High resolution analysis of sediments from the Dead Sea, Israel - Development of scientific standards for the proposed Dead Sea Deep Drilling Project (DSDDP)

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The aim of this project is to apply a novel methodological approach to identify flood and dust storm layers in Dead Sea sediments and to establish Holocene time series of these event deposits. We will combine petrographic thin section analyses, X-ray fluorescence element scanning and high-resolution magnetic susceptibility measurements. The resolution of the resulting set of multi-proxy data will be below 1.0 mm thus allowing identification of individual dust storm and flood layers down to microscopic scale. The study will be carried out mainly on existing core material from the sediment records of Ein Feshka, Ein Gedi and Ze’elim. All these records are located along a North-South climatic gradient at the western shore of the Dead Sea. Results from previous low resolution studies on these cores will be integrated. Cores from all three sites will be correlated and synchronized in great detail in order to disentangle local from regional signals. In addition to establishing long time series of individual extreme events, the expected data will allow for recognising decadal-scale variability in the eastern Mediterranean climate system during the Holocene. A particular focus will be on deciphering the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and solar irradiation changes. The new high-resolution multiproxy time series will serve as a profound data base for future studies of the planned long record within the Dead Sea Drilling Project (DSDDP). Detailed correlation of the shoreline transect with the deep lake facies will contribute to a comprehensive interpretation of the depositional processes in the Dead Sea Basin. Moreover, the new combination of methods applied in this project has a large potential to establish very long time series of extreme events from the planned long ICDP core.