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Environmental Sciences: A Students Companion

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The Holocene
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Shorelines in the Sahara: geomorphological evidence for an enhanced monsoon from palaeolake Megachad

Nick Drake

Department of Geography, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK, nick.drake{at}kel.ac.uk

Charlie Bristow

School of Earth Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK

The Sahara Desert is the most extensive desert on Earth but during the Holocene it was home to some of the largest freshwater lakes on Earth; of these, palaeolake Megachad was the biggest. Landsat TM images and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital topographic data reveal numerous shorelines around palaeolake Megachad. At its peak sometime before 7000 years ago the lake was over 173 m deep with an area of at least 400 000 km2, bigger than the Caspian Sea, the biggest lake on Earth today. The morphology of the shorelines indicates two dominant winds, one northeasterly that is consistent with the present-day winds in the region. The other originated from the southwest. We attribute it to an enhanced monsoon caused by a precessionally driven increase in Northern Hemisphere insolation. Subsequent desiccation of the palaeolake is recorded by numerous regressive shorelines in the Sahara Desert.

Key Words: Lake • beach ridges • spits • remote sensing • DEM • Holocene • Chad

The Holocene, Vol. 16, No. 6, 901-911 (2006)
DOI: 10.1191/0959683606hol981rr
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