TY - JOUR
T1 - Climatic change recorded in the sediments of the Chew Bahir basin, southern Ethiopia, during the last 45,000 years
AU - Foerster, Verena
AU - Juninger, Annett
AU - Langkamp, Oliver
AU - Gebru, Tsige
AU - Asrat, Asfawossen
AU - Umer, Mohammed
AU - Lamb, Henry F.
AU - Wennrich, Volker
AU - Rethemeyer, Janet
AU - Nowaczyk, Norbert
AU - Trauth, Martin H.
AU - Schaebitz, Frank
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Addis Ababa University for support in making the field campaigns possible, and to Addis Geosystems Ltd for providing drilling equipment. Nina Bösche (University of Potsdam) assisted with satellite image processing, and Frederik von Reumont and Andreas Bolten helped with cartography. We would like to thank Martin Wessels and two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the manuscript. This project is affiliated to the CRC 806 , which financially supported the first field campaign. The Chew Bahir Project is a contribution to the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), part of the ICDP-HSPDP initiative organized by A. Cohen. We thank the German Science Foundation (DFG) for funding all these projects.
PY - 2012/10/1
Y1 - 2012/10/1
N2 - East African paleoenvironments are highly variable, marked by extreme fluctuations in moisture availability, which has far-reaching implications for the origin, evolution and dispersal of Homo sapiens in and beyond the region. This paper presents results from a pilot core from the Chew Bahir basin in southern Ethiopia that records the climatic history of the past 45 ka, with emphasis on the African Humid Period (AHP, ∼15–5 ka calBP). Geochemical, physical and biological indicators show that Chew Bahir responded to climatic fluctuations on millennial to centennial timescales, and to the precessional cycle, since the Last Glacial Maximum. Potassium content of the sediment appears to be a reliable proxy for aridity, showing that Chew Bahir reacted to the insolation-controlled humidity increase of the AHP with a remarkably abrupt onset and a gradual termination, framing a sharply defined arid phase (∼12.8–11.6 ka calBP) corresponding to the Younger Dryas chronozone. The Chew Bahir record correlates well with low- and high-latitude paleoclimate records, demonstrating that the site responded to regional and global climate changes.
AB - East African paleoenvironments are highly variable, marked by extreme fluctuations in moisture availability, which has far-reaching implications for the origin, evolution and dispersal of Homo sapiens in and beyond the region. This paper presents results from a pilot core from the Chew Bahir basin in southern Ethiopia that records the climatic history of the past 45 ka, with emphasis on the African Humid Period (AHP, ∼15–5 ka calBP). Geochemical, physical and biological indicators show that Chew Bahir responded to climatic fluctuations on millennial to centennial timescales, and to the precessional cycle, since the Last Glacial Maximum. Potassium content of the sediment appears to be a reliable proxy for aridity, showing that Chew Bahir reacted to the insolation-controlled humidity increase of the AHP with a remarkably abrupt onset and a gradual termination, framing a sharply defined arid phase (∼12.8–11.6 ka calBP) corresponding to the Younger Dryas chronozone. The Chew Bahir record correlates well with low- and high-latitude paleoclimate records, demonstrating that the site responded to regional and global climate changes.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/2160/8704
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84866004597&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.quaint.2012.06.028
DO - 10.1016/j.quaint.2012.06.028
M3 - Article
SN - 1040-6182
VL - 274
SP - 25
EP - 37
JO - Quaternary International
JF - Quaternary International
IS - 1
ER -
