Elsevier

Quaternary Science Reviews

Volume 249, 1 December 2020, 106639
Quaternary Science Reviews

Introduction
The ICDP Dead Sea deep drilling project – introduction

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Overview

The southern Levant is a key region for studying hydro-climate and vegetations patterns at the desert fringe in relation to past and future climate dynamics. Modern observations document increased drought frequency together with more intense precipitation and flooding in the world’s semi-arid and arid regions as a consequence of the warming climate. Climate models predict that such conditions will intensify in the future, impacting millions of people. Paleoclimate studies can complement the

Armon et al.: overview of modern atmospheric patterns controlling rainfall and floods into the Dead Sea: implications for the lake’s sedimentology and paleohydrology

This paper describes the main types of rain-storms in the vicinity of the Dead Sea watershed and their meteorological controls. The paper reviews recent studies and new analyses of meteorological, rainfall and flood data, underlining the importance of the lower Jordan River in supplying water volume to the Dead Sea, as compared to the high-discharge, low-volume floods of the arid part of the watershed.

Rainfall in the region is typically associated with synoptic-scale circulation patterns forced

Bar-matthews et al.: hydro-climate research of the late quaternary of the eastern Mediterranean-Levant region based on speleothems research: a review

This paper summarizes studies of paleoclimate conditions during the late Quaternary in the east Mediterranean-south Levant that are based on evidence from cave-speleothems.

The caves studied are located along N–S and W-E transects of the eastern Mediterranean-Levant region: from Mt. Lebanon and Mt Hermon in the northern Levant with present-day annual rainfall of more than 800 mm, across northern and central Israel with annual rainfall ranging from ∼800 mm to ∼500 mm, through the northern Negev

Torfstein: climate cycles in the southern Levant and their global climatic connections

This paper introduces a the new synthetic lake level curve that provides an important proxy of Levant hydro-climate history during the past 800 kyrs.

The new curve is based on comparison to the lake level record of the Dead Sea that was reconstructed by the mapping and dating of shorelines during the past 70 kyrs. This curve has been shown to be closely coupled with global climate patterns, and specifically argued to be modulated by northern hemisphere climate systems. The paper compares the

Goldstein et al.: revised chronology of the ICDP Dead Sea deep drill core relates drier-wetter-drier climate cycles to insolation over the past 220 kyrs

This paper provides an updated chronology for the DSDDP Hole 5017-1-A, based on new information obtained since the chronology published by Torfstein et al. (2015). The updated chronology uses the following approaches: (1) radiocarbon ages of Kitagawa et al. (2017); (2) correlation of specific sediment strata in the core with U–Th-dated sediments on the Dead Sea margin, particularly during the last glacial period; (3) tuning of the δ18O data of DSDDP core aragonite to the U–Th dated δ18O record

Coianiz et al.: late Quaternary lacustrine deposits of the Dead Sea basin: high-resolution sequence stratigraphy from downhole logging data

This paper reports on high resolution wire logging data combined with a detailed lithological description of the ICDP 5017-1-A deep borehole. The data were used to examine depositional systems and related processes controlling their formation. Analysis of sedimentary stacking patterns and stratal surfaces within the late Pleistocene-Holocene lacustrine succession revealed 10 depositional sequences. The paper discerns between three sedimentary stacking patterns interpreted as representing

Ben-Dor et al.: varves of the Dead Sea sedimentary record

The authors review the studies that examine the questions whether the laminated sedimentary sequences that comprise the Lisan Formation represent annual deposits, namely varves. The laminated sequences typically comprise primary minerals that precipitated from the lake’s solution (aragonite, gypsum and salt), and detrital material that is washed by annual floods to the lake. The main sedimentary facies that comprise the lacustrine formations are: (1) the ‘aad’ facies that describes sequences of

Lu et al.: a 45 kyr laminae record from the Dead Sea: implications for basin erosion and floods recurrence

This paper presents a laminae-counting record of the sedimentary sequences that were deposited on the deep floor of the Dead Sea Basin during the past 45 kyr (covering Marine Isotope Stages MIS3, MIS2 MIS1), when the late Pleistocene Lake Lisan and the Holocene Dead Sea filled the tectonic depression. The aragonite-detritus laminae couplets of the aad sedimentary facies (first described by Machlus et al., 2000) were deposited during periods of positive freshwater supply. The freshwater brings

Belmaker et al. (2019): Constraints on aragonite precipitation in the Dead Sea from geochemical measurements of flood plumes

This paper presents an investigation of the mechanism and environment of deposition of primary aragonite that comprise the laminated sequences of the aad facies that were deposited in the last glacial Lisan Formation. Several studies have concluded that the primary aragonite precipitated due to mixing between runoff that brought bicarbonate to the lake and the lake’s Ca-chloride brine. However, the factors controlling the aragonite precipitation have not been robustly established. Belmaker

Levy et al., 2019: Mount Sedom salt diapir - source for sulfate replenishment and gypsum supersaturation in the last glacial Dead Sea (Lake Lisan)

This paper focuses on gypsum precipitation in the last glacial Lake Lisan. To precipitate aragonite and gypsum from the Ca-chloride brine filling the lake requires supply of bicarbonate and sulfate ions (Stein et al., 1997; Torfstein et al., 2005). Bicarbonate was likely derived from dissolution of calcite in the watershed (see Belmaker et al., this issue), but the sources of sulfate remained elusive. Levy et al. investigate and quantify the long-term sulfate reservoir changes in the deep

