Reflection of climatic changes during interpleniglacial in the geoecosystems of South-Eastern Poland

Abstract

About 70% of the last cold stage was taken by transitional phases of continuous fluctuations of climate and permafrost extension. All this is reflected especially well in slope types and the thickness of slope, fluvial and aeolian deposits. Very distinct and relatively fast changes took place around 33-30 ka BP: the aridification of climate with an ice sheet transgression, expansion of continuous permafrost and the onset of loess deposition. The greatest transformations of slopes and river valleys in the Carpathians and Subcarpathian Basins took place not in the coolest phases but during the Interpleniglacial. The authors exemplified a number of sites in Southern Poland documenting frequent fluctuations of climate and permafrost from that 25-30 ka long period. Calibrated dates of dated episodes correlate well with the δ 18O curve from Greenland with frequent warmings. These rapid warmings are reflected in the higher rate of aggradation in valley floors and thick colluvial material deposited over slopes, both combined with a retreat of permafrost. The comparison with the Greenland 18 O curve is valuable to establish a comparable chronology of events, even for such a distant area like Central-Eastern Europe.

Subsurface imaging of fluvial deposits of the Vistula River valley in Kraków (southern Poland) by 2D ERT survey

“…To wards the north, the Ho lo cene floodplain is re stricted by a ter race with Pleis to cene loess at its sur face, 2-3 km in width and with a height of up to 20 m above the mean river level in the Wis³a River val ley in the re search area (Mamakowa and OErodoñ, 1977;Gêbica, 2004;Wójcik and Lewandowski, 2010;Starkel et al, 2017). Land slides are lo cally as so ci ated with the es carp ments of this ter race (Wójcik, 2015a, b).…”

CLIMATIC OSCILLATIONS DURING MIS 3–2 RECORDED IN SETS OF 14C AND OSL DATES—A STUDY BASED ON DATA FROM POLAND

“…In the selection process, we were guided by their regular functioning and the specificity of the reactions of each of them to changes in climatic conditions. Some sites and group of sites had already been analyzed by the authors: one site in the Sudeten Foreland (Krzyszkowski et al 1995(Krzyszkowski et al , 1999(Krzyszkowski et al , 2001, numerous sites from the Subcarpathian Basins (Gębica et al 2015;Starkel et al 2017), the Holy Cross Mountains in the highlands of southern Poland (Ludwikowska-Kędzia 2018), and the lowlands of central Poland (Rotnicki 1987;Krzyszkowski 1990Krzyszkowski , 1991Kasse et al 1998;Petera 2002;Krzyszkowski and Kuszell 2007;Wachecka-Kotkowska et al 2014, 2018Dzieduszy ńska 2019). However, no collective analysis of this data has ever been made.…”

“…Therefore, it seems that such environments could register the same cycles of warming and cooling as those recorded in ice cores for the earlier period of MIS 3-2. It should be noted that previous studies for the Subcarpathian Basins (Gębica et al 2015;Starkel et al 2017), for which we have numerous investigated sites and dates, as well as research in the Holy Cross Mountains (Ludwikowska-Kędzia 2000, 2018, showed that collective reconstructions (including analyses of summed probability density distributions of radiocarbon and luminescence dates) can help to identify warming-cooling periods during the Interpleniglacial.…”

State‐of‐the‐art overview of the Loess Palaeolithic of Poland

“…Jary, 2007) stratigraphic position of the Komorniki interstadial soils (Jersak et al, 1992) and Gi/ LMd and Gi/LMs (Maruszczak, 1991b) seem to fit well in the unstable climate period of MIS 3 in southern Poland. It was a period of multiple climatic changes (cooling and warming phases), alternation of periods of landscape stabilisation, and activity of periglacial loess sedimentation and/or slope processes (Starkel et al, 2017). The soil unit formed at that time was formed as a single horizon (long-term developing) or as a set of soil subunits, usually two, overlapping or separated layers by loess, e.g.…”

“…Loess sites are grouped in the southern part of the country, marking the periglacial zone of the Weichselian glaciation (named Vistulian in Poland). These areas, as a zone of the far foreland of the continental ice sheet, constituted a specific transition zone between different climatic-landscape periglacial areas with a characteristic 'migrating' mosaic of different habitats of tundra, forest-tundra, steppe, forest-steppe, and forest of variable areas (Starkel, 1977;1988;Starkel et al, 2017;Łanczont et al, 2015a).…”