Sand drift events and surface winds in south-central Sweden : From the deglaciation to the present

• Published in: Quaternary Science Reviews
• Main Authors: Bernhardson, Martin, Alexanderson, Helena, Björck, Svante, Adolphi, Florian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2019
• Subjects: Geology; Aeolian; Geomorphology; GIS; Holocene; Luminescence dating; Palaeoclimatology; Remote sensing; Sand drift; Sand dunes; Scandinavia; Sweden; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/21d28d89-df08-43e8-bb63-87818189dfbe; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.01.017

During the transition from the last glacial into the Holocene interglacial, the atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic area changed from a glacial mode, influenced by the presence of large ice sheets, into a system more similar to that of the present day. This change had implications for wind, temperature and precipitation patterns that can be traced in geological archives. Here, we focus on reconstructing past wind directions over southern Scandinavia, as inferred from the net sediment transport direction of inland dunes in south-central Sweden. We analysed single dunes and dune fields along a 540-km-long S-N transect with LiDAR (Light detection and ranging) derived DEMs (digital elevation models) to determine their geomorphological type and the directional mode of the wind that led to their formation. Luminescence ages of sand drift and dune formation were compiled from previous studies, allowing us to build a chronology of sand drift after the deglaciation of south-central Sweden. The majority of the dunes appear to have been formed by westerly or northwesterly winds and stabilised ∼10.5–9.0 ka. Although this is rather close in time to the local deglaciation for the northern sites, it is long after the disappearance of ice from the more southern sites. The coeval dune stabilisation over such a large geographical area suggests that regional environmental conditions played an important role. It is likely that an unstable climate in conjunction with low groundwater tables during the early Holocene locally delayed vegetation from stabilising the dunes.