ICDP Workshop on Lake Issyk-Kul 2010

Environmental and climate reconstructionsfor Paleogene and Neogene time from continental settings remain sketchy and confined to a small set of regions. Moreover, there is evidence that regional continental climate is not in phase with oceanic sediment records. These relationships are fundamental to understand forcing and feedbacks, especially for time windows beyond the Quaternary.

A workshop will be held on September 5 to 9, 2010 to address scientific, technical, administrative and logistical prerequisites for scientific drilling of Issyk-Kul, at present an endorheic mountain lake in the northern Tien Shan (Kyrgystan). The archive offers the potential to track long-term climatic and environmental changes because continuous accumulation started in this lake approximately 25 Million years ago. A major goal of the planned drilling will be to unravel the erosion history, which has recorded the reaction to changes in both climatic and relief due to mountain building. Of particular interests will be topics addressing changes over the last 5 to 10 million years like

1. Lacustrine environmental changes,
2. Regional humidity and temperature changes and biodiversity,
3. Impact of progressive humidity changes on the weathering history,
4. Sequence stratigraphy as a tool for lake-level analysis and tectonic basin evolution studies,
5. Geodynamic/Tectonic setting and their record in lake sediments and at outcrops near the shore, and
6. Development of age models for sediment cores.

We invite researchers from the international scientific community in disciplines such as sedimentology, palaeontology, geochemistry s.l. (incl. stable and radiogenic isotopes, including cosmogenic nuclides), biochemistry, structural geology, geomorphology, glaciology, palaeomagnetism, geophysics, etc. Interested scientists are requested to contact the ICDP workshop organizers before January 31, 2010 (Hedi Oberhänsli, GFZ, Telegrafenberg, 14467 Potsdam, Germany, oberh@gfz-potsdam.de; Peter Molnar, University Colorado, Boulder, USA, peter.molnar@colorado.edu). ICDP will support travel and expenses for approximately 30 participants, with preference for individuals from ICDP member countries. Selected participants will be informed in mid March 2010.