The Dead Sea Deep Drilling Project, which was carried out starting in 2010-2011 recovered a continuous Pleistocene-Holocene sedimentary sequence. The core provides annual/seasonal time resolution record of the environmental, climatic, seismic, and geomagnetic history of the region. A ~460 m main core, with over 85% of recovery, was obtained at ~300 m water depth at the deepest area of the lake. A second drill site was near the shore. The sedimentary record includes several sequences of salt layers interbedded with laminated mud. Preliminary age estimations indicate that the drilled sediments were deposited during the past couple of glacial-interglacial cycles. Several groups in Israel as well as in Germany, US, Switzerland, and Japan, study the cores.
My group examines the drill cores in order to understand how the deep basin sediments reacted to earthquake vibrations, and compare the record with that from the margins.
Partners: Dr. Elisa J. Kagan, Dr. Yin Lu
Drill near the Dead Sea shore
Second drill site near the shore, 2010
Drilling - night shift
Mor Kanari
Near shore drill site four years later (2014), lake level dropped about 4 m.
folds
Fault in the core
Various types of halite (salt)
Red-archived, Black-working half of the cores
Cores
Drilling barge
Zvi Ben-Avraham, Amotz Agnon, Moti Stein, Michael Lazar
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Photos of the core opening party are here.