Field Workshop for Interdisciplinary Earth Science Investigations in Mongolia

9630142 Fowell Central Asia represents a sizable gap in Quaternary paleoclimate databases because relatively few sediment cores have been collected from this part of the world. This is particularly unfortunate due to the growing need for detailed records of terrestrial climate change and ecosystem evolution. High-resolution climate data are already available from oceans and ice sheets, and comparable continental records are necessary in order to further understanding of global climate changes. Located in the interior of the Asian continent, Mongolia is subject to the seasonal interplay of the Siberian and Indian-African monsoons, home to numerous endemic species of fish and insects, and the site of exceptionally well preserved Mesozoic and Cenozoic vertebrate fossils. Mongolia is thus a natural field laboratory for paleoclimate research, and climate records from this country have unique potential to elucidate relationships between monsoonal circulation, glaciation, orbital forcing, tectonic uplift, terrestrial climate change, and rates of evolution. As a prelude to in-depth studies of Mongolian climate history, a planning meeting and field workshop for ten U.S. scientists with research interests in paleoclimate, paleontology, and global change will be held in Mongolia in the fall of 1996. During a recent NSF- sponsored workshop on Mongolian research held in South Carolina during October of 1995, all ten of these scientists expressed a keen interest in attending a one-month reconnaissance trip to Mongolia. Since the October workshop, plans for multidisciplinary field-based research projects have advanced rapidly to the point where an exchange of results and ideas between U.S. and Mongolian scientists has become instrumental to the success of future projects. In addition to planning meetings and seminars, there will be visits to potential field sites and collection of preliminary samples in order to eliminate the difficulty and risk of remote site sel ection. The planning meeting will be held in Ulan Bator during August of 1996, during which time U.S. scientists will spend five days meeting with members of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences to exchange information and discuss logistics of potential projects. Meetings will be followed by a two-week expedition to Lake Khubsugul, with stops along the way to survey glacial features, loess deposits, and shallow lakes or bogs suitable for collection of short cores. Khubsugul has been selected as the destination of the field trip so that short sediment cores for preliminary palynological, paleomagnetic, and carbon isotope analyses may be collected from the lakeshore and from nearby ponds. Furthermore, the trip to Khubsugul is intended to ascertain the feasibility of a large-scale coring project designed to extract and extended paleoclimate record from this central Asian lake basin. ***