ALBERT

Description: Lake Ohrid (LO), a transboundary lake shared by Macedonia and Albania on the Balkan Peninsula, is not only considered to be the oldest lake in Europe (~2 Ma) but has a long and continuous sedimentary history. An advantage at LO is the availability of hydroacoustic data sets of good quality covering the entire lake basin. The tectonically formed basin is filled with thick undisturbed sediments. However, the overall internal structure of LO is characterized by numerous faults, clinoform structures, and several Mass Transport Deposits (MTDs). By using a seismic chronology model (SCM) correlating seismic reflector packages with Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) we estimate the occurrence of the deepest MTD detected in the southern basin at the transition of MIS9 to MIS8 (~300 ka) defining the onset of the sliding history in LO that is still ongoing today. In general, MTDs are widespread within the basin but they do cluster at active faults. Two large MTDs occurred in the early MIS7 (~230 ka, ~220 ka) and after a quiesence period of about ~70 ka two additional large MTDs have been detected in the late penultimate glacial period MIS6 (~150 ka, 130 ka). MIS5 seemed to be another quiet period with respect to mass wasting. In the younger sedimentary history mass movement is a common process with several large and mid-sized deposits mapped at all stratigraphic levels. The youngest slide deposits are estimated to occur within the last 2,000 years. The main outcome of this paper is a model for the spatial and temporal distribution of mass wasting for Lake Ohrid.