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The Veldwezelt site (province of Limburg, Belgium): environmental and stratigraphical interpretations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2014

E.P.M. Meijs
E.P.M. Meijs*
Affiliation:
ArcheoGeolab, Veulenerbank 33, NL-6213 JR Maastricht, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract

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Uphill and drainage line environments reveal many hiatuses or discordances, because of truncation by erosion. In downslope position accumulation often prevailed outside the drainage lines and prevented erosion, even during unstable periods. Consequently, downslope sections yield the most detailed environmental data, but often lack contact with uphill series. However, for stratigraphical correlation the contact between downslope and uphill series is essential. In the Veldwezelt loess sequence this contact is intact, which provides additional data on transitional processes. In view of these special palaeoenvironmental conditions, exhibiting a transition between downslope and uphill areas and a south-east trending stream, an extraordinarily detailed Late Saalian, Eemian and Weichselian loess sequence could be reconstructed. The Veldwezelt series furnished important pedological, sedimentological, faunal, tephrochronological and cryogenic data, on the basis of which palaeoenvironmental conclusions could be drawn and six types of pedo-sedimentological cycles distinguished. A stratigraphical overview was obtained by correlating the Veldwezelt section with other west European loess frameworks and tephra sequences; the sedimentary series at Harmignies (Mons Basin, southern Belgium) and the Greenland GRIP ice core.

Keywords

loesspedologypalaeoenvironmentstratigraphysedimentologycryogenesisBelgiumPleistocene
Type
Research Article
Information
Netherlands Journal of Geosciences , Volume 90 , Issue 2-3 , November 2011 , pp. 73 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Stichting Netherlands Journal of Geosciences 2011

Footnotes

*

In: Jagt, J.W.M., Jagt-Yazykova, E.A. & Schins, W.J.H. (eds): A tribute to the late Felder brothers – pioneers of Limburg geology and prehistoric archaeology.

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