KIND workshop successfully held in Potsdam

65 scientists from all over the world gathered in Potsdam from July 12-15 to discuss ideas for scientific drilling of Lake Kinneret to address question of paleoclimate variability and its link to human evolution.

The southern Levant serves as the triple junction of Asia, Europe and Africa, and is located on the fringe of the Sahara Desert, making its regional hydro-climate extremely sensitive to even small global climate perturbations. In addition, this region has served as a major pathway for the migration “out of Africa” of fauna, flora and hominids throughout the Quaternary, as well as for the development of human culture. Spanning the length of the southern Levant is the Dead Sea Rift, which hosts the Dead Sea in the south and Lake Kinneret in the north. Seismic activity along the rift is a major hazard to infrastructure and human life, and together with future predictions of increased aridity over the coming century, superimposed over existing severe geopolitical strife, there is a critical need to identify and quantify climate change patterns, seismic risks to infrastructure and human life, and the overall ecological impacts of these processes on the environment.

More project info: https://www.icdp-online.org/projects/by-continent/asia/kind-israel/