Topic VIII - Type of lake: synthesis and advances > VIII-4-Lake Bourget and cousins: perialpine lakes as the cradles and future of limnogeology and paleolimnology

Conveners

1. Fabien Arnaud (EDYTEM, CNRS, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, Le Bourget-du-lac, France)
2. Emmanuel Chapron (Géographie de l'Environnement (GEODE), Toulouse, France)

The specific shape of European Alps led to the onset of flexural basins both in front (west and north sides) at the back (east and south sides) of the chain. Subsequent geodynamics and glaciations maintained overdeepened basins pinched between the main chain and the foreland ones on the west and north sides and the vaster Po flexural basin on the east and south sides. During Quaternary interglacial periods those structural depressions are filled with waters giving bith to chaplet of lakes, the so-called perialpine lakes. Theses lakes’ sedimentary infilling present the particularity to be composed of a autochthonous carbonate fraction more or less diluted by the products of the Alps erosion, generally leading to the construction of massive deltas at the tributary outlets and to the deposition of hyperpycnites in the deeper basins. This particularitiy make them model scales of oceanic basins that attracted sedimentologists as early the 60s’. Nowadays those lakes continue to be under the scope of the limnogeologists and paleolimnologist questionning a renewed bunch of scientific questions and revisiting old ones with fresh ideas and groundbreaking new tools.

With this session we aim at celebrating more than 50 years of scientific investigations of perialpine lakes since the pioneer works by the legends of our discipline up to the very latest developments. We hope to bring together key contribution by and about pioneers as well as by the vanguard of the generation of researchers. Any topic that can be treated using perialpine lake sediment is welcomed, as well as any technical approach from biology-based up to geophysics, including all the geochemists quiver of techniques.

Depending on the success of this call-for-abstract, some contributions could be transformed into a dedicated short-course session prior or after the congress itself.