Publication at Faculty of Science |
2009
Abstract
The sediments exposed in up to 5 m high erosional river banks were analysed using mineral magnetic, geochemical and chemical approaches. The results reveal the alluvial history of the currently active river channel system since the end of the first millennium AD.
Fine overbank clayey sediments deposited during the ‘Mediaeval Warm Period’ were eroded from cultivated fields newly formed during Mediaeval colonization between 1250 and 1450. These fine deposits are overlain by coarser floodplain sediments of the ‘Little Ice Age’, indicating a change in the sediment source since the sixteenth century AD, and a substantial increase in the sediment load in the second half of twentieth century.