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Content archived on 2022-12-23

Climate change and lake sediments in south east Russia and southern Kazakhstan

Exploitable results

The present day dependence of large areas of south east Russia and southern Kazakhstan on marginal water supplies highlights the need for accurate reconstructions of past climate for the region, both to provide possible analogues for future climate change and to validate general circulation model drought simulations under CO2 warming. In this and other arid and semi-arid regions of the world, the sediments of closed-basin saline lakes can provide a high-resolution record of environmental and climatic change over timescales of 102, 106 years. However, despite the large number of suitable sites, there is a paucity of palaeoclimatic data for the region. This project aims to develop a programme of palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatological study in two areas (Caspian lowlands and southern Kazakhstan) using recently developed techniques of diatom and ostracod microfossil analysis. Specifically, the objectives of the project are: field survey of saline lakes in the Caspian lowlands, northern Aral Sea and Balkash-Alakul area, including analysis of water chemistry and sediment sampling; laboratory analysis of surface-sediment samples, including sediment chemistry, diatom and ostracod taxonomy and ostracod-shell geochemistry; diatom, ostracod and sediment chemistry analysis of long-cores collected from selected sites to reconstruct patterns of water-level and climate change over the last 103 - 104 years; incorporation of results into a computerized database of chemical and biological information on Russian and Kazakh saline lakes and analysis of results using multivariate statistical techniques. The main results of the project will be the provision of new information on the water chemistry, and diatom and ostracod biota for an important but little studied region of the world and the provision of high-resolution palaeoclimatic data from south-east Russia and southern Kazakhstan for the last 103-104 years. These areas are currently dependent on marginal water supplies and the estimates of 2degreesC increase in temperature and 25% decrease in soil moisture with current rates of greenhouse warming highlight their sensitivity to future climate change. The new data from this project will provide important information on past fluctuations in available moisture and, in particular, on the frequency and magnitude of droughts for the study regions, and put the predictions of future change under greenhouse warming into a context of long-term change. In addition, the data will provide a unique data set which can be used to validate general circulation model (GCM) hindcasts for the regions. Results of the project will be presented at appropriate international conferences and published. Original raw data will also be made available to other scientists in hard-copy or machine-readable format from the developed project data base.

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