0000000000417585
AUTHOR
Ulrich Hambach
Millennial-scale terrestrial ecosystem responses to Upper Pleistocene climatic changes: 4D-reconstruction of the Schwalbenberg Loess-Palaeosol-Sequence (Middle Rhine Valley, Germany)
Abstract Loess-Palaeosol-Sequences (LPS) in the Central European region provide outstanding terrestrial polygenetic and multiphase archives responding to past climate and environments over various spatial and temporal scales. As yet, however, the geomorphological and pedogenic processes involved in LPS formation, and their interplay with changes in ecological conditions, impede robust correlation with other palaeoenvironmental archives. The Schwalbenberg LPS, which drape a hillslope in the Middle Rhine Valley in western Central Europe, provide unique high-resolution records highly suitable for investigating the processes involved in their formation and the relationship to climatic influence…
The ELSA-Vegetation-Stack: Reconstruction of Landscape Evolution Zones (LEZ) from laminated Eifel maar sediments of the last 60,000 years
Abstract Laminated sediment records from several maar lakes and dry maar lakes of the Eifel (Germany) reveal the history of climate, weather, environment, vegetation, and land use in central Europe during the last 60,000 years. The time series of the last 30,000 years is based on a continuous varve counted chronology, the MIS3 section is tuned to the Greenland ice — both with independent age control from 14C dates. Total carbon, pollen and plant macrofossils are used to synthesize a vegetation-stack, which is used together with the stacks from seasonal varve formation, flood layers, eolian dust content and volcanic tephra layers to define Landscape Evolution Zones (LEZ). LEZ 1 encompasses t…
Quartz OSL dating of late quaternary Chinese and Serbian loess: A cross Eurasian comparison of dust mass accumulation rates
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. Reconstructing dust Mass Accumulation Rate (MAR) from loess deposits is critical to understanding past atmospheric mineral dust activity and requires accurate independent age models from loess deposits across Europe and Asia. Previous correlations of loess in Europe and China have tended to focus on multi-millennial timescales, with no detailed examination of dust MAR at the two ends of the Eurasian loess belt on shorter, sub-orbital scales. Here we present a detailed quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) chronology from the Serbian Titel Loess Plateau (Veliki Surduk loess core) and the Chinese Loess Plateau (Lingtai section). The luminescence ages pa…
Sedimentology of a Late Quaternary lacustrine record from the south-eastern Carpathian Basin
The Upper Pleistocene geoarchives in the south‐eastern Carpathian Basin are represented predominantly by loess–palaeosol records. In 2015, a 10 m sediment core composed of clay‐rich lacustrine sediments was recovered by vibracoring a dry lake basin located between the Vršac Mountains (Serbia) and the Banat Sands in the south‐eastern Carpathian Basin; a location relevant for placing regional archaeological results in a palaeoenvironmental context. Here, we present results from geoelectrical prospection and a lithostratigraphic interpretation of this sequence supported by a detailed granulometric study supplemented by ostracod analysis. An age model based on luminescence dating is discussed a…
Landscape instability at the end of MIS 3 in western Central Europe : evidence from a multi proxy study on a Loess-Palaeosol-Sequence from the eastern Lower Rhine Embayment, Germany
Abstract The Lower Rhine Embayment hosts important Loess-Palaeosol-Sequences (LPS) within the western European loess belt yielding valuable information on landscape evolution and palaeoclimatic dynamics. The study focusses on the palaeoenvironmental development based on a LPS from the eastern shoulder of the Lower Rhine Embayment (Dusseldorf-Grafenberg). The palaeoenvironmental development within the study area is presented and discussed based on high-resolution grain size analyses, selected environmental magnetic parameters, and geochemical analyses complemented by luminescence age estimates. Differences in grain size distribution (ΔGSD) as well as the U-ratio clearly reflect main stratigr…
Neanderthals and Monkeys in the Würmian of Central Europe: The Middle Paleolithic Site of Hunas, Southern Germany
The site of Hunas is a cave ruin, filled with bedded sediments up to the roof. About 20 m sediments from the top down were excavated and yielded Middle Paleolithic artifacts as well as numerous faunal remains, including Macaca. With a single human molar, the site is one of the rare Neanderthalian localities in Germany. New TIMS-U/Th dating of speleothems at the base of the profile indicate that the whole sequence was not deposited during the late Middle Pleistocene as previously thought, but during the last glacial. According to the new chronological results, Hunas is the only place which shows the coexistence of man and monkey in the Wurmian of Central Europe. The Macaca remains are the mo…
Danube loess stratigraphy — Towards a pan-European loess stratigraphic model
The Danube River drainage basin is the second largest river catchment in Europe and contains a significant and extensive region of thick loess deposits that preserve a record of a wide variety of recent and past environments. Indeed, the Danube River and tributaries may themselves be responsible for the transportation of large volumes of silt that ultimately drive loess formation in the middle and lower reaches of this large catchment. However, this vast loess province lacks a unified stratigraphic scheme. European loess research started in the late 17th century in the Danube Basin with the work of Count Luigi Ferdinand Marsigli. Since that time numerous investigations provided the basis fo…
Multi-proxy dating of Holocene maar lakes and Pleistocene dry maar sediments in the Eifel, Germany
Abstract During the last twelve years the ELSA Project (Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive) at Mainz University has drilled a total of about 52 cores from 27 maar lakes and filled-in maar basins in the Eifel/Germany. Dating has been completed for the Holocene cores using 6 different methods (210Pb and 137Cs activities, palynostratigraphy, event markers, varve counting, 14C). In general, the different methods consistently complement one another within error margins. Event correlation was used for relating typical lithological changes with historically known events such as the two major Holocene flood events at 1342 AD and ca 800 BC. Dating of MIS2–MIS3 core sections is based on greyscale tunin…
Cultural evolution and environmental change in Central Europe between 40 and 15 ka
The role of environmental change in the evolution of cultural traits is a topic of long-standing scientific debate with strongly contrasting views. Major obstacles for assessing environmental impacts on the evolution of material culture are the fragmentary nature of archaeological and – to a somewhat lesser extent – geoscientific archives and the insufficient chronological resolution of these archives and related proxy data. Together these aspects are causing difficulties in data synchronization. By no means does this paper attempt to solve these issues, but rather aims at shifting the focus from demonstrating strict chains of causes and events to describing roughly contemporaneous developm…
Dust-stack 2013 of combined sediment record ELSA
During the last twelve years the ELSA Project (Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive) at Mainz University has drilled a total of about 52 cores from 27 maar lakes and filled-in maar basins in the Eifel/Germany. Dating has been completed for the Holocene cores using 6 different methods (210Pb and 137Cs activities, palynostratigraphy, event markers, varve counting, 14C). In general, the different methods consistently complement one another within error margins. Event correlation was used for relating typical lithological changes with historically known events such as the two major Holocene flood events at 1342 AD and ca 800 BC. Dating of MIS2?MIS3 core sections is based on greyscale tuning, radioc…