At least, that's what a group of scientists are doing this week. Scientists from the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth are examining tubes of sediment burrowed from an East African lake. The researchers said the cores display the climate history of an area and can predict future patterns. They will conduct their preliminary analysis at the University's Limnological Research Center. You have to be clever.
Lakes act as history books, recording the events that impact a region over time.
As climactic, geophysical or biological changes occur, the effects of these changes are recorded in the sedimentary layers that shroud the bottoms of lake beds. There's an element of learning as we go. We try to pull in different lines of evidence to build a story that is consistent with the observations. The scientists' efforts are the beginning of a three-year project to study cores from Lake Milawi in Milawi, East Africa. The group said they hope to work through five of the 16, 30-foot cores they obtained during two expeditions to Lake Milawi in 1997 and 1998.