Central Asia is highly dependent on glacier meltwater for its water resources. Its high mountains hold great volumes of glacial ice, with seasonal snow melt supplying up to 80% of the region's fresh water needs. However, since the 1960s, central Asia has lost over 14% of its glacier covered area and ~18% of its ice volume. Changes in glacially-fed hydrologic systems impact water availability and biodiversity in these regions. However, these observations cover only a fraction of the climate history of this region. Ice cores from glaciers in the high Himalayas preserve records of millennia of climate changes. Understanding the natural variability recorded in such records is of critical importance for interpreting the vulnerability of the region to modern and future climate change.
This project will recover a surface-to-bedrock ice core from the Pamir, Tajikistan, which will be used to develop detailed records of climate changes in central Asia during the Holocene and beyond. The results will be used to reconstruct the dynamics and rates of moderate, abrupt, and threshold changes in climate in Central Asia. Specifically, the research team will generate annually-resolved, multivariate geochemical records from the ice cores (including stable isotopes, trace elements, major ions, and dust particles), recover pollen and other biological materials, and compare the results with ice core and other paleo records from the interior of Asia. Chronological control will be established with a variety of techniques (layer counting, radiocarbon, beryllium-10, lead-210, and tritium). The project involves scientific collaboratio with international research partners from Germany and Japan as well as from local government departments in Tajikistan. Graduate students from two US institutions would be involved in the international activities, which will include both field expeditions to collect the ice cores and follow up sampling and collaboration visits.
This project is jointly supported by the Paleoclimate Program of the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, the EPSCoR program, and the Division of International Science and Engineering.
