Conference:
International Conference, The Caspian Region, January 2010, Moscow, Russia, p. 17-20.
Authors:
Salomon B. Kroonenberg, Elmira Aliyeva, Marc de Batist, Robert M. Hoogendoorn, Dadash Huseynov, Rovshan Huseynov, N.S. Kasimov, Mikhail Lychagin, Lies de Mol, Speranta-Maria Popescu, Jean-Pierre Suc.
Abstract:
Past breaks in Caspian sea-level trends caught everyone by surprise. Nobody predicted the sharp fall in the thirties, the sharp rise in 1977 and the sudden fall in 1995, even though in the last case numerous Global Circulation Models and hydrological balances have been run to predict future sea-level behaviour. The problem is that the period for which instrumental observations exist, since 1834, is too short to validate any model of long-term trends, and the historical record before that is too fragmentary and too contradictory to derive any reliable trend from them. Therefore we studied paleodata on past sea-level changes in the Caspian area in the Holocene.
One of the most promising sites that can give information both on the absolute elevation and chronology of highstands and lowstands, as well as a semi-continuous record of paleo-ecological conditions, is the modern delta of the Kura river in the southern Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, a conspicuous fluvial- and wave dominated delta body protruding offshore until at least 50 m water depth. In an earlier project we recognized the traces of two major lowstands, and two major highstands in the last 1500 years of the Kura Delta history, based on shallow sparker surveys and shallow drilling, sampling and paleoenvironmental analysis.
We now extended the record further back into the Holocene and upper Pleistocene by an extensive seismic survey, drilling and coring of two deep wells, detailed sedimentological, geochemical, paleoecological and chronological analyses. The data have been integrated in a Petrel geological model, visualised using 3-D Inside reality software, and will be matched with the output of 3-D process-based numerical simulation models to be developed for the Kura delta. In this way we obtained a much more detailed and much more reliable Holocene sea-level curve for the Caspian, and especially for the depth and the timing of the lowstands. which are difficult to study on land.