Chapter 4 - Changes in the Heavy-Mineral Spectra on Their Way From Various Sources to Joint Sinks: A Case Study of Pleistocene Sandurs and an Ice-Marginal Valley in Northwest Poland

Abstract

The supply of sediment—and thus of heavy minerals—from the melting Weichselian Scandinavian ice cap to sandurs and ice-marginal valleys in the south was controlled mainly by the ablation rate and thus by meltwater streams with fast-changing discharges, resulting in a high accumulation rate. There were, however, more sources that contributed to the successions that accumulated in front of the ice cap. These sources were in the ice-marginal valleys—the sediments that became eroded from the bedding—and locally, from the valley margins, as well as areas in the upstream (eastern) direction of the rivers and areas in the south that were drained by south–north (S–N) running rivers. In addition, wind-blown material that might come from anywhere in the periglacial environment may have left sedimentary particles both on the sandurs and in the ice-marginal valleys.