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The arrival of the Paranal Drill Cores

After almost five months and almost 17300km of travel, the sediment cores from our second deep drilling operation at the Paranal clay pan finally arrived here in Cologne at the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy. A truck full of sediment cores with a weight of up to 8t was unloaded, inspected and stored in the facilities of the Quaternary working group. The first 50m were directly moved to the laboratory to start some initial scans on the Multi-Sensor Core Logger. Within the next months the cores will be opened, described and will go through some analyses, including paleomagnetics, geochemical and geophysical properties, followed by sub-sampling for more methods, covered within our CRC1211. This sediment archive will give us crucial insights in the paleo-environment and paleo-climate of the southern Atacama Desert (Southern Focus Area of our CRC1211). With the data and information obtained from our first deep drilling operation at the PAG clay pan (Central Focus Area) and short cores from the Huara clay pan (Northern Focus Area), we will be able to trace major climate shifts and conditions during the past, to better understand local and overregional climate patterns and mechanisms, such as ENSO variations and rare but severe precipitation events. With the information obtained from the entirety of paleoclimate archives within our Collaborative Research Centre, we will be able to better understand processes which shape our Earth, especially in arid to hyperarid environments. In cooperation with our biologists, we will be able to unravel how life evolved and adapted to these harsh conditions. Reconstructed past climate episodes and their atmospheric mechanism, can be translated to forecast and model future climate and environmental conditions.

Author: B. Ritter

 

 

Crew with the lowermost core of Hole 1B (174 m depth).
Fig.1: Crew with the lowermost core of Hole 1B (174 m depth).
Photo: Damian Lopez

  Downloading the samples at the shipping agency in La Portada, Antofagasta.
Fig.2: Downloading the samples at the shipping agency in La Portada, Antofagasta.
Photo: Damian Lopez

 

Arrival in Cologne.
Fig.3: Arrival in Cologne.
Photo:
Benedikt Ritter

  Downloading the samples on the parking at the Institute of Geology.
Fig.4: Downloading the samples on the parking at the Institute of Geology.
Photo:
Benedikt Ritter

Online Short Course on Cosmogenic Nuclides as Dating Tool at the Universidad Católica del Norte (UCN)

On the 23th and 24th of August up to 20 postgraduates and students from the Universidad Católica del Norte (UCN) in Antofagasta participated at an online short course about the use and application of cosmogenic nuclides for dating surfaces and terrestrial archives. Dr. Benedikt Ritter offered this course to geoscience students in Chile in the spirit of knowledge exchange between the CRC1211 and the UCN and to foster potential new research project of postgraduates in Chile.

Beside participants from the UCN, also students from the Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Atacama, Universidad Alberto Hurtado and Universidad de Concepcíon attended. During the two-day workshop, the participants learned the background knowledge about cosmogenic nuclides, their source, production and their application as dating tool. With the knowledge gained during the course, we hope that our young geoscientists think about applying these new methods in their future projects.

 

 

Photo 1
Fig.1: Flyer Short Course by Dr. Benedikt Ritter

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Fig.2: Participants from Chile.

Bridging research in Namibia and Chile – C2 fieldwork during first half of 2022

After an involuntary break of field work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, subproject C2 successfully completed two extensive field campaigns during the last months. During the first one in February and March 2022, the project members visited together with colleagues from the Geological Survey of Namibia the remote northwest of the country. Later in May and June, another field campaign to the Atacama Desert in North Chile was carried out in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Chile (SERNAGEOMIN).

In both deserts, the main objective was to investigate and sample in a systematic manner the sediment deposits created during past periods of higher fluvial activity, with the overarching goal to derive the pre-Quaternary to Late Pleistocene fluvial landscape evolution along climate gradients and in comparison between the two hyperarid west-coast deserts.

 

Skeleton Coast, Namibia

Along the remote Skeleton Coast and Kunene Highlands in Northwest Namibia, Dr. Dominik Brill, Dr. Janek Walk and Julian Krieger conducted in total 6 weeks of field work in February and March in close cooperation with the Geological Survey of Namibia. Accompanied by Anna Nguno, deputy director and head of the Regional Geoscience Division, Andreas Nduutepo and Paulina Pokolo, the team focused on the fluvial fans stretching across the Skeleton Coast. Field work included screening and mapping of the fluvial landforms along a north-south gradient, their drainage basins, as well as their interaction with the Skeleton Coast Erg (Figure 1).

