Drilling to the Past in Lake Elgygytgyn
19.03.2009 - Land & Geology, Flora & Fauna, Other, Arctic
A team of German, Russian and American scientists led by a University of Massachusetts professor has been drilling through the bottom of Lake El'Gygytgyn, a crater lake in Siberia. Having left in mid-December, the scientists will be camped out on the banks of the crater lake taking sediment cores from the bottom of the lake in order to have a glimpse back into the region's climate history. The mission will last until mid-May, when the lake's annual thaw begins and the ice can no longer be able to support the more than 180,000 pounds of drilling equipment.
They hope to pull to the surface of the lake an unusually detailed sample of ancient sediment via a hollow tube, 10 feet at a time. The sample will be an archive of an earlier era when the Arctic was warmer, and is expected to provide clues about Earth's future. The sediment cores will be flown to the University of Cologne in Germany for analysis.
Although ancient sediment cores have been retrieved from the floor of polar oceans before, this project hopes to have a look at what happened on landmasses in the Arctic during past climate transitions. This information will help determine how vegetation and weather patterns will change as the planet warms at an unprecedented rate.
Lake El'Gygytgyn was formed when a giant meteor smacked into Earth 3.6 million years ago. But, unlike many other lakes in northern latitudes, it was spared the ploughing of glaciers, which usually scrape away layers of soil, thus keeping the sediments in the lake unaltered. It is believed that Lake El'Gygytgyn holds the only detailed record of sediment deposits on a polar land mass that dates back millions of years.
