Following the earlier conclusion of fieldwork, the beginning of December 2011, also saw the completion of analytical work from the laboratory.

As such, the time was right to invite our Turkish colleagues from the Eastern Mediterranean Centre for Oceanography and Limnology (EMCOL) of the Istanbul Technical University (ITU) to discuss initial results.

The workshop “Developments of Lake Iznik: initial results of limnological and palaeolimnological investigations” was hosted by the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, University of Cologne and the Steinmann-Institute of Geology, Mineralogy and Palaeontology, University of Bonn. The workshop commenced with a series of introductory talks, presenting the latest results and interpretations, and the following days were spent in fruitful discussion. As a result, we were able to finalise the core-correlation between the long cores retrieved in 2005 and those from 2009, which also fit nicely to the hydro-acoustic profile taken in April 2011.

We are all looking forward to a continuation of our cooperation work, especially since we know that we are currently working on the oldest sediment record in the region.

Chalkboard: Initial results of our workshop. Photo: Finn Viehberg