Lake Victoria Basin

ICDP workshop on the Lake Victoria Drilling Project (LVDP): scientific drilling of the world's largest tropical lake

“…Lake Victoria, as a large lake situated at the Equator, is an important place to study high-vs. low-latitude climate forcings. The unique location of Lake Victoria at the Equator, and relatively simple tectonic history that led to the formation of the lake compared to nearby rift lakes (e.g., Renaut and Owen, 2023), suggests that reconstruction of climate over glacial-interglacial cycles may be important to help us examine the relationship between orbital forcing, ice sheet extent, and more regional tropical patterns of climate variability (e.g., Stager et al, 2011). Additionally, how the changing spatial extent and inflows/outflows of Lake Victoria, the source of the White Nile, and the connection to the climate of the Mediterranean region have developed over these time intervals is unknown.…”

“…The region is relatively tectonically quiescent compared to elsewhere in the rift system, and prior geophysical surveys found laterally continuous sediments (Fig. 3b) (Johnson et al, 1996;Scholz et al, 1998). The project could assess if recovered cores capture a record of seismicity and, with a better understanding of the tectono-sedimentary history of Lake Victoria, the possibility of rapidly shifting depocenters.…”

“…Seismic reflection profiles obtained during the same expeditions revealed that the paleosol extends across the entire lake basin (Fig. 3b), indicating complete desiccation of the lake prior to 15 ka, perhaps during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and extending through Heinrich event 1 (Johnson et al, 1996;Scholz et al, 1998;Talbot and Laerdal, 2000;Stager et al, 2002), when much of Africa experienced relatively cool, arid conditions (e.g., Otto-Bliesner et al, 2014). Existing seismic data reveal at least three more basin-wide paleosols (Fig.…”

“…The NSF-funded 1995 IDEAL expedition collected nearly 2000 km of seismic reflection profiles using a 16.4 cc (1 in. 3 ) airgun (Scholz et al, 1998). Additionally, profiles were gathered from the 1985 Project PROBE survey, which collected multichannel seismic reflection data using a 2300 cc (140 in.…”

“…Lake Victoria is an extremely sensitive archive of past hydroclimate variability (e.g., Vanderkelen et al, 2018;Beverly et al, 2020;Ogondo et al, 2022). It completely desiccated at least once in the Late Pleistocene (e.g., Johnson et al, 1996) and has likely desiccated and refilled multiple times since it formed (e.g., Scholz et al, 1998). These fluctuations in lake size provided a powerful, dynamic mechanism that forced major changes in human populations and ecosystems around the lake, including range expansion, contraction, and fragmentation of the region's biota, all key drivers of macroevolutionary change (e.g., Tryon and Faith, 2013;Tryon et al, 2015;Faith et al, 2013Faith et al, , 2014Faith et al, , 2016.…”