PALEOMADA combines field and laboratory activities.
Field work consists of setting up monitoring stations in each setting (lake and rivers, caves, and meteorological station), training Malagasy and Belgian Master's students and local collaborators (field technicians and meteorological staff collaborators) in the sample collection and storage processes, in situ measurements of various physico-chemical parameters during field expedition, and physical samples collection (lake sediments, speleothems, and various water samples from the lake, the surrounding rivers, and from the cave drips and pools). All these activities have received permission from the local authorities.
Lab activities consist of preparing and analyzing the physical samples collected from the field to produce interpretable geochemical data. Water samples were analyzed for various stable isotope composition (d2H, d18O, d13C) and for various major and trace elemental composition (Ca, Mg, Sr, Ba). Speleothem samples were analyzed for d18O, d13C, major and trace elemental composition, and clumped isotope). Lake sediment samples were analyzed for TOC, TN, C/N, %C, %N, δ2H, δ13C and δ15N. Records from lake sediments and modern lake environment have been used by a Belgian MSc student for her MSc. thesis, which was defended in June 2020. Records from stalagmites samples and cave monitoring are currently used by a Malagasy MSc student in the preparation of her MSc. thesis. Another Malagasy student assistant has been benefiting from the project and my mentoring and has defended a Master's thesis on physico-chemical characterization and valorization of caves in December 2020.
Up to this final report, three manuscripts using data from this PALEOMADA project have been submitted. Two manuscripts are first authored (with one sole author). They are under review at Geochemica Cosmochimica Acta and at Science of the Total Environment. The 3rd manuscript is co-authored and is currently under review at Nature, the results presented in which are beyond the original scope of the project because it looks at methane and greenhouse gas emission from tropical lakes. Four conference abstracts have been submitted and presented, except one that had been cancelled due to COVID. In addition to this, the researcher has been invited to give a seminar talk at the Institute of Earth Sciences, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, in Germany.
