International audienceNumerous periglacial features (polygons, nets, soil stripes, ice-wedge pseudomorphs and sand-wedge casts, involutions) have been recorded in France by examining bibliographical sources and aerial photographs. These data show that a large part of France was affected by permafrost during the Pleistocene and only the southern Aquitaine Basin and Languedoc seem to have been beyond its maximum extent. The first OSL ages obtained from the aeolian infill of wedge structures indicate that at least two phases of thermal contraction cracking occurred in southwestern France between ∼25 and 36 ka. Chronostratigraphical data from loess in northern France indicate that these episodes correspond to the formation of ice-wedge networks associated with tundra gleys. In the latter region, two additional permafrost episodes probably occurred during the Last Glacial, the older one corresponding to the end of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 around 60 ka and the more recent one to MIS 2 around 19-16 ka. Although stratigraphical data indicate that these episodes were relatively short (about one millennium), relict permafrost may have existed for longer periods in northern France

International audiencehe Land Use and Cover Area frame Statistical survey (LUCAS) database on topsoil properties inEurope was used to map aeolian deposits. The points which satisfy the grain-size criteria of coversands, loess andtransitional facies were extracted from the rasters of predicted soil texture established by kriging of the LUCAS databy Ballabio et al. (2016). A comparison with already available maps, derived from a conventional field approach,shows a good fit in most of the tested areas. The new map, however, suggests a greater extension of loess, whichseems related to the inclusion of thin loess covers, usually omitted by conventional mapping, and the presence ofpreviously unmapped areas due to lack of survey or misinterpretation. The main source of aeolian particlescorresponds to glacio-fluvial sediments at the margin of the Scandinavian and Alpine ice sheets. Coversands andloess form a broad band across northern Europe, and in the Rh^one, Rhine and Danube valleys. Large areas on theoutskirts of these deposits also received a significant loess contribution, which has been reworked in slope deposits.Conversely, southern Europe is characterized by much less loess accumulation. The Atlantic coast has transgressivedune fields that penetrate inland to varying degre

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