The Eastern Mediterranean - Levant late Quaternary climates: Paleohydrology and Extreme Floods from the Dead Sea ICDP Core (PALEX-II)

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Extreme hydrometeorological events and especially floods are a major threat for humans. Therefore, it is an emerging challenge for science to investigate origin and mechanisms of floods in order to better anticipate their frequency and amplitudes as well as their impacts on regional environments. A very sensitive region in terms of both environmental conditions and the political situation is the Dead Sea area in the Near East. Ongoing global change is expected to even increase the environmental pressure and in particular hydrological processes in this part of the world. Therefore, this is an ideal and highly interesting region for Earth and environmental research. The PALEX (Paleohydrology and Extreme Floods from the Dead Sea ICDP sediment core) project addresses all aspects of extreme hydro-meteorological events in this region through a joint effort of scientist from Israel, Palestine and Germany within the trilateral program of the German Science Foundation DFG. We apply a novel approach of combining the observation of recent flash floods using cutting-edge technologies with advanced reconstructions of long flood time-series over several thousand years from the Dead Sea sediment record at high temporal resolution. In this respect, the long sediment cores obtained by the ICDP (International Continental Scientific Drilling Program) drilling from the deep basin of the Dead Sea provide a unique archive to reconstruct the natural hydro-climatic variability for the last 200 kyrs. In addition, the comprehensive process understanding of the meteorological origin of floods and their effects on erosion, sediment transport and deposition revealed by our combined meteorological and sedimentological monitoring allows an improved interpretation of this exceptional sediment record to utilize event-triggered sediments as proxies for past flooding. With this approach we aim at investigating the relation of changes in the occurrence and dynamics of floods to changing climatic boundary conditions and test the predicted increase of extreme floods in a warming climate. Beyond the scientific goals, PALEX undertakes major efforts in capacity building and international networking in the Middle East to foster peaceful collaboration for solving common problems and development of human and technical resources. A crucial part of the project concept, therefore, is joint training of early stage researchers from Palestine, Israel and Germany. The PALEX personal mentoring concept will give young scientists the opportunity to work closely with senior scientists from all participating institutions and develop their research skills.