Introducing DFG-research project RO 7078/2-1: Late Pleistocene dune archives spanning from the Canary to the Tyrrhenian Basin – Paleoenvironmental reconstruction via dust imprint from source areas in northern Africa

Saharan dust input is a well-known phenomenon worldwide but especially concerning landscapes around the Mediterranean Sea and on the Canary Islands since the largest dust source areas on earth are located in the northern African continent. Its effects have been imprinted in several geoarchives and are especially well known from aeolianite archives. These coastal dune archives typically form in dependence of changes in sea level and are comprised of pale coloured carbonate sands, intercalated by reddish silty layers, which we call paleo surfaces. They were heavily influenced by, among others, dust imprint from the northern African continent. The aim of our research project is hence to conduct detailed analyses on those layers to reconstruct local and supraregional environmental conditions during the last glacial.

In view of the good temporal resolution over the last glacial our sites on Lanzarote (Canary Islands), Cabo Roig (SE-Spain), Formentera and Eivissa (Balearic Islands) and Sardinia offer best conditions to answer the following research questions, building on each other: (i) What are site-specific characteristics of the dust enriched layers and what information about the local environmental conditions are stored within our geoarchive? (ii) Are there differences or systematical similarities in terms of quantities and admixture of dust material when comparing the different paleo surfaces within a single site/profile? (iii) Can we identify distinct source areas of dust as well as dominating dust pathways ? (iv) Are we able to correlate the different sites from the Canary to the Tyrrhenian basin and what supraregional patterns are deducible?