TY  - JOUR
A1  - Prasad, Sushma
A1  - Anoop, A.
A1  - Riedel, N.
A1  - Sarkar, Saswati
A1  - Menzel, P.
A1  - Basavaiah, Nathani
A1  - Krishnan, R.
A1  - Fuller, D.
A1  - Plessen, Birgit
A1  - Gaye, B.
A1  - Roehl, U.
A1  - Wilkes, H.
A1  - Sachse, Dirk
A1  - Sawant, R.
A1  - Wiesner, M. G.
A1  - Stebich, M.
T1  - Prolonged monsoon droughts and links to Indo-Pacific warm pool: A Holocene record from Lonar Lake, central India
JF  - Earth & planetary science letters
N2  - Concerns about the regional impact of global climate change in a warming scenario have highlighted the gaps in our understanding of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM, also referred to as the Indian Ocean summer monsoon) and the absence of long term palaeoclimate data from the central Indian core monsoon zone (CMZ). Here we present the first high resolution, well-dated, multiproxy reconstruction of Holocene palaeoclimate from a 10 m long sediment core raised from the Lonar Lake in central India. We show that while the early Holocene onset of-intensified monsoon in the CMZ is similar to that reported from other ISM records, the Lonar data shows two prolonged droughts (PD, multidecadal to centennial periods of weaker monsoon) between 4.6-3.9 and 2-0.6 cal ka. A comparison of our record with available data from other ISM influenced sites shows that the impact of these PD was observed in varying degrees throughout the ISM realm and coincides with intervals of higher solar irradiance. We demonstrate that (i) the regional warming in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool (IPWP) plays an important role in causing ISM PD through changes in meridional overturning circulation and position of the anomalous Walker cell; (ii) the long term influence of conditions like El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the ISM began only ca. 2 cal ka BP and is coincident with the warming of the southern IPWP; (iii) the first settlements in central India coincided with the onset of the first PD and agricultural populations flourished between the two PD, highlighting the significance of natural climate variability and PD as major environmental factors affecting human settlements.
KW  - Indian summer monsoon
KW  - ENSO
KW  - prolonged droughts
KW  - Holocene
KW  - Lonar Lake
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2014.01.043
SN  - 0012-821X
SN  - 1385-013X
VL  - 391
SP  - 171
EP  - 182
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Sarkar, Saswati
A1  - Wilkes, Heinz
A1  - Prasad, Sushma
A1  - Brauer, Achim
A1  - Riedel, Nils
A1  - Stebich, Martina
A1  - Basavaiah, Nathani
A1  - Sachse, Dirk
T1  - Spatial heterogeneity in lipid biomarker distributions in the catchment and sediments of a crater lake in central India
JF  - Organic geochemistry : the international journal for rapid publication of current research in organic geochemistry and biochemistry
N2  - The basin-scale spatial variability in lipid biomarker proxies in lacustrine sediments, which are established tools for studying continental environmental change, has rarely been examined. It is often implicitly assumed that a lake sediment core provides an average integral of catchment sources. Here we evaluated the distribution of lipid biomarkers in a modern ecosystem and compared it with the sedimentary record. We analyzed lipid biomarkers in terrestrial and aquatic organisms and in lake surface sediments from 17 locations within the saline-alkaline Lonar crater lake in central India. Terrestrial vegetation and lake surface sediments were characterized by relatively high average chain length (ACL) index values (29.6-32.8) of leaf wax n-alkanes, consistent with suggestions that plants in drier and warmer climates produce longer chain alkyl lipids than plants in cooler and humid areas. A heterogeneous spatial distribution of ACL values in lake surface sediments was found: at locations away from the shore, the values were highest (31 or more), possibly indicating different sources and/or transport of terrestrial biomarkers. In floating, benthic microbial mats and surface sediment, n-heptadecane, carotenoids, diploptene, phytol and tetrahymanol occurred in large amounts. Interestingly, these biomarkers of a unique bacterial community were found in substantially higher concentrations in nearshore sediment samples. We suggest that human influence and subsequent nutrient supply resulted in increased primary productivity, leading to an unusually high concentration of tetrahymanol in the nearshore sediments. In summary, the data showed that substantial heterogeneity existed within the lake, but leaf wax n-alkanes in a core from the center of the lake represented an integral of catchment conditions. However, lake level fluctuation may potentially affect aquatic lipid biomarker distributions in lacustrine sediments, in addition to source changes.
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orggeochem.2013.11.009
SN  - 0146-6380
VL  - 66
SP  - 125
EP  - 136
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  -