The Ziway–Shala lake basin (main Ethiopian rift, Ethiopia): a revision of basin evolution with special reference to the Late Quaternary

Abstract

The Ziway–Shala basin, in the Main Ethiopian Rift (MER), is a reference site for regional to global paleoclimatic reconstructions. We undertook and interpreted a stratigraphical, pedological and geomorphological study, including a new geological map scale 1:250,000, to provide a Late Quaternary-centred revised geological history of the basin. 1 The map can be found at the back of this issue. 1 We mapped several Late Quaternary sedimentary units and arranged them in four major unconformity-bounded stratigraphic units (synthems), recording equivalent phases of geomorphic change. A new, extensive, soil survey allowed us to establish a pedostratigraphic unit, the T’ora geosol, as a distinctive marker of landscape stability and instability in the area during the Holocene. Climate change was a major control on geo-morphologic evolution of this area during the intense climate fluctuations of the last 100,000 years. Extensive lake systems developed during relatively humid Last Glacial interstadials and in the early-mid Holocene; this last was characterized by short, but high-amplitude, regressions during arid pulses. Major lakes’ lowering occurred in the terminal Pleistocene and in the last 5000 years. Evidences for high or very high terminal Pleistocene lake levels suggest possible non-climatic controls on changes in lakes’ extension and volumes between Late Pleistocene and Holocene. We suggest that modifications of hydrological thresholds, due to activity of structures parallel and transversal to the MER, established new lakes’ boundaries between terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene, setting the maximum level of Holocene lake systems at about 1670 m a.s.l. The integrated analysis of lacustrine, fluvial, slope and soil systems provided a basis for a general interpretation of relations between climatic changes and geomorphic processes at a basin scale.