Constraining drought records in the central Great Plains (USA) within the last 1,500 years using innovative luminescence-dating methods

• Applicant: Dr. Sebastian Kreutzer
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 505819035

Droughts are amongst the most significant natural threats in the central and southern Great Plains (USA). Accurate and precise chronologies of droughts and related dune activity phases in the Great Plains are paramount for understanding the frequency and magnitude of these natural disasters. Beyond historical records on the timing and magnitude, droughts can be revealed only from sediment archives. Due to the limited abundance of lakes or other sedimentary sinks in the central and southwestern Great Plains (Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas), aeolian (sand) dunes and their drought-induced re-activation are expected to provide the most valuable information on severe phases of aridity during the past centuries. CONSTRAIN aims at a new, accurate and precise temporal placement of pre-historic droughts in the southwestern Great Plains over the last 1,500 years. Within the project, we aim at (1) developing a routine luminescence dating technique using zircons to constrain geomorphological processes on short times scales (up to 1,500 years) with ideally annual precision, (2) generating a high-resolution landscape model of pre-historic dune activity in the southern Great Plains using a high-resolution chronological model and new statistical approaches. Against the background of global warming, these results are expected to contribute to predicting and effectively mitigating future drought hazards in the study area. The project is a collaboration of Heidelberg University (Germany), Université de Lausanne (Switzerland) and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (USA). The project is designed as a pilot study and will mainly focus on preparatory work, showing the feasibility of the zircon dating approach and establishing the research partnership.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland, USA
• Partner Organisation: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Paul Hanson; Privatdozent Dr. Christoph Schmidt