Abstract
A tribute to Boenigk (1978): The fluvial development of the Lower Rhine Basin during the late Tertiary and early Quaternary
Highlights
The Lower Rhine Embayment (LRE, or Lower Rhine Basin) has been an area of subsidence since early in the Tertiary
The onset of the fluvial deposition is thought to be of Late Miocene age (Boenigk, 1978; Schäfer et al, 2004), the river environments gradually prograding north-westwards, reaching the southern part of the Netherlands in the course of the Pliocene, following the shifting coastline (Zagwijn, 1974). This process continued into the Early Pleistocene and eventually resulted in a shift of the marine realm far into the present North Sea
Some time before the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene, climatic deterioration combined with increased uplift of the Rhenish Massif (Meyer and Stets, 2002) accounted for deposition of the so-called “Hauptterrassen” or main terrace sequence in the LRE (Boenigk and Frechen, 2006)
Summary
The Lower Rhine Embayment (LRE, or Lower Rhine Basin) has been an area of subsidence since early in the Tertiary. The sequence described in Boenigk’s (1978) classic paper outlines the development of the region from the latest Oligocene to the Middle Pleistocene, a period characterized by the complex interplay of tectonic activity, climatic variations, marine transgression–regression cycles, and the resulting depositional and erosional responses, each of which operated at different rates.
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