by Adi Torfstein, Alexandra Turchyn, Perach Nuriel, Steven L. Goldstein, Rolf Kipfer

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. Lake Kinneret (a.k.a. the Sea of Galilee) and its precursors within the Kinnarot Basin (which hosts the lake), deposited a thick sequence of lacustrine sediments since the late Neogene. Seismic profiles across the tectonically subsiding Cursi Basin in the middle of the lake, as well as preliminary results from sediment cores, indicate that the sedimentary sequences are flat-lying with no detectable disturbances, and are dominated by primary authigenic calcite, whose chemical and isotopic composition documents regional hydrology and lacustrine conditions since at least the Pliocene, at an extremely high resolution due to high sedimentation rates (~2m/kyr in the top and averaging ~0.3m/kyr throughout). The authigenic carbonates allow for highly resolved dating of the sedimentary sequence using 14C, U-Th and UPb for Pliocene (and older) sections. Moreover, seismic activity is well recorded by disturbances in their laminar horizontal structure. Accordingly, the Kinneret sedimentary sequence has the potential to serve as one of the longest, and highly resolved lacustrine records on Earth, which is particularly important due to the relevance of this site to: (1) High resolution reconstruction of Pliocene-Quaternary hydro-climate history of the Levant and East Mediterranean, which is considered a major hot spot of projected climate warming; (2) Evaluation of the impacts of climate change on human history and regional ecology; (3) Reconstruction of seismic activity along the Dead Sea Rift since the Pliocene; We propose holding an ICDP Workshop to distill the major scientific research themes and to plan the operation of our proposed ICDP drilling project in the Cursi Basin.

• The specific objectives of the KIND project is to establish a Pliocene-Quaternary chronostratigraphic reference record at a sub-centennial resolution, which will include a hydroclimate record, paleoseismicity record, geomagnetic record, pollen and paleo-botanical record, and chemical and isotopic records (e.g., stable and clumped isotopes). These records will be used to explore the following topics:
• (1) Compare middle and late Quaternary hydroclimate patterns between northern and southern Israel,
• (2) Determine the timing of major Pliocene-Quaternary climate change perturbations and evaluate relative global lags and leads,
• (3) Compare and calibrate transient climate models using the KIND hydroclimate record, and extend transient climate models to the Pliocene,
• (4) Building on hydroclimate records and modeling, we will establish a quantitative predictive model of regional hydroclimate for the 21st century,
• (5) Reconstruct seismic activity across the Dead Sea Rift activity since the Pliocene,
• (6) Generate a global unified geomagnetic record since the Pliocene,
• (7) Generate a reconstruction of environmental conditions and their interplay with climate change since the Pliocene,
• (8) Study the connection between prehistoric migration patterns and regional hydroclimate,
• (9) Study the connection between historic cultural developments and regional hydroclimate, as well as possible connections to the impacts of earthquakes on cultural development,
• (10) Significant public outreach and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) activities.

Paleoclimate, Paleoseismicity, Paleomagnetism, Dead Sea Basin, Human Evolution

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