Late Pleistocene loess and their paleosols in the Granada Basin, Southern Spain

Middle Pleistocene to Holocene geochronology of the River Aguas terrace sequence (Iberian Peninsula): Fluvial response to Mediterranean environmental change

“…In addition, continental pollen records indicate abrupt climate change during Late Pleistocene and Holocene sequences (Florschütz et al, 1971;Pons and Reille, 1988;Pantaleón-Cano et al, 1996;Burjachs et al, 1997). These climate (and vegetation) changes affected fluvial dynamics and soil processes (Harvey et al, 1995;Schulte and Julià, 2001;Günster et al, 2001;Schulte, 2002bSchulte, , 2003Thorndycraft and Benito, 2006).…”

“…Various authors have tried to correlate different geomorphological units, such as palaeosols and river terraces (Völk, 1979;Günster et al, 2001). Until now their results have not been supported with accurate radiometric dates.…”

Loess and soils in the eastern Ebro Basin

“…At that time, silty deposits of aeolian origin had already been recognised in the Manresa area of Catalonia (IGME, 1956). Since then, Spanish authors have overlooked the presence of such deposits and only foreign authors have mentioned them: in Andalusia (Brunnacker and Lozek, 1969;Günster et al, 2001), and the Levant region (Dumas, 1977). However, extensive accumulations of loess in the Middle of the River Tagus Valley (García-Gim enez and Gonz alez, 2010;Garcia-Gim enez et al, 2012) and the Castilian branch of the Iberian and South Submeseta (Gonz alez et al, 2000) have recently been reported.…”

Provenance of loess from the Spanish central region: chemometric interpretation

“…They were associated with very fine silt accumulations (with minimal amounts of sand and clay), constituted principally of silica and calcite and probably belonged to ancient materials accumulated during isotope stage 4 (67 000-45 000 BP) in very harsh environments with average annual temperatures of about 4.9 • C (Rose, Meng & Watson, 1999). Other deposits of loess (<10 m thick) were also located in the deep intermountain valleys of Granada, in the southwest of Spain, at 500-900 metres above sea level (Günster et al 2001). This loess was remobilized by water and is composed of sand (2-22 %), silt (8-70 %) and clay (4-27 %).…”