- Marriner, Nick
- Flaux, Clement
- Kaniewski, David
- Morhange, Christophe
- Leduc, Guillaume
- Moron, Vincent
- Chen, Zhongyuan
- Gasse, Francoise
- Empereur, Jean-Yves
- Stanley, Jean-Daniel
The Nile valley accommodates the world's longest river and shaped the development of numerous complex societies, providing a reliable source of water for farming and linking populations to sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean Sea. Its fertile delta lay at the heart of ancient Egyptian civilization, however little is known of its morpho-sedimentary response to basin-wide changes in Holocene hydrology. Here, we present two well-resolved records from the Nile delta (based on similar to 320 radiocarbon dates) to reconstruct the timing and rhythm of catchment-scale modifications during the past 8000 years. On the orbital timescale, we demonstrate that Nilotic hydrology and sedimentation have responded to low-latitude insolation forcing while, on sub-millennial timescales, many of the major phases of deltaic modification were mediated by climate events linked to El Nino Southern Oscillation-type (ENSO) variability. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
- NORTH-ATLANTIC CLIMATE
- LAST GLACIAL MAXIMUM
- AFRICAN RAINFALL
- DIATOM RECORD
- EAST-AFRICA
- SUDAN
- MONSOON
- EVOLUTION
- SAHARA
- VARIABILITY
[Marriner, Nick; Gasse, Francoise] CEREGE UMR 7330, CNRS, F-13545 Aix En Provence 04, France; [Flaux, Clement; Morhange, Christophe; Moron, Vincent] Univ Aix Marseille, CEREGE UMR 7330, F-13545 Aix En Provence 04, France; [Kaniewski, David] Univ Toulouse 3, EcoLab Lab Ecol Fonct, F-31062 Toulouse 9, France; [Leduc, Guillaume] Univ Kiel, Inst Earth Sci, D-24118 Kiel, Germany; [Moron, Vincent] Columbia Univ, Int Res Inst Climate & Soc, New York, NY USA; [Chen, Zhongyuan] E China Normal Univ, Shanghai 200062, Peoples R China; [Empereur, Jean-Yves] CNRS, UMS 1812, Ctr Etudes Alexandrines, Alexandria 21131, Egypt; [Stanley, Jean-Daniel] Smithsonian Inst, Geoarchaeol Program, Natl Museum Nat Hist, Washington, DC 20013 USA
Marriner, N (reprint author), CEREGE UMR 7330, CNRS, BP 80, F-13545 Aix En Provence 04, France.
- Centre européen de recherche et d'enseignement de géosciences de l'environnement (CEREGE), UMR7330
- Laboratoire d'écologie fonctionnelle et environnement (ECOLAB), UMR5245