 

Small terrace steps in fine pan deposits
Fig 1: Remnants of pan (or “vlei”) deposits of the ephemeral Samanab, which accumulated due to the temporary blocking of the Samanab by the Skeleton Coast Erg.
Photo:
Janek Walk

 

Selected sites, with catchments incised differently far into the more humid hinterlands to the east, were then studied in detail for dating using various methods. Accordingly, surfaces of seven multi-phase alluvial fans were sampled for cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating, while at six sites, fluvial deposits, often intercalated with aeolian sediments, were sampled for luminescence dating and in some cases also for palaeomagnetic dating (Figure 2).

 

Sediment section measured using tape measures
Fig 2: Sedimentary section at the lower ephemeral Huab river showing a succession of fine and coarse river deposits, covered by an alluvial fan.
Photo:
Janek Walk

 

Atacama Desert, Chile

Four weeks of field work in the Atacama Desert in May and June, conducted by Prof. Frank Lehmkuhl, Dr. Janek Walk, and Prof. em. Helmut Brückner, together with geologist Andrés Quezada from the SERNAGEOMIN, focused on small- to medium-sized alluvial fan systems aligned along a meridional transect from the slightly more humid Great Coastal Escarpment across the Salar Grande and the hyperarid core of the Atacama towards a mountain range at the Quebrada de Maní. Along this transect, five sites were systematically studied and fan surfaces sampled for cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating (Figure 3). For cross-check dating, also tephra was sampled, if present.

 

Alluvial fan surface in a desert
Fig 3: Sampling of a large alluvial fan extending south of the Cerro Manchas, west of the Salar Grande, for cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating. Note the boulder in the foreground, which is heavily disintegrated by kernsprung and the older, presumably Pliocene to Miocene, bright alluvial fan surface in the background.
Photo:
Helmut Brückner

 

In addition, the group worked at the shore of the Salar Grande, where clastic material covers the salt succession. Andrés Quezada, expert for Salar Grande and surrounding geology, discussed with us the salar’s evolution (Figure 4) and supported us in sampling the rhythmic stratification of fluvial and alluvial deposits for luminescence and palaeomagnetic dating (Video).

Outcrop in a salt mine in the Salar Grande
Fig 4: Andrés Quezada from the SERNAGEOMIN explaining the evolution of the Salar Grande at the abandoned Salina (salt mine) Río Seco.
Photo:
Janek Walk

 

 


Video: Sampling the clastic sediments and salt at the Salina Río Seco | Video: Frank Lehmkuhl

 

At the coast of the CRC’s southern focus area, we further worked on the coastal alluvial fan Paposo – a site investigated and sampled in detail already during the first phase of the CRC. In collaboration with project C08, we took soil samples to be analysed for their micromorphological properties as well as for the new luminescence-based process tracing methods of the – at Paposo – biologically active Earth Critical Zone (see also: Z2/Z3/C8 joint fieldwork in March 2022)

 

 

llustrious visit

End of June/beginning of July, the B02 cluster received a visit from silverfish specialist John Irish from Namibia. John is a collaborator on our subproject and his visit involved intensive three weeks of work on Maindroniidae specimens collected in South America over the last five years. John's extensive morphological studies will bring some taxonomic order to the perplexing diversity of Maindronias. His studies, complemented by our extensive molecular investigations, will transform our understanding of this ancient group of desert specialists.

 

 

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Disturbing John
Photo:
Jonas Krämer

 

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"Maindronia" neotropicalis
Photo:
Alvaro Zúñiga

 

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Working hard
Photo:
Simón Anguita



Contact

  Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Tibor J. Dunai
Institute of Geology and Mineralogy | University of Cologne
Zülpicher Str. 49b | 50674 Cologne
+49 (0)221 470-3229 | tdunai@uni-koeln.de
   
  Managing Director:
Christian Tiede
Institute of Geology and Mineralogy | University of Cologne

Zülpicher Str. 49b | 50674 Cologne
+49 (0)221 470-89833 | christian.tiede@uni-koeln.de

 _

  Co-Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Martin Melles
Institute of Geology and Mineralogy | University of Cologne

Zülpicher Str. 49a | 50674 Cologne
+49 (0)221 470-2262 | mmelles@uni-koeln.de
   
  Scientific Coordinator:
Dr. Benedikt Ritter
Institute of Geology and Mineralogy | University of Cologne

Zülpicher Str. 49b | 50674 Cologne
+49 (0)221 470-89868 | benedikt.ritter@uni-koeln.de

 _

  Co-Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Dietmar Quandt
Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants | University of Bonn

Meckenheimer Allee 170 | 53115 Bonn
+49 (0)228 73-3315 | quandt@uni-bonn.de
   
  Webmaster:
Tim Schlüter
Institute of Geography | University of Cologne

Otto-Fischer-Str. 4 | 50674 Cologne
+49 (0)221 470-3735 | webmaster@sfb1211.de
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