This summer, Melanie Leng (BGS's Chief Scientist for Environmental Change Adaptation)
attended a workshop in Dar es Saleem, Tanzania, with around 70 other scientists
from 10 countries, with the aim to form a plan to create a palaeo Geo-Observatory
in this region. The Geo-Observatory, in the form of a long sediment core, will
contain information on past conditions in Lake Tanganyika and tropical East
Africa. Here Melanie tells us about why we need to do research in this region
and what happens next…
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| The Lake Tanganyika team |
LakeTanganyika is one of the oldest, largest and deepest freshwater lakes on
Earth and has been collecting information in the sediments deposited on the
lake bed for an estimated 10 million years. Creating a Geo-Observatory from Lake
Tanganyika in the form of a column of sediments from the bottom of the lake
going back through time, provides an outstanding opportunity to study these
sediments and transform our understanding of processes controlling the local
environment. Such processes could
include changes in the plants and animals in and around the lake; the recent
dramatic decline in fish stocks (which has huge implications for the people
that live on the lakeshores); and perhaps more importantly if these changes are
linked to current and past global climate change or volcanism. These studies
could also help determine if recent changes are as a result of human activity,
through increasing agriculture, industrialisation and human population growth.
Very deep in Lake Tanganyika there are sediments going back many
million years (estimated from seismic reflection profiles) so we can also investigate tropical climate in the Miocene period to a time when
global climate was warmer than the preceding Oligocene and the following
Pliocene periods. Two major ecosystems first appeared in the Miocene: kelp forests in
the oceans and major grasslands on the continents. The expansion of grasslands
is correlated to a drying of the continents as global climate warmed. It is
important to understand how our ecosystems respond to climate changes
especially warmer worlds.
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| Sunset at Lake Tanganyika |
Drilling into the Lake Tanganyika lake bed and subsequently
investigating the ‘Geo-Observatory’ will produce continuous information which
will be used as a type
section for the tropics. The Geo- Observatory
requires pooling international funds and expertise and hence we have linked up
with the International Continental scientific
Drilling Programme (ICDP) – an international organisation that facilitates
large international continental drilling projects by pooling membership fees to
part fund large scientific drilling projects but also facilitates the
operational structure and organisation of the drilling. ICDP funded the
workshop in Dar es Salaam which enabled us to develop scientific and logistic
plans for drilling the Geo-Observatory.
More than 70 researchers from 10
countries attended the workshop including colleagues from Tanzania, Burundi and
Congo which also allows us to build capacity in these countries. From the UK
the following attended and represented a range of international expertise:From the UK the following attended and represented a range of international expertise: myself, Philip Barker and Chris Wollf (Lancaster University), Ellinor Michel and Jonathan Todd (Natural History Museum), Helen Roberts (Aberystwyth University), Charlotte Spencer-Jones (Durham University) and Richard Staff (SUERC).
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| The workshop participation group comprising more than 70 scientists from more than 10 countries |
Now all the delegates all back home we will all be writing
applications to our national funders to acquire co-funding for the drilling, science, and training and outreach activities for the people that live around
the lake. It’s a hugely ambitious project and may take several years to come to
fruition, but we are all working hard to make sure the Geo-Observatory is
delivered to answer some of the most pressing questions in the changing East
African climate.
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