Lake Van Drilling Project

• Lake Van in Turkey is an excellent paleoclimate archive comprising long high resolution annually laminated sediment records covering several glacial-interglacial cycles. The lake is situated on the high plateau of eastern Anatolia and has a surface area of 3,522 km2. Its maximum depth is 451 m and its length is 130 km. It is the fourth largest of all terminal lakes in the world and contains highly alkaline waters.

• (Photo ©:NASA)

• Specific goals of the PaleoVan project are to reconstruct:

1. Paleoclimate development in a sensitive semiarid region based on proxy data and modeling;
2. dynamics of lake level fluctuations and hydrogeological development;
3. formation and age of Lake Van;
4. history of volcanism and volcanic activity based on tephrostratigraphy;
5. variations of the earthmagnetic field;
6. tectonic, paleoseismic and earthquake activity;
7. interaction between man and environment since prehistoric time.

See also:

• ICDP-03/07

Asia, Turkey, Van Province, Eastern Anatolia, Lake Van

38° 38' N, 42° 54' E (Please scroll down to end of page for more information.)

• drilling operations started: July 2nd, 2010

• German Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)
• International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP)
• Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
• The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey

• Thomas Litt, University of Bonn, Steinmann Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology, Paleontology Division
• Sebastian Krastel-Gudegast, Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel, Research Division 4: Dynamics of the Ocean Floor
• Michael Sturm, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG), Department of Surface Waters - Research and Management, Sedimentology Section
• Rolf Kipfer, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG), Department of Water Resources and Drinking Water
• Sefer Örçen, University of Yüzüncü Yil
• M. Namik Çagatay, Istanbul Technical University (ITÜ), Eastern Mediterranean Centre for Oceanography and Limnology (EMCOL)

• DOSECC, Inc.
• GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Scientific Drilling ICDP (Operational Support Group OSG/ICDP)
• Istanbul Technical University, Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Leibniz Institute for Applied Geosciences, Section 5: Petrophysics and Borehole Geophysics
• Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG), Department of Surface Waters - Research and Management, Sedimentology Section
• University of Bonn, Steinmann Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology, Paleontology Division
• University of Bremen, Department 5 Geosciences, Marine Technology – Environmental Research

Anatolia , Climate Change , Global Environment , ICDP-03/07 , Lake Drilling , Paleoclimatology , PALEOVAN , Quaternary , Turkey , VAN , Varved Record

Presite survey done, workshop done, drilling operations start at July 2nd, 2010

• PALEOVAN - Drilling 500'000 years of environmental history in the Middle East

• http://www.paleontology.uni-bonn.de/paleovan/index.html

Show in Google Earth: Link

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