Lake Van, Turkey - Pre-Site Survey for a potential new ICDP site

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Lake Van (eastern Anatolia in Turkey) has a surface area of 3,522 km², a volume of 576 km³ and a maximum depth of 450 m. It measures 130 km WSW-ENE and is the fourth largest of all terminal lakes in the world. Previous scientific work has shown that annually laminated sediments exist in Lake Van. However, caused by the limitation in drilling equipment available it was only possible to reach a sediment depth less than 10 m covering the Late Glacial and Holocene (last 15,000 years). It would be important to obtain older sediments, at least from the last interglacial-glacial cycle including the Eemian interglacial, or even older cycles. Caused by the dimension of Lake Van, it is only possible to make further progress by focussing national and international experience and expertise under the umbrella of ICDP. During the final European Lake Drilling Project (ELDP) meeting 2001 it was suggested to start with a proposal development for large lake drilling with the ICDP equipment pool GLAD800. In this respect the experience of the drilling projects of lakes Titicaca and Malavi should be used. The applicant was asked to promote and to co-ordinate the first steps of the pre-site survey and to acquire national funds (travel expenses for the first year).