Facies Sequences Associated with Some Braided River Deposits of Late Pleistocene Age from Southern Britain

Floodplain environmental change during the Younger Dryas and Holocene in Northwest Europe: Insights from the lower Kennet Valley, south central England

“…Overlaps appear in the possible ages of the different stages, reflecting the imprecision of the dating -river reaction time may have been faster than the precision of a radiocarbon date. HLM3 has a cold stage palaeoenvironmental signature, with similar sedimentology to presentday rivers with nival flow regimes significantly influenced by snowmelt and high rates of sediment supply (Bryant, 1983). The duration of this phase is difficult to determine, as radiocarbon data are not sufficiently precise, though they appear to suggest much of it may date to the last few hundred years of the Younger Dryas.…”

Quaternary river terraces in England: Forms, sediments and processes

“…Parallel to the valley axis, the sedimentary bodies are elongated in the downstream direction. This phenomenon has frequently been observed from gravel-bed rivers (Miall, 1977(Miall, , 1996Bryant, 1983b;Briant et al, 2008) and apparently results from downstream extension of the sediment body. The clasts have a great size range, their form determined by local source lithologies, but the largest are most frequently of medium to fine gravel (1-30 cm).…”

Environmental reconstructions of a late devensian terrace sequence. Some preliminary findings

“…The widespread occurrence of sandy facies and an absence of thick units of massive gravel is unlike facies models developed from descriptions of proximal or medial low sinuosity rivers (Williams and Rust, 1969;Rust, 1972Rust, , 1978bMiall, 1978) and the occurrence of large intraclasts and a notable gravel content renders a distal origin unlikely. The Eardington sequence shows significant differences from assemblages described from both Pleistocene (Costello and Walker, 1972;Bryant, 1983) and ancient situations (Moody-Stuart, 1966;Miall, 1976;Bluck, 1980). However, there are similarities to structures described by Campbell (1 976) in the Jurassic Morrison Formation (New Mexico), which he interpreted as being deposited by aggrading and coalescing braided streams.…”

“…However, as Bryant (1983) has pointed out such interpretations may be unsound as a range of fluvial environments occurs in modem periglacial regions. Furthermore, studies of meandering gravel bed rivers have shown that these river systems may deposit sequences closely analogous to those deposited by braided river systems (McGowen and Garner, 1970;Bluck, 1971Bluck, , 1979 and that close attention to certain sedimentary indicators (e.g.…”