Quaternary uplift of northern England

Timing and depositional environments of a Middle Pleistocene glaciation of northeast England: New evidence from Warren House Gill, County Durham

“…Long-term uplift of the whole sequence has been proposed by other workers (Westaway, 2009b(Westaway, , 2009a, and the proposed Middle Pleistocene age suggests that there has been significant uplift since the palaeovalley was formed. Rapid uplift in northern England, in comparison to southern England as far north as Yorkshire, is suggested due to the greater mobility of the crust as a result of its younger thermal age and the heating effects of Palaeozoic granites, and isostatic uplift of the crust in response to Quaternary erosion.…”

“…This is discussed in more detail in Davies et al (2009a). An MIS 8 age is possibly more likely than MIS 10 or 12, as if it was deposited in the base of a palaeovalley during MIS 12, this palaeovalley would have had to have been impossibly deep, due to a long and sustained period of tectonic uplift since the Cenozoic (refer to uplift discussion below and to Westaway, 2009a), although this is speculative. In addition, note new and emerging evidence from the Trent valley and Tottenhill, which indicates clearly that there was a large post-Anglian, pre-Devensian glaciation of eastern England to the south of County Durham (Gibbard et al, 1992;Langford and Briant, 2004;Carney, 2007).…”

Accounting for palaeoclimate and topography: A rigorous approach to correction of the British geothermal dataset

“…To estimate the temperature at depth it can be noted that the radioactive heat production was measured as 3.5±0.6 µW m -3 in the Tregarden borehole and 4.8±0.7 µW m -3 in the Colcerrow borehole (Lee, 1986), suggesting a typical value for the St Austell granite of ~4.0-4.5 µW m -3 . From standard theory (e.g., Lachenbruch, 1970;Westaway, 2009), in granite of uniform radioactive heat production Y and vertical extent D, the surface heat flow Q s will equal the basal heat flow Q o plus Y × D. One may thus tentatively estimate for the St Austell granite that Q o is ~50 mW m -2 and the radioactive contribution is a consequence of Y ~4.5 µW m -3 across D ~20 km. Subject to these assumptions, with a surface temperature of ~10 °C, one may calculate using this standard theory that a temperature of 190 °C is to be expected at a depth of ~4.5 km, a shallower depth than is expected for the previous calculations.…”

“…Once again making use of standard theory (e.g., Lachenbruch, 1970;Westaway, 2009), if D is 13 km and Y 5.0 µW m -3 , Q s will exceed Q o by 65 mW m -2 , whereas if Y is 5.7 µW m -3 the difference will be 74 mW m -2 . From the measured values the differences between Q s and the expected value of Q o are only ~35 mW m -2 .…”

Review of tufa deposition and palaeohydrological conditions in the White Peak, Derbyshire, UK: implications for Quaternary landscape evolution

“…This is comparable with Bridgland's (2000) model of Mid and Late Pleistocene terrace aggregation and valley erosion synchronized with glacial-interglacial cycles, with aggradation associated with ameliorating climatic conditions. The remoteness of the Wye catchment from the coast and from the River Trent suggests that climatic forcing, moderated by local uplift and gradients, was responsible for the valley incision (Bridgland, 2000;Maddy, 1996;Rose, 2010 andWestaway 2009). It is reasonable to assume that once the limestone had been unroofed of its former Namurian cover, the stream would have functioned much as it does now, except when the hydrology was dominated by distally-derived glacial or periglacial meltwater.…”