Fluctuations of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet recorded in the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility of periglacial loess from Ukraine

Abstract

The azimuth of imbrication of minimum magnetic susceptibility axes in the youngest loess from Ukraine defines prevailing wind directions during aeolian sedimentation. It changes along the studied sections. These changes can be directly correlated with the fluctuations of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. The northern and northeastern winds noted in the loess succession separated by a period when southwestern to southeastern winds were predominant may be correlated with two main phases of ice‐sheet advance during the Last Glacial Maximum. The ice‐sheet advances towards the areas of loess deposition generated katabatic winds that influenced aeolian sedimentation in the periglacial zone. A period of relatively stable wind directions during a younger phase of the Last Glacial Maximum was interrupted by periods with more chaotic wind regime most probably caused by fluctuations of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet during its retreat from the peri‐Baltic part of Europe. These intervals occur where initial soils developed. The distribution of anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility axes defined along the periglacial loess sections from central and eastern Europe can serve to constrain fluctuations of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet.

Disentangling Sedimentary Pathways for the Pleniglacial Lower Danube Loess Based on Geochemical Signatures

“…sediments building the Black Sea shelf were, e.g., deposited by the palaeo-Danube, indicating similar geochemical and mineralogical compositions to the DA pathway (Ducea et al, 2018). The GF pathway was reconstructed for LPS in Poland and Ukraine (Buggle et al, 2008;Skurzyński et al, 2019Skurzyński et al, , 2020Pańczyk et al, 2020) and was mainly driven by enhanced aeolian activities of katabatic winds influenced by fluctuations of the Eurasian CIS (Nawrocki et al, 2019). Pańczyk et al (2020) constrained a divide of dust provinces based on detrital zircon ages, which divides the GF from the EC mode in Poland and Ukraine.…”

“…This sediment pathway was identified as an important dust source for loess deposits in Poland and (southwestern) Ukraine (Nawrocki et al, 2018;Pańczyk et al, 2020). The glaciofluvial outwash plains of Central and Northern Ukraine pose a major dust source for Ukrainian loess-palaeosol sequences (Nawrocki et al, 2006(Nawrocki et al, , 2019Buggle et al, 2008;Pańczyk et al, 2020). This pathway, hereafter called glaciofluvial (GF) pathway, can be related to the CR mode (Li et al, 2020).…”

“…On the one hand, the loess deposits of Central Ukraine are linked to the glaciofluvial (GF) sedimentary pathway (Buggle et al, 2008). These deposits, inter alia located in the catchment of the Dnieper River (Veres et al, 2018), consist of aeolian dust entrained from the glaciofluvial outwash plains by strong northerly winds (Buggle et al, 2008;Nawrocki et al, 2019). On the other hand, the loess deposits of southern Ukraine rather correspond to the Eastern Carpathian (EC) sedimentary pathway sourced from the sediments of the Dniester River and its tributaries.…”

“…Changes of dust source areas over time are potentially linked to palaeoclimatic fluctuations driving dust source expansion and/ or changes in dust transport pathways (Zhang et al, 2018;Nawrocki et al, 2019;Pańczyk et al, 2020;Skurzyński et al, 2020). For MIS 3, URL, VLA, and BAK show some variation in the zirconium-based provenance proxies (Figure 10, Supplementary Figure S3).…”

Main problems of the research on the Palaeolithic of Halych-Dnister region (Ukraine)

“…The Final Palaeolithic artefacts have been discovered in the upper part of the loess MIS 2, just below the recent topsoil on the sites of Halych I and Yezupil III. Most likely, they are related to the Krasyliv sub-horizon, which was formed under conditions of the final Pleistocene active layer [23].…”