ICDPInternational Continental Scientific Drilling Program

Lake Biwa and Lake Suigetsu are highly expected to provide an excellent set of paleoclimatic and tectonic information from the Middle Pleistocene through to the present. The results of previous studies done on the cores from those lakes suggest that the sediment is quasi-continuous down to the considerably deeper horizons (250 m in Lake Biwa and 75 m in Lake Suigetsu, ranging over last 430 kyrs and 150 kyrs, respectively), and that the good age control can be obtained by tephra chronology and lamina counting.

Now in-hand preliminary results suggest that the cores will provide high-resolution records of paleoclimatic and tectonic history of central Japan. Adding to this, the comparison between Lake Biwa and Lake Suigetsu records will arrow us to detect the inter-regional variety of climate changes between Japan Sea area and Pacific Area.