ABSTRACT

This Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) award will help develop biological and geochemical records from a series of sediment cores representing the last 3,000 years of history from the northern basin of Lake Tanganyika, East Africa.

The research goal is to produce high-resolution precisely dated paleoclimate records to test the validity of a recently proposed model of symmetric, equator ward compression of the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone by solar variability during the Little Ice Age, and to investigate other possible effects of solar forcing on tropical rainfall. The researcher postulates that detailed geo-biologic time series, when developed from the Lake, will help define discrete paleoclimate events at Lake Tanganyika that could be compared with records from tropical latitudes to provide a record of drought and rainfall trends from 3,000 years through modern times.

Part of the research effort will involve diatom-based proxies of past wind activity. These data represents a potential new source of insights into the nature and origin of late Holocene variability in the Afro-Asian paleo-monsoon system, which until now has been studied almost exclusively through sites located in and around the Arabian Sea.

Results from this research project will be compared to other records ranging from tropical to polar latitudes thereby placing the climatic history of the Tanganyika basin into a global context. Determining the history of recent productivity declines, often attributed to global warming, will provide important insights into their origin.

The award will support several undergraduate students to help analyze the sediment records and the international collaborations with non-US scientists will increase worldwide access to the research data and a sharing of ideas regarding its interpretation.

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