Continental Drilling in the East African Rift Lakes: A Strategic Planning Workshop

这笔赠款支持一个讲习班，以制定东非裂谷湖大陆科学钻探的战略计划。目标是将古气候学、古人类学、气候模型、古海洋学、科学钻探作业、裂谷盆地构造学、火山学和地层学等领域的专家聚集在一起，以确定这些不同学科的关键科学目标并确定其优先顺序，并在成本/效益框架内将这些目标与具体的、优先考虑的湖泊钻探目标联系起来。在马拉维湖成功进行科学钻探之后，古气候和地球物理学界开展了大量活动，提供了必要的现场勘测和背景数据，可能导致在东非的几个湖泊进行钻探，包括坦噶尼喀湖、阿尔伯特湖、维多利亚湖和图尔卡纳湖。这些进展为新的钻探项目奠定了基础，这些项目将从世界上一些最好的上更新世热带古气候湖泊档案中开发出长期、定量、高分辨率的记录。每个湖泊将提供非常不同的时间分辨率和连续性，从而对非洲环境历史有不同的见解。每个钻探目标也会有非常不同的成本和技术挑战。未来的湖泊钻探计划必须考虑如何最大限度地补充正在进行的利用近海海洋沉积物和洞穴以及古湖泊钻探倡议产生新的非洲古环境记录的倡议。鉴于在东非裂谷湖泊进行科学钻探有巨大的科学机会，我们建议需要举办一次研讨会，通过对每一项钻探目标的技术挑战和科学成果进行成本/效益分析，确定如何最好地进行钻探。在这些湖泊中进行科学钻探的结果将直接满足几个关键的重点领域，包括调查过去地质时代生命、生态、环境和生物地理的变化方面，以及了解地球深部(前全新世)气候系统的复杂性。研讨会将确定介于古气候学、古人类学和构造学之间的新研究领域，促进跨学科研究，并补充美国国家科学基金会大陆动力学和人类起源计划的主要目标。此外，我们的讲习班将为东非上更新世的沉积和古环境研究制定研究重点，促进该地区未来的科学调查。该计划将在研讨会报告中公布，并将为全面钻探ICDP和NSF影响奠定基础：研讨会将促进来自不同学科的专家之间更广泛的合作，包括古气候学、古人类学和裂谷盆地构造物理学，促进在湖泊进行科学钻探的真正跨学科模式。研讨会还为美国、欧洲和非洲科学家之间的国际合作提供了机会，其中许多人也是女性或早期职业科学家。拟议的讲习班参与者名单反映了建立来自不同国际背景和传统上在科学界代表性较低的群体的参与的愿望。

This grant supports a workshop to develop a strategic plan for continental scientific drilling in the East African Rift Lakes. The objectives are to bring together experts in the fields of paleoclimatology, paleoanthropology, climate modeling, paleoceanography, scientific drilling operations, rift basin tectonics, volcanology, and stratigraphy, in order to define and prioritize key scientific goals of these diverse disciplines, and to link these goals to specific, prioritized lake drilling targets within a cost/benefit framework. Following the successful scientific drilling operations in Lake Malawi, there has been an enormous level of activity within the paleoclimate and geophysics communities that has provided necessary site survey and background data that could lead to drilling in several of the East African lakes, including Lakes Tanganyika, Albert, Victoria, and Turkana. These developments have set the stage for new drilling projects to develop long, quantitative, highly resolved records from some of the world's best lacustrine archives of Plio-Pleistocene tropical paleoclimate. Each lake would provide very different temporal resolution and continuity and thus different insights into African environmental history. Each drilling target also would have very different costs and technical challenges. Future lake drilling programs must consider how to maximally complement ongoing initiatives to generate new African paleoenvironmental records using offshore marine sediments and speleothems and drilling initiatives in paleolakes. Given the enormous scientific opportunities for scientific drilling in the East African rift lakes, we propose that a workshop is needed to determine how best to proceed, through a cost/benefit analysis of the technical challenges and scientific outcomes of each drilling target.Intellectual Merit: The East African rift lakes contain an unparalleled record of climatic and environmental history through the Plio-Pleistocene spanning tens of degrees of latitude, with resolution and continuity comparable to deep-sea sediments and ice cores. Results from scientific drilling in these lakes will directly meet several key areas of emphasis, including investigations of the changing aspects of life, ecology, environments, and biogeography in past geologic time and understanding the complexities of Earth's deep time (pre-Holocene) climate systems. The workshop will identify new research areas that lie between paleoclimatology, paleoanthropology, and tectonics, fostering transdisciplinary research and complementing the key goals of the NSF Continental Dynamics and Human Origins programs. In addition, our workshop will develop research priorities for sedimentary and paleoenvironmental studies of the Plio-Pleistocene in East Africa, promoting future scientific investigations in this region. This plan will published in a workshop report, and will set the stage for full drilling proposals to ICDP and NSF.Broader Impacts: The workshop will foster broader collaborations among specialists from varied disciplines, including paleoclimate, paleoanthropology, and rift basin tectonophysics, promoting a truly interdisciplinary model for scientific drilling in lakes. The workshop also offers opportunities for international collaborations between American, European, and African scientists, many of whom are also women or early career scientists. The proposed workshop participant list reflects the desire to build participation from diverse international backgrounds and groups traditionally underrepresented in sciences.