Chronostratigraphy and paleoclimatic meaning of cryogenic deformations in the Central European loess

✍ Scribed by Brigitte Vliet-Lanoë

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 717 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0343-2521
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00186011

✦ Synopsis

Cryoturbations in loess reflect cold and wet environments but not necessarily permafrost. Only flat bottomed cryoturbations are indicative of it. Outside the permafrost zone they occur during the wet period of the last glaciation: during the early Weichselian, the lower pleniglacial, the end of the middle pleniglacial and the late glacial. Their morphology ist related to the frost susceptibility of the superimposed layers, expressed in form of differential frost heaving, ruled by the drainage quality and the frost susceptibility gradient. Their diagenesis is discussed.