Project Details
Projekt
Rain6K: Six thousand years of Ethiopian hydroclimates from a varved sequence in Lake Babogaya
Applicant
Dr. Cécile Blanchet
Subject Area
Geology
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 513963332
The Rain6K project will focus on elucidating the decadal variability of past rainfall in central Ethiopia using an annual sedimentary record from Lake Babogaya. This crater lake is ideally situated to track precipitation changes close to the Blue Nile, which is one of the main sources of the Nile River. For this project, we will use a sediment core covering the last 6,000 yrs, which contain eight annually-laminated (varved) sequences interrupted by non-laminated sediments and a sedimentation hiatus. The combination of microfacies analyses and geochemical tools will enable us to investigate the rainfall dynamics at decadal scale during the past 6,000 yrs. This time interval is of prime importance as it covers a period of intense human activity in the upper and lower Nile Valley and encompasses intervals of significant climatic changes, such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Modifications of the Nile flow have been identified and tentatively related to these climatic changes and might have led to social unrest, based on the information provided by the yearly recordings of Nile River levels in the so-called Nilometers. Our reconstruction will provide unique insights on the relationships between rainfall variability in the source region and the downward expression as seasonal floods (source-to-sink approach). Another important aim will be to investigate the climatic forcing of extreme rainfall events or droughts in Ethiopia during the past 6,000 yrs, in order to inform our future in the context of global warming. Finally, such a high-resolution reconstruction as the one proposed here will constitute a much-needed climatic framework for the archaeological community that will help to illuminate the human-climate relationships.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Botswana, South Africa, United Kingdom
