The late Quaternary limnological history of Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), Israel

The freshwater Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and the hypersaline Dead Sea are remnant lakes, evolved from ancient water bodies that filled the tectonic depressions along the Dead Sea Transform (DST) during the Neogene-Quartenary periods. We reconstructed the limnological history (level and composition) of Lake Kinneret during the past ∼40,000 years and compared it with the history of the contemporaneous Lake Lisan from the aspect of the regional and global climate history. The lake level reconstruction was achieved through a chronological and sedimentological investigation of exposed sedimentary sections in the Kinnarot basin trenches and cores drilled at the Ohalo II archeological site. Shoreline chronology was established by radiocarbon dating of organic remains and of Melanopsis shells.The major changes in Lake Kinneret level were synchronous with those of the southern Lake Lisan. Both lakes dropped significantly ∼42,000, ∼30,000, 23,800, and 13,000 yr ago and rose ∼39,000, 26,000, 5000, and 1600 yr ago. Between 26,000 and 24,000 yr ago, the lakes merged into a unified water body and lake level achieved its maximum stand of ∼170 m below mean sea level (m bsl). Nevertheless, the fresh and saline water properties of Lake Kinneret and Lake Lisan, respectively, have been preserved throughout the 40,000 years studied. Calcium carbonate was always deposited as calcite in Lake Kinneret and as aragonite in Lake Lisan-Dead Sea, indicating that the Dead Sea brine (which supports aragonite production) never reached or affected Lake Kinneret, even during the period of lake high stand and convergence. The synchronous level fluctuation of lakes Kinneret, Lisan, and the Holocene Dead Sea is consistent with the dominance of the Atlantic-Mediterranean rain system on the catchment of the basin and the regional hydrology. The major drops in Lake Kinneret-Lisan levels coincide with the timing of cold spells in the North Atlantic that caused a shut down of rains in the East Mediterranean and the lakes drainage area.     

New insights into lake responses to rapid climate change: the Younger Dryas in Lake Gościąż, central Poland

The sediment profile from Lake Gościąż in central Poland comprises a continuous, seasonally resolved and exceptionally well-preserved archive of the Younger Dryas (YD) climate variation. This provides a unique opportunity for detailed investigation of lake system responses during periods of rapid climate cooling (YD onset) and warming (YD termination). The new varve record of Lake Gościąż presented here spans 1662 years from the late Allerød (AL) to the early Preboreal (PB). Microscopic varve counting provides an independent chronology with a YD duration of 1149+14/–22 years, which confirms previous results of 1140±40 years. We link stable oxygen isotopes and chironomid-based air temperature reconstructions with the response of various geochemical and varve microfacies proxies especially focusing on the onset and termination of the YD. Cooling at the YD onset lasted ~180 years, which is about a century longer than the terminal warming that was completed in ~70 years. During the AL/YD transition, environmental proxy data lagged the onset of cooling by ~90 years and revealed an increase of lake productivity and internal lake re-suspension as well as slightly higher detrital sediment input. In contrast, rapid warming and environmental changes during the YD/PB transition occurred simultaneously. However, initial changes such as declining diatom deposition and detrital input occurred already a few centuries before the rapid warming at the YD/PB transition. These environmental changes likely reflect a gradual increase in summer air temperatures already during the YD. Our data indicate complex and differing environmental responses to the major climate changes related to the YD, which involve different proxy sensitivities and threshold processes.     

Cryptotephras in the Lateglacial ICDP Dead Sea sediment record and their implications for chronology

Due to a lack of visible tephras in the Dead Sea record, this unique palaeoenvironmental archive is largely unconnected to the well-established Mediterranean tephrostratigraphy. Here we present first results of the ongoing search for cryptotephras in the International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP) sediment core from the deep Dead Sea basin. This study focusses on the Lateglacial (~15–11.4 cal. ka BP), when Lake Lisan – the precursor of the Dead Sea – shrank from its glacial highstand to the Holocene low levels. We developed a glass shard separation protocol and counting procedure that is adapted to the extreme salinity and sediment recycling of the Dead Sea. Cryptotephra is abundant in the Dead Sea record (up to ~100 shards cm^-3), but often glasses are physically and/or chemically altered. Six glass samples from five tephra horizons reveal a heterogeneous geochemical composition, with mainly rhyolitic and some trachytic glasses potentially sourced from Italian, Aegean and Anatolian volcanoes. Most shards likely originate from the eastern Anatolian volcanic province and can be correlated using major element analyses with tephra deposits from swarm eruptions of the Süphan Volcano ~13 ka BP and with ashes from Nemrut Volcano, presumably the Lake Van V-16 volcanic layer at ~13.8 ka BP. In addition to glasses that match the TM-10-1 from Lago Grande di Monticchio (15 820±790 cal. a BP) tentatively correlated with the St. Angelo Tuff of Ischia, we further identified a cryptotephra with glass analyses which are chemically identical with those of the PhT1 tephra in the Philippon peat record (13.9–10.5 ka BP), and also a compositional match for the glass analyses of the Santorini Cape Riva Tephra (Y-2 marine tephra, 22 024±642 cal. a BP). These first results demonstrate the great potential of cryptotephrochronology in the Dead Sea record for improving its chronology and connecting the Levantine region to the Mediterranean tephra framework.     

