinary scientific opportunities that an ICDP drilling program at Lake Tanganyika could offer, more than 70 scientists representing 12 countries and a variety of scientific disciplines met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in June 2019. The team developed key research objectives in basin evolution, source-to-sink sedimentology, organismal evolution, geomicrobiology, paleoclimatology, paleolimnology, terrestrial paleoecology, paleoanthropology, and geochronology to be addressed through scientific drilling on Lake Tanganyika. They also identified drilling targets and strategies, logistical challenges, and education and capacity building programs to be carried out through the project. Participants concluded that a drilling program at Lake Tanganyika would produce the first continuous Miocene–present record from the tropics, transforming our understanding of global environmental change, the environmental context of human origins in Africa, and providing a detailed window into the dynamics, tempo and mode of biological diversification and adaptive radiations.