2013, Wortmann, M., Krysanova, V., Kundzewicz, Z.W., Su, B., Li, X.

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF) often have a significant impact on downstream users. Including their effects in hydrological models, identifying past occurrences and assessing their potential impacts are challenges for hydrologists working in mountainous catchments. The regularly outbursting Merzbacher Lake is located in the headwaters of the Aksu River, the most important source of water discharge to the Tarim River, northwest China. Modelling its water resources and the evaluation of potential climate change impacts on river discharge are indispensable for projecting future water availability for the intensively cultivated river oases downstream of the Merzbacher Lake and along the Tarim River. The semi-distributed hydrological model SWIM was calibrated to the outlet station Xiehela on the Kumarik River, by discharge the largest tributary to the Aksu River. The glacial lake outburst floods add to the difficulties of modelling this high-mountain, heavily glaciated catchment with poor data coverage and quality. The aims of the study are to investigate the glacier lake outburst floods using a modelling tool. Results include a two-step model calibration of the Kumarik catchment, an approach for the identification of the outburst floods using the measured gauge data and the modelling results and estimations of the outburst flood volumes. Results show that a catchment model can inform GLOF investigations by providing 'normal' (i.e. without the outburst floods) catchment discharge. The comparison of the simulated and observed discharge proves the occurrence of GLOFs and highlights the influences of the GLOFs on the downstream water balance.

2015, Hesse, C., Stefanova, A., Krysanova, V.

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.

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.

2016, Russell, James M., Bijaksana, Satria, Vogel, Hendrik, Melles, Martin, Kallmeyer, Jens, Ariztegui, Daniel, Crowe, Sean, Fajar, Silvia, Hafidz, Abdul, Haffner, Doug, Hasberg, Ascelina, Ivory, Sarah, Kelly, Christopher, King, John, Kirana, Kartika, Morlock, Marina, Noren, Anders, O'Grady, Ryan, Ordonez, Luis, Stevenson, Janelle, von Rintelen, Thomas, Vuillemin, Aurele, Watkinson, Ian, Wattrus, Nigel, Wicaksono, Satrio, Wonik, Thomas, Bauer, Kohen, Deino, Alan, Friese, André, Henny, Cynthia, Marwoto, Ristiyanti, Ngkoimani, La Ode, Nomosatryo, Sulung, Safiuddin, La Ode, Simister, Rachel, Tamuntuan, Gerald

The Towuti Drilling Project (TDP) is an international research program, whose goal is to understand long-term environmental and climatic change in the tropical western Pacific, the impacts of geological and environmental changes on the biological evolution of aquatic taxa, and the geomicrobiology and biogeochemistry of metal-rich, ultramafic-hosted lake sediments through the scientific drilling of Lake Towuti, southern Sulawesi, Indonesia. Lake Towuti is a large tectonic lake at the downstream end of the Malili lake system, a chain of five highly biodiverse lakes that are among the oldest lakes in Southeast Asia. In 2015 we carried out a scientific drilling program on Lake Towuti using the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) Deep Lakes Drilling System (DLDS). We recovered a total of  ∼ 1018 m of core from 11 drilling sites with water depths ranging from 156 to 200 m. Recovery averaged 91.7 %, and the maximum drilling depth was 175 m below the lake floor, penetrating the entire sedimentary infill of the basin. Initial data from core and borehole logging indicate that these cores record the evolution of a highly dynamic tectonic and limnological system, with clear indications of orbital-scale climate variability during the mid- to late Pleistocene.