As the driest inhabited continent of the world, Australia hosts a surprisingly large number of lakes that are distributed all over the continent and show remarkable diversity with regard to their size, shape, geological setting and hydrology. Despite this diversity, most attention has so far focused on non-perennial salt lakes and their hydrological and mineralogical properties and evolutionary pathways. Indeed, one of the most remarkable sedimentary products of Australian lakes is the formation of in situ chemical sediments (i.e. evaporites). Limited attention, however, was given to other physical properties of these lakes, so that primary geological processes relevant for the lakes sedimentary budget during both wet and dry phases – and consequently their longer-term geomorphic evolution – have been somewhat ignored. Notwithstanding, ancient to recent clastic littoral landforms have been known in the drylands of Australia for decades, including the conspicuous paleo-shorelines of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, strongly suggesting non-chemical sedimentary processes as important agents of change in and around Australian lakes that are independent from lake water chemistry and might result in the formation of very different suites of sedimentary deposits and/or rocks (e.g. sand and sandstones).

Recently, the concept of wind-driven waterbodies was introduced to emphasize lakes for which wind-induced hydrodynamics are the dominant agent for the mobilization, reworking, transport and deposition of terrigenous sediments. As such, our project entitled “AustraLakes” suggests the development of a comprehensive inventory of most of the lakes of Australia from sedimentary perspective with the aim of proposing a new classification of these lakes based on their dominant sedimentary processes. This project will include a first remote sensing based survey of all lakes in order to identify and categorize them, followed by further GIS analyses and a field survey with the purpose of ground truthing specific aspects of lake sedimentary process as well as sampling specific depositional landforms around shorelines of selected lakes. We will consider both perennial as well as non-perennial lakes, including modern and past lakes, and we will also proceed to a thorough literature review to integrate the ancient (Cenozoic to Holocene) lakes of Australia preserved in the geological record. This proposed overview of the lakes of Australia, which is the tangible aim of this project, represents a crucial step for us to further characterize and understand the sedimentary processes – and the resulting sedimentary record – of lakes in drylands, a critical setting where climate variability exerts a strong control on various timescales. A final scientific meeting will help preparing and initiating the next step, i.e. a research proposal dedicated to a more comprehensive multi-institutional collaboration project incorporating further field-based research. This will be coupled with a strong focus on numerical simulations of sedimentary processes in these lakes for which we will rely on our previous expertise and new numerical tools that we developed from the numerical model Delft3D as well as our large international collaborative network. 

AustraLakes will run for two years:
Year#1 will be dedicated to collecting data with a focus on GIS-based analysis of remote sensing data, including some field survey and a workshop on Australian lakes as sedimentary systems.

Year#2 will be dedicated to synthesizing the data, organizing an international workshop in Strasbourg and publishing the results in a review paper. In combination, this will lead to the development and writing of a follow-up proposal for an IRN project to be submitted by the end of Year#2.

Institut Terre et Environnement de Strasbourg – ITES

Australia

Bouchette, F., Schuster, M., Ghienne, J.F., Denamiel, C., Roquin, C., Moussa, A., Marsaleix, P. and Duringer, P., 2010. Hydrodynamics in holocene lake mega-chad. Quaternary Research, 73(2), pp.226-236.

Cohen, T.J., Arnold, L.J., Gázquez, F., May, J.H., Marx, S.K., Jankowski, N.R., Chivas, A.R., Garćia, A., Cadd, H., Parker, A.G. and Jansen, J.D., 2022. Late quaternary climate change in Australia’s arid interior: Evidence from Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre. Quaternary Science Reviews, 292, p.107635.

Cohen, T.J., Meyer, M.C. and May, J.H., 2018. Identifying extreme pluvials in the last millennia using optical dating of single grains of quartz from shorelines on Australia’s largest lake. The Holocene, 28(1), pp.150-165.

Marx, S.K., May, J.H., Cohen, T., Kamber, B.S., McGowan, H.A. and Petherick, L., 2022. Dust emissions from Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre: a review. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 146(1), pp.168-206.

May, J.H. and Worthy, T.H., 2022. Foreword: Revisiting Lake Eyre Basin landscapes. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 146(1), pp.1-6.

May, J.H., May, S.M., Marx, S.K., Cohen, T.J., Schuster, M. and Sims, A., 2022. Towards understanding desert shorelines-coastal landforms and dynamics around ephemeral Lake Eyre North, South Australia. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 146(1), pp.59-89.

May, J.H., Barrett, A., Cohen, T.J., Jones, B.G., Price, D. and Gliganic, L.A., 2015. Late Quaternary evolution of a playa margin at Lake Frome, South Australia. Journal of Arid Environments, 122, pp.93-108.

Nutz, A., Schuster, M., Ghienne, J.F., Roquin, C. and Bouchette, F., 2018. Wind-driven waterbodies: a new category of lake within an alternative sedimentologically-based lake classification. Journal of paleolimnology, 59, pp.189-199.

Schuster, M., A. Nutz, F. Zainescu, J. Storms, H. van der Vegt, J.-H. May, F. Bouchette & J.-F. Ghienne, 2024. Hydrodynamique sédimentaire forcé par le vent dans les lacs. – Géochronique 169, pp.37-40.

Schuster, M. and Nutz, A., 2018. Lacustrine wave-dominated clastic shorelines: modern to ancient littoral landforms and deposits from the Lake Turkana Basin (East African Rift System, Kenya). Journal of paleolimnology, 59, pp.221-243.

Schuster, M., Roquin, C., Moussa, A., Ghienne, J.F., Duringer, P., Bouchette, F., Durand, A. and Allenbach, B., 2014. Shorelines of the Holocene Megalake Chad (Africa, Sahara) investigated with very high resolution satellite imagery (Pléiades): example of the Goz Kerki Paleo-Spit. Revue française de photogrammétrie et de télédétection, (208), pp.63-68.

Schuster, M., Roquin, C., Duringer, P., Brunet, M., Caugy, M., Fontugne, M., Mackaye, H.T., Vignaud, P. and Ghienne, J.F., 2005. Holocene lake Mega-Chad palaeoshorelines from space. Quaternary Science Reviews, 24(16-17), pp.1821-1827.

Sepulchre, P., Schuster, M., Ramstein, G., Krinnezr, G., Girard, J.F., Vignaud, P. and Brunet, M., 2008. Evolution of Lake Chad Basin hydrology during the mid-Holocene: A preliminary approach from lake to climate modelling. Global and Planetary Change, 61(1-2), pp.41-48.

Wang, L., Schuster, M., Xin, S.W., Zainescu, F., Xue, X.Y., Storms, J., May, J.H., Nutz, A., van der Vegt, H., Bozetti, G. and Jiang, Z.X., 2024. Littoral landforms of Lake Hulun and Lake Buir (China and Mongolia): Wind-driven hydro-sedimentary dynamics and resulting clastics distribution. Journal of Palaeogeography, 13(2), pp.309-326.

Zăinescu, F., Van der Vegt, H., Storms, J., Nutz, A., Bozetti, G., May, J.H., Cohen, S., Bouchette, F., May, S.M. and Schuster, M., 2023. The role of wind-wave related processes in redistributing river-derived terrigenous sediments in Lake Turkana: A modelling study. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 49(2), pp.368-386.