Lateglacial older and younger coversand in northwest Europe: chronology and relation to climate and vegetation

Kolstrup, E. 2007 (January): Lateglacial older and younger coversand in northwest Europe: chronology and relation to climate and vegetation. Boreas, Vol. 36, pp. 65–75. Oslo. ISSN 0300–9483. Dutch, Belgian, German and Danish Lateglacial localities with both coversand and well‐dated organic deposits are used to relate older and younger coversand development to changes in climate and vegetation. The number of well‐dated coversand sequences in northwest Europe is low, but it appears that the transition from older to younger coversand was asynchronous and spanned Bølling sensu stricto to late Allerød, so there is no clear single cause for the change in grain‐size composition of the sediment. Aeolian activity took place during all parts of the Lateglacial and seems to have continued well into the Holocene. The effect of changing temperatures is mainly reflected indirectly as periods with denser vegetation, especially forest, that led to reduced coversand net‐accumulation. The outline proposes that the lithostratigraphic position of a peat layer cannot be used as an Allerød marker because even a well‐developed peat layer within coversands may differ in age from one area to the next. The combined coversand and vegetation development shows that local conditions were important for the accumulation and preservation of sediments.