DIGEST
Project structure
DIGESTED forms a central element of the multinational and interdisciplinary NamCore drilling project framework. It will directly add to reach scientific goals of other groups working under the umbrella of NamCore, e.g., paleoclimate/paleoenvironments, active tectonics, paleomagnetism and environmental magnetism and evolutionary biology. DIGESTED will also greatly profit from the research results generated by these collaborators as well as from access to downhole logging data and geochronological information. WP-1Digester will also actively provide the coordination and science integration platform for the overall NamCore drilling project through the organization of international project workshops. DIGESTED will also provide a fertile breeding ground for future research ideas and collaborative research projects by Swiss and international research teams on NamCore sample materials.
Interconnected
research packages
The DIGESTED Sinergia project will combine expertise from the fields of sedimentary geology/(bio-)geochemistry, paleolimnology, microbiology as well as environmental physics and tracer hydrology in a highly complementary fashion to explore abiotically and biotically driven biogeochemical cycling and its impact on altering sediment and mineral composition in a thus far understudied terrestrial environment at high altitude. Interdisciplinarity will be fostered through a diverse work package (WP) framework tightly connected and lined up by WP-1Digester on project coordination and science integration.
Our approach
Scientific drilling is an integral tool for the study of the chronological records of Earth’s geological and biological history. The DIGESTED research project takes advantage of the ICDP-funded international drilling campaign at the high altitude setting of Nam Co which has undergone substantial Quaternary climatic and environmental changes. Local climate impacts lake primary productivity and hydrology and the resulting alterations in water chemistry and biology are recorded in sediments. Nonetheless, mineral, molecular and isotopic signatures of environmental conditions enter a so-called ‘black box’ of diagenesis during which it is not known whether and to what extent they are altered by ongoing biological and chemical reactions in sediments. Mineral dissolution and precipitation reactions can be driven by sediment microbial communities and their composition is in turn controlled by physicochemical properties of the sediment. Microbial abundance and mineral precipitation at depth can also be influenced by fluid advection along tectonic fault planes which creates an overprinting of new over ancient mineral and isotope signatures.