Unique Landscape Originated by Cataclysmic Glacial Floods at the Weichselian Glaciation Decline in North-Eastern Poland

Large-scale bedforms in the vicinity of Serwy Lake (NE Poland): their morphometry and links to the high-energy glaciofluvial environment

“…Th e origin of selected fragments of outwash plains in NW Poland was linked to glacial lake-outburst floods (GLOFs), based on morphometry investigations (Szafraniec 2008(Szafraniec , 2010a(Szafraniec , b, 2013. In the case of NE Poland, largescale subaqueous bedforms were identified, which developed in a proglacial setting and unambiguously indicate the occurrence of extreme high meltwater discharges as catastrophic glacial lake-outburst floods (GLOFs) and prove that the proglacial area was significantly and rapidly transformed during NE Poland's deglaciation (Weckwerth et al 2019(Weckwerth et al , 2020Weckwerth and Wysota 2024).…”

“…This region lies at the front of the former SIS margin from the Pomeranian Phase of the Weichselian glaciation (Weckwerth and Wysota 2024). Thus, the border between this basin and the Western and Eastern Suwałki Lakelands is well-defined in morphology and in terms of the extent of glaciofluvial sediments, because these lakelands comprise flat or undulating till plains (Ber 1972(Ber , 1974Bogacki 1976Bogacki , 1980Weckwerth et al 2019;Weckwerth and Wysota 2024).…”

“…1). Thus, the northern part of the Augustów Plain represents a set of narrow and confined spillways of meltwaters, which finally inundated the central part of the Augustów Plain during the Pomeranian Phase of the Weichselian glaciation (e.g., Ber 2000; Pochocka-Szwarc and Krzyszkowski 2015), including GLOFs of different sources (Weckwerth et al 2019(Weckwerth et al , 2022bWeckwerth and Wysota 2024).…”

“…1). The outwash surface nearby the Serwy Lake is intersected by large tunnel valleys associated with the maximum ice sheet limit of the Late Weichselian (Ber 1972(Ber , 1974(Ber , 1982(Ber , 2000Krzywicki 2002;Weckwerth and Wysota 2024) or comprises the remnants of older glacial and glaciofluvial landforms (Ber 2000; Sobiech 2019).…”

“…Indicator landforms of GLOFs recognised near Suwałki (NE Poland; Fig. 1) form the comprehensive Suwałki Glacial Megaflood Landsystem (Weckwerth et al, 2019(Weckwerth et al, , 2020(Weckwerth et al, , 2024. The most spectacular of its components are the scabland landscape, linear clusters of kettle holes and large-scale dunes.…”