Regional deglaciation and postglacial lake development as reflected in a 74 m sedimentary record from Lake Vättern, southern Sweden

The withdrawal of the Late Weichselian ice sheet and rapid isostatic uplift in southern Scandinavia led to the entrainment of large volumes of melt water within the proglacial Baltic Ice Lake (BIL). The eventual western outpost of BIL, Lake Vättern, has been a focal point for studying the dynamic re...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:GFF 2016-04, Vol.138 (2), p.336-354
Main Authors: Swärd, Henrik, O'Regan, Matt, Ampel, Linda, Ananyev, Roman, Chernykh, Denis, Floden, Tom, Greenwood, Sarah L., Kylander, Malin E., Mörth, Carl Magnus, Preto, Pedro, Jakobsson, Martin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ice ages
Lakes
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The withdrawal of the Late Weichselian ice sheet and rapid isostatic uplift in southern Scandinavia led to the entrainment of large volumes of melt water within the proglacial Baltic Ice Lake (BIL). The eventual western outpost of BIL, Lake Vättern, has been a focal point for studying the dynamic retreat history of the Late Weichselian ice sheet in south central Sweden. This part of the deglacial history is described from an abundance of terrestrial studies, but, to date, no complimentary long sediment cores from Lake Vättern have been available. Here, we present the results from a unique, 74 m borehole in southern Lake Vättern that recovered a Late Pleistocene to Holocene sedimentary sequence. Physical and chemical analyses of the sediment and pore water, together with geophysical mapping, reveal glacial as well as postglacial imprints implying an oscillating ice sheet margin, evidence for neotectonic activity and one or more marine incursions into the lake during deglaciation. We attribute the glaciotectonic deformation of the sediments at 54 m below the lake floor to an ice readvance that likely occurred at the same time or before the advance that formed the Levene moraine (∼13.8-13.4 cal. ka BP). After this event, potential readvances were likely restricted to a more northerly position in the basin. We identify the final drainage of the BIL, but find evidence for an earlier marine incursion into the Vättern basin (∼13.0 cal. ka BP), indicating water exchange between the North Atlantic and the Baltic Ice Lake during the late Alleröd.
ISSN:1103-5897
2000-0863
DOI:10.1080/11035897.2015.1055510