Palchan et al., 2019: mobilization of fine detritus to the Dead Sea Basin during the late glacial and early Holocene

This paper focuses on the subject of the origin and mobilization of fine detritus particles to the lacustrine water-bodies at the Dead Sea Basin. The fine detritus particles comprise significant parts of the aad and ld sedimentary facies and they are related to dust material that was blown to the Dead Sea watershed from the Sahara-Arabia deserts and form the surface cover, loess and soils (e.g., Haliva-Cohen et al., 2012). Palchan et al. use the mineralogical, grain size and geochemical

Meibach et al., 2019: a new Dead Sea pollen record reveals the last glacial paleoenvironment of the southern Levant

This paper investigates the vegetation and fire history of the Dead Sea region from pollen data that were retrieved from the interval between 88 and 14 ka in the DSDDP 5017-1-A core. This period encompasses the late MIS5 and the last glacial MIS 4, MIS3 and MIS2, when Lake Lisan occupied the Dead Sea basin and extended over the Jordan Valley, Kinnarot Basin and northern Arava Valley (reaching water-surface elevation of ∼170 m below mean sea level, more than 200 m above the Holocene Dead Sea.

Kiro et al., 2020: droughts, flooding events, and shifts in water sources and seasonality characterize last interglacial Levant climate

This paper investigates the hydro-climate conditions that prevailed in the Dead Sea watershed during the last interglacial MIS5e (∼131-116ka) and the impacts of global climate engines on the regional conditions. They report on major shifts in the geographic sources, intensity, and seasonality of eastern Mediterranean precipitation during the unusually warm last interglacial period MIS 5e, reflecting global shifts in the rain and desert belts, based on 234U/238U activity ratios in mineral

Thomas and Aritzegui 2019: fluid inclusions from the deep Dead Sea sediment provide new insights on holocene extreme microbial life

Little is known about the way that the extreme ecosystem of the Dead Sea deep floor has evolved with time. Thomas and Aritzegui investigate the microbial activity at the extreme conditions of the Dead Sea, looking in fluid inclusions trapped in halite, the main evaporitic phase during arid periods in the hydro-climate history of the lake. By extracting ancient DNA from Holocene halite fluid inclusions, they obtained fossil bacterial and archaeal 16 S rRNA gene sequences that suggest that the

Oryan et al., 2019: heat flow in the Dead Sea from the ICDP boreholes and its implications for the structure of the basin

This paper uses new heat flow data that retrieved from the borehole to re-examine the long standing issue of the “Dead Sea Basin (DSB) heat flow paradox”. The “DSB paradox” describes the apparent conflict between the low heat flow data that were measured in the vicinity of the Dead Sea (e.g., 32–40 mW/m2) and the results of numerical simulations emulating the formation of the Dead Sea Basin (DSB) that infer that it could not be formed as a pull-apart basin with a surface heat flow lower than 50

Summary and future perspectives

This issue assembles 14 papers that summarize and report on various aspects of the sedimentology, geochemistry and palynology of the lacustrine formations that filled the Dead Sea Basin during the past ∼220 kyr, and the implications for the hydro-climate conditions that prevailed in the lakes’ watershed during the late Quaternary. One paper deals with some tectonic aspects but topics related to the reconstruction of seismic activity in the vicinity of the Dead Sea Basin and Dead Sea Transform

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The Dead Sea Deep Drilling Project (DSDDP project) was made possible by the endless efforts and contributions of many institutes, funding agencies, drillers, researchers and students. The drilling and part of the funding was made possibly primarily because of the recognition by the ICDP of the importance of the Dead Sea as a site for paleo-environmental research with global importance. We thank Prof. Rolf Emmerman and Dr. Uli Harms who had the vision and patience to support and promote the

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Cited by (3)

  • The modern wave-induced coastal staircase morphology along the western shores of the Dead Sea

    2022, Geomorphology
    Citation Excerpt :

    Here, we turn to the Dead Sea (Fig. 1A, B), an observation-rich fluctuating terminal lake, with several advantages for such research (see Section 2, below). Enzel et al. (2006), Enzel and Bar-Yosef (2017), and Stein and Goldstein (2020) presented information-rich updated background on the Dead Sea, its levels and chronology, including of its predecessor Late Pleistocene Lake Lisan (Fig. 1A); these summaries also include current and past regional climates and the characteristic sedimentology. Our goal here is to understand and quantify the governing drivers of coastal erosion along the Dead Sea shores and respective cliff formations.

  • High resolution environmental conditions of the last interglacial (MIS5e) in the Levant from Sr, C and O isotopes from a Jerusalem stalagmite

    2022, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
    Citation Excerpt :

    Hereafter, we term this stalagmite “Har Nof AF12 stalagmite”. In addition, we use regional environmental data (Fig. 3) and the record that was recently retrieved from the sediment core drilled by the ICDP Dead Sea Deep Drilling Program in the deepest floor of the Dead Sea (Neugebauer et al., 2014; Torfstein et al., 2015; Chen and Litt, 2018; Kiro et al., 2020; Stein and Goldstein, 2020). The lakes that occupied the tectonic basin of the Dead Sea during the late Quaternary received waters and sediments from a large watershed that encompasses both the desert belt and the Mediterranean subtropical climate zone (e.g., Stein, 2014; Stein and Goldstein, 2020 and references therein).

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