North Sea palaeogeographical reconstructions for the last 1 Ma

Abstract

The landscape evolution of the southern North Sea basin is complex and has left a geographically varying record of marine, lacustrine, fluvial and glacial sedimentation and erosion. Quaternary climatic history, which importantly included glaciation, combined with tectonics gave rise to cyclic and non-cyclic changes of sedimentation and erosion patterns. Large-scale landscape reorganisations left strong imprints in the preserved record, and are important for the detail that palaeogeographical reconstructions for the North Sea area can achieve. In the spirit of the North Sea Prehistory Sea. It summarises current stratigraphical and chronological frameworks and provides an overview of sedimentary environments. As we go back in time, the understanding of Quaternary palaeo-environmental evolution in the North Sea basin during the last 1 million years becomes decreasingly accurate, with degree of preservation and accuracy of age control equally important controls. Comparing palaeogeographical reconstructions for the Middle Pleistocene, the last interglacial-glacial cycle and the period following the Last Glacial Maximum illustrates this. More importantly, a series of palaeogeographical maps provide an account of basin-scale landscape change, which provides an overall framework for comparing landscape situations through time.

Filling the North Sea Basin: Cenozoic sediment sources and river styles

“…Glaciation occurred periodically in the region from the Plio-Pleistocene boundary times and through the later Pleistocene (Thierens et al, 2012;Ottesen et al, 2014;Sejrup et al, 1995) causing landscape remodelling and frequent reorganisation of drainage systems on adjacent land areas (cf. Gibbard & Cohen, 2015;Cohen et al, 2014). During the Middle to Late Pleistocene river incision greatly increased apparently in response to the increasing severity and longer duration of cold climates (Gibbard & Lewin, 2009).…”

“…During this glaciation ice from southern Norway crossed the North Sea and overrode easternmost Britain to deposit a complex of glacial sediments (Gibbard, 1995). This complex includes not only diamicton but glaciolacustrine sediments, including stratified diamictons that accumulated beneath a floating ice-front (Lunkka, 1994;Gibbard & van der Vegt, 2012), these sediments indicating the occurrence of a massive proglacial lake in the unglaciated southern North Sea basin (Gibbard, 1988(Gibbard, , 1995Cohen et al, 2014). This ice sheet across the basin blocked the drainage systems, whilst the topographic barrier to the south (Weald-Artois anticline) between Kent and northern France, caused an extensive lake to form (Belt, 1874;Gullentops, 1974;Gibbard, 1988Gibbard, , 1995Gibbard, , 2007Hijma et al, 2012;Cohen et al, 2014).…”

The Blake Event recorded near the Eemian type locality – A diachronic onset of the Eemian in Europe

“…It suggests that regional climatic conditions over Europe and the North Atlantic in the first part of MIS 5e were very different from those in equivalent parts of MIS 2 and 1 (Late Glacial and Early Holocene). Known differences between the melting history of the Greenland ice cap following Termination II (NEEM community Members, 2013) and following Termination I (Lowe et al, 2008), also seen in North Atlantic paleoceanography (Bauch et al, 2000), can be regarded to provide mechanisms that can explain the difference in climate history between the Eemian and Holocene (Renssen et al, 2012;Cohen et al, 2014).…”

The southern North Sea and the human occupation of northwest Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum

“…The dynamics related to sea-level rise and the transformation of the area into a full marine environment will certainly have affected the preservation of earlier deposits. Reference to the geological records shows that the effects would have occurred locally rather than on a 'landscape-wide' scale (Cohen et al, 2014). The impact of the transgression would depend on the topography at any given location.…”