A small‐strain overlay model

The paper begins with a discussion of the phenomenon of small‐strain stiffness and presents the small‐strain overlay model, a simple model that takes into account the non‐linear stiffness of soils at small strains. The new model can enhance already established elastoplastic formulations for non‐linear stiffness variation at small strains in a similar way that intergranular strain enhances the hypoplastic model. The overlay model is driven by the material's strain history and only two additional material constants, both with clear physical meaning. Therefore, the proposed model is a step towards the incorporation of small‐strain stiffness into routine design. In this paper, the new small‐strain overlay model is formulated. Its ability to take into account the influence of various strain histories on soil stiffness is illustrated in several examples. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quantitative reconstruction of lake conductivity in the Quaternary of the Near East (Israel) using ostracods

Surface sediments, water samples and environmental data from 37 lakes, ponds and streams in Israel were analysed to determine the main variables controlling ostracod species distributions. Multivariate statistical analysis revealed that the greatest amounts of variation in the distribution of the ostracod taxa among the 37 water bodies were explained by the host water δD value (12.9%), water temperature (11.0%), mean January air temperature (10.5%), electrical conductivity (9.5%), and the Mg and NO₃ concentrations (7.8 and 7.1%, ion concentrations as % of the anions or cations). A supplementary data set comprising ostracod species composition and electrical conductivity readings for 24 water bodies was available from previous research and was merged with the 37 samples data set to develop an ostracod-based transfer function for the reconstruction of electrical conductivities. A weighted averaging partial least squares regression (WA-PLS) provided the best results with a relatively high coefficient of determination (r ²) between measured and inferred electrical conductivity values of 0.73, a root mean square error of prediction of 0.13 (13.4% of gradient length) and a maximum bias of 0.24 (23.9% of gradient length), as assessed by leave-one-out cross-validation based on 56 water bodies. The application of the EC transfer function onto (sub)fossil ostracod assemblages from Holocene and early to mid Pleistocene lake sediments provided EC values consistent with other proxies and demonstrated that Quaternary ostracod assemblages from subaqueous sediments can now be used to trace the hydrological history of water bodies in the Near East. A better understanding of past hydrological conditions in response to the natural climate variability is crucial in regions that face restricted water resources and rising demands in times of rapid climate and environmental change.     

Landsliding and sediment flux in the Central Swiss Alps: A photogrammetric study of the Schimbrig landslide, Entlebuch

This study explores the effects of hillslope mass failure on the sediment flux in the Waldemme drainage basin, Central Swiss Alps, over decadal time scales. This area is characterized by abundant landslides affecting principally flysch units and is therefore an important sediment source. The analysis concentrates on the Schimbrig landslide that potentially contributes up to 15% to the sediment budget of the Waldemme drainage basin. Volumetric changes are quantified using high-resolution elevation models that were extracted using digital photogrammetric techniques. Sediment discharge data were used to constrain the significance of the landslide for sediment flux in the channel network. The temporal extent of the photogrammetric analysis ranges from 1962 to 1998, including an earth slide event in 1994. The analyses reveal that during periods of low slip rates of the landslide, nearly all of the displaced sediments were eroded and supplied to the channel network. In contrast, during active periods, only a fraction of the displaced landslide mass was exported to the trunk stream. Interestingly, the 1994 earth slide event did not disturb the long-term sediment discharge pattern of the channel network, nor did it influence the sediment flux at a weekly scale. However, suspended sediment pulses correlate with higher-than-average precipitation events. This was especially the case in August 2005 when a storm event (> 100 years return period) triggered several debris flows and earth flows in the whole drainage basin and in the Schimbrig area. This storm did not result in a significant increase in the slip rates of the entire landslide's main body. It is therefore proposed that debris flows and earth flows perform the connectivity between hillslope processes (e.g. landsliding) and the trunk stream during and between phases of landslide activity in this particular setting.     

Unusual bed forms on the North Aleutian Shelf,Bristol Bay,Alaska

Side-scan sonar records collected over an area of the North Aleutian Shelf, approximately 250 km west of the head of Bristol Bay, Alaska, identified widespread evidence of active sea floor erosion processes, including sediment transport. Thousands of sea floor depressions, many linear and some containing rippled floors, were identified in water depths of 30 to 90 m. The depressions cover approximately 40 percent of the area surveyed. The sea floor depressions are interpreted to be erosional features, and in conjunction with a field of sand waves, exemplify the dynamic nature of the ocenographic processes active on this area of the sea floor.