Sea-rain-lake relation in the Last Glacial East Mediterranean revealed by δ18O-δ13C in Lake Lisan aragonites
Introduction
Oxygen and carbon isotope ratios in marine archives have been widely applied in the study of Pleistocene-Holocene paleoclimate. In the continental environment the application of oxygen and carbon isotope ratios to paleoenvironmental studies is more difficult because of the complicated set of factors that control the fractionation of the isotopes and the limited extent of the studied environments. Nevertheless, lake sediments were previously studied by isotopic methods, yielding significant paleohydrologic information (e.g., Talbot, 1990; Ricketts and Johnson, 1996; Li and Ku, 1997; Leng et al. 2001). Yet, the question remains open as to the relation between the stable isotope record of global climatic inventories of the ocean and those of limited continental regions. Here, we present a stable isotope (oxygen and carbon) study of authigenic aragonite that was deposited in Lake Lisan, the Last Glacial precursor of the Dead Sea, and in the Holocene Dead Sea. In earlier studies the behavior of stable isotopes in these water bodies was interpreted as reflecting complicated relations to factors such as input water composition, evaporation, relative humidity, atmospheric humidity, and salinity (Gat, 1984; Katz et al., 1977). We reexamine the relationships between the different hydrological factors, and evaluate seawater-rain-lake relationships by comparing stable isotope data of lake deposited aragonite with those of coeval marine foraminifera and speleothems.
Section snippets
Geological settings
Three major consecutive lacustrine water bodies occupied the Dead Sea basin during the late Pleistocene-Holocene times: Lake Samra (Amora), Lake Lisan, and the Dead Sea, depositing the Samra, Lisan, and Ze’elim Formations, respectively (Zak, 1967; Stein, 2001). Our study focuses on the stable isotope behavior of lakes Lisan and the Dead Sea.
Sampling
Pure aragonite laminae were separated from large blocks of the Lisan Fm. at Perazim Valley (PZ1 section; Fig. 1, Fig. 2). The section representing a time span of ∼55 Kyr B.P. was sampled on two time-scales. (1) The entire section was sampled in intervals of ∼1 m (except between 830 and 1330 cm, where poor exposure prevented sufficiently dense sampling). In this sampling scheme a time resolution of ∼1000 yrs was aimed at. (2) At specific elevations, where significant limnologic changes occur
Discussion
The isotopic composition of oxygen in CaCO3 that precipitates (in equilibrium) from an aqueous solution depends on temperature and water composition. The relation between these factors was established by Epstein et al. (1953) and Craig (1965) and was formulated for the precipitation of chemical aragonite by the following equation (considering a 0.6‰ difference between calcite and aragonite equilibration; Tarutani et al., 1969):
where δW = δ18O of CO2 in
Summary: limnologic-climatic implications
- 1
Comparison of Lake Lisan–Dead Sea δ18O records with the Mediterranean Sea and caves records (Fig. 8) demonstrates that the Mediterranean rain fronts have been a dominant source of precipitation in the region. When this source shut down, arid conditions prevailed and the lake level dropped.
- 2
It appears that during major lake drops the steady-state condition is not achieved and high δ18O values are established. Although we have no samples from the extreme low stands (the lake retreated from the PZ1
Acknowledgments
We thank J. R. Gat, A. Frumkin, M. Stiller, A. Starinsky, M. Bar-Matthews, A. Ayalon, and A. Katz for thorough discussions and hope that the heat that was sometimes generated during these conversations resulted in some light as well. A. Hecht, B. Z. Begin, N. Shefer, A. Ayalon, and B. Schilman generously provided us with unpublished data and preprints. N. Shiloni-Haviv, O. Klein-Ben David, R. (Ken-Tor) Bookman, N. Waldmann, and A. Haliva helped in fieldwork and in the meticulous separation of
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Associate editor: D. Lea
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Present address: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, 61 Rt 9W, Palisades, NY 10964-8000, USA.