Abstract
Six ca. 9 m long piston cores and 16 multi-cores up to ca. 50 cm long were recovered from the North Basin of Lake Malawi, East Africa. Five of these cores were selected for palaeoenvironmental studies. Five stratigraphie units are recognised, which together with volcanic ash beds and magnetic susceptibility profiles, were used to correlate the cores. A geochronology for the cores has been established by means of 210Pb assays of the uppermost part of the record, radiocarbon dating and varve counts. Radiocarbon age determinations on bulk organic matter spanning the last ∼24,000 years are complicated by the presence of variable quantities of reworked organic debris and a calibration correction of 450 years has been provisionally assumed. Three facies: laminites (varves), homogenites, and unlaminated clays were recognised and used to interpret the depositional environment.
The varved sections provide the first high-resolution varve chronology from the southern tropics. The uppermost varved section provides an outstanding basis for elucidating Lake Malawi’s response to historically documented climatic, volcanic and seismic events in the region. Beds of homogeneous clay or silty clay (homogenites) were probably deposited from muddy turbidity flows, and are particularly abundant in the section spanning the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, when the lake level of Lake Malawi fell dramatically. Homogenite deposition at this time was probably due to reworking of newly exposed, unconsolidated muddy sediments. Some younger homogenites can be correlated across large distances and may have originated from turbidity flows triggered by seismic shocks.
The new sedimentary record provided by these cores is difficult to reconcile with current understanding of lake-level history. Although our new data are consistent with previously inferred lowstand conditions in the Early Holocene, our interpretation of the oldest section recovered in the cores also suggests lowstand rather than highstand conditions at around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum.
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Barry, S.L., Filippi, M.L., Talbot, M.R., Johnson, T.C. (2002). Sedimentology and Geochronology of Late Pleistocene and Holocene Sediments from Northern Lake Malawi. In: Odada, E.O., Olago, D.O. (eds) The East African Great Lakes: Limnology, Palaeolimnology and Biodiversity. Advances in Global Change Research, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48201-0_15
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