Late Glacial and Holocene paleoenvironmental records in the Tatra Mountains, East-Central Europe, based on lake, peat bog and colluvial sedimentary data: A summary review

• Published in: Quaternary international 2016-09, Vol.415, p.126-144
• Main Authors: Kłapyta, Piotr, Zasadni, Jerzy, Pociask-Karteczka, Joanna, Gajda, Agnieszka, Franczak, Paweł
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Holocene; Lake sediments; Late Glacial; Little Ice Age; Peat bogs; Tatra Mountains
• ISSN: 1040-6182; 1873-4553
• DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2015.10.049

The Tatra Mountains are the highest massif in the Carpathian mountain arc (2655 m) and represent a typical alpine landscape developed in the course of Pleistocene glaciations, but are not glacierized today. The glacial relief of the massif offers an abundance of topographic depressions (cirque overdeepenings, morainic closed depressions) where sedimentary sequences may potentially reveal paleoenvironmental changes that may have occurred since the glaciers' retreat from the Last Glacial Maximum position (∼26–18 ka). We present a review of Late Glacial and Holocene sedimentary archives from the Tatra Mountains collected in the Polish and non-Polish literature. The data sets (40 sites) included 21 lake, 13 peat bog, and 6 colluvial sediment sites. The entire listed sediment sequence features radiometric datings or at the very least a chronological framework is inferred from the biostratigraphy. The oldest sampled sedimentary sequences were dated back to the Oldest Dryas and were obtained from the deepest glacial lakes located in the subalpine zone (up to 1700 m). Shallow lakes (