Collaborative Research: P2C2--Madagascar Caves and Paleoclimate (MADCAP), Investigating Climate Variability in the Southern Hemisphere of the Western Indian Ocean

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The project will produce educational materials and exhibits prepared for a general audience and displayed in a modest museum now under construction at Tsimanampetsotse National Park. The displays will reveal how research with stalagmites helps uncover the climate and vegetation history of Madagascar and will help heighten public awareness of the Park's natural history and biodiversity. This project will involve several Malagasy scientists and includes mentoring for a doctoral student and post-doctoral scholar. The project will also support research and laboratory experiences for undergraduates at both MIT and UMass. Finally, a better understanding of the causes of decadal-scale climate variability will help in providing insights into potential future changes in rainfall in a country that experiences severe drought and flooding on inter-annual time scales.The aims of the research are: 1) to investigate sub-decadal to annual resolution changes in precipitation over the past 2,000 years and determine the relationships between precipitation in Madagascar and variability in the Indian Ocean Zonal Mode, El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and other drivers of inter-annual and decadal-scale climate variability; 2) investigate the relationships between climate, landscape evolution and the disappearance of Madagascar's endemic megafauna in the Late Holocene; and 3) investigate the timing and nature of millennial and orbital scale variability in the Indian Ocean Monsoon in the Southern Hemisphere and determine how it relates to Northern Hemisphere Monsoon variability and climate changes in East Africa.This project aims to use speleothems from caves at two locations in Madagascar to reconstruct climate and landscape evolution in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. High-resolution time series of speleothem delta 18-Oxygen and Strontium/Calcium and Magnesium/Calcium trace element ratios measured on stalagmites collected from northwest and southwest Madagascar will be used to reconstruct past changes in precipitation. Speleothem delta 13-Carbon measurements will be used as a proxy for the evolution of the landscape between forest and grassland. Precise age models will be constructed using 230 Thorium/Uranium.