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GSA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA - 2018

Paper No. 61-8
Presentation Time: 3:35 PM

HOLOCENE MONSOON RAINFALL AND LAKE LEVELS IN GALANG CO, SOUTHEASTERN TIBET


PERELLO, Melanie1, BIRD, Broxton W.2, LEI, Yanbin3, POLISSAR, Pratigya J.4, THOMPSON, Lonnie G.5 and YAO, Tandong3, (1)Department of Earth Sciences, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, 723 W. Michigan Street SL 118, Indianapolis, IN 46203, (2)Department of Earth Sciences, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN 46202, (3)Institute for Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, NA, China, (4)Biology and Paleo Environment, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY 10964-8000, (5)Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and School of Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University, 1090 Carmack Rd, Columbus, OH 43210

Projections of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) under climate change indicate that the system will be less reliable in the future. This unreliability with decreasing glacial melt will have impacts on water availability throughout southern Asia, while the region undergoes a simultaneous population growth and increased water demands. Based on these scenarios, it is imperative to make accurate projections of future monsoon rainfall, but modeling is limited by a very short record of regional weather monitoring. Lake sediments serve as an important archive of both past precipitation and lake levels along with other environmental conditions. In this study, we sampled five lakes in southeastern Tibet to collect surface and Livingstone cores along with water and vegetation. The paleoclimate record for each lake is developed by incorporating proxies including leaf waxes (δ2H) and carbonate (δ18O) isotopes, sedimentology, diatom communities, and geochemistry. Here we present data from Galang Co, a previously unstudied lake that we sampled in 2015. Our initial results for this study show that monsoon conditions in this lake reflect trends in other regional records, but with greater variability. This paleoclimate reconstruction furthers our understanding of strong versus weak monsoon intensities and can be incorporated in climate models for predicting future monsoon conditions.

Session No. 61

T110. Lakes through Space and Time II
Sunday, 4 November 2018: 1:30 PM-5:30 PM
Room 134 (Indiana Convention Center)
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 50, No. 6
doi: 10.1130/abs/2018AM-323963
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