Author(s)

David Sebag, Alain Durand, Zibo Garba, Eric P. Verrecchia

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Laboratoire Morphodynamique Continentale et C?tière, Université de Rouen, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Rouen, France.

An old erg covers the northern part of the Lake Chad basin. This dune landform allowed the formation of many interdune ponds of various sizes. Still present in certain zones where the groundwater level is high (e.g. Kanem, southern Manga), these ponds formed in the past a vast network of lacustrine microsystems, as shown by the nature and the distribution of their deposits. In the Manga, these interdune deposits represent the main sedimentary records of the Holocene environmental succession. Their paleobiological (pollens, diatoms, ostracods) and geochemical (δ18O, δ13C, Sr/Ca) contents are often the basis for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. On the other hand, their sedimentological characters are rarely exploited. This study of palustro-lacustrine deposits of the Holocene N’Guigmi lake (northern bank of the Lake Chad; Niger) is based on the relationships between the sedimentological features and the climato-hydrological fluctuations. The mineralogical parameters (e.g. calcium carbonate content, clay mineralogy) and the nature of autochthonous mineralization (i.e. amorphous silica, clays, calcium carbonates) can be interpreted using a straightforward hydro-sedimentary model. Established to explain the geochemical dynamics of Lake Chad, this model is based on a biogeochemical cycle of the main elements (i.e. silicium, calcium) directly controlled by the local hydrological balance (i.e. rainfall/evaporation ratio). All these results show that a detailed study of sedimentological features can provide important paleohydrological informations about the regional aridification since ca 6500 14C BP.

Sahel; Lake Chad; Holocene; Mineralogy; Depositional Environments; Climate Change

D. Sebag, A. Durand, Z. Garba and E. Verrecchia, "Paleohydrological Reconstruction from Late Holocene Records in Interdune Lakes (N’Guigmi, Northern Bank of the Lake Chad, Niger)," Open Journal of Geology, Vol. 3 No. 2, 2013, pp. 143-155. doi: 10.4236/ojg.2013.32018.