This proposal will carry out Holocene paleomagnetic field secular variation (PSV) studies on five lakes from Tropical East Africa (Turkana, Malawi, Tanganyika, Edward, Victoria). We will recover PSV records from at least two sediment cores in each lake and develop a composite PSV directional record from them. We will correlate the directional PSV records from all five lakes and date the records with C14 dating. We will also attempt to reconstruct relative paleointensity variability from each lake. Our preliminary data suggest we can do this for at least one lake, Malawi. This work will permit us to develop a regional group of PSV time series that will characterize field variability in a region where almost nothing is known in high-resolution. A high-resolution relative paleointensity record from Lake Malawi (10°S) would be the first such Holocene record from the Southern Hemisphere. The study will analyze these records and compare them with other global Holocene PSV data to assess geodynamo dynamics. USC researchers have developed a new model of Holocene field variability (PSVMOD2.0), based on a family of Global PSV time series for the last 8000 years. PSVMOD2.0 now has 85 sites around the World, which yield 72 directional PSV time series and 35 paleointensity time series. However, PSVMOD2.0 has no significant data from the African continent and no paleointensity time series from the Southern Hemisphere. This study of African lakes will add significantly to the quality of PSVMOD2.0. The African PSV data will also be used to better assess the timing and regional pattern of Holocene climate change in the studied lakes. PSV has previously been used very effectively as a high-resolution correlation and dating tool in paleoclimate studies. PSVMOD2.0 should become a community database used by a variety of scientists to better understand PSV and geodynamo dynamics. We still do not understand very well how our planetary magnetic field works (and largely the way all planetary magnetic fields and stellar magnetic fields work) under normal conditions. We know that these magnetic fields are generated by flow of electrically conducting fluid below the planetary/stellar surfaces (dynamo action), but current models of these processes (dynamo models) do not adequately describe how these fields really operate (particularly the Earth's magnetic field and our Sun's magnetic field). We need a more complete understanding of how our magnetic field operates under normal conditions to better constrain future dynamo models. The best (and only) way to do that is to reconstruct how our field has varied over the last several thousand years. (Dating errors make this analysis difficult to impossible in older times.) We currently have measured variations in Earth's magnetic field over the last few thousand years over less than half the Earth's surface. This project fills in a big hole in our understanding the central African continent. Better understanding of how the Earth's magnetic field operates normally (last few thousand years) will also give us a better way to assess what the Earth's magnetic field is doing when it 'goes screwy'. These periods are called magnetic field excursions and reversals.
