Lateglacial/early Holocene palaeoenvironments in the southern North Sea Basin: new data from the Dudgeon offshore wind farm

Abstract

ABSTRACTIt is well known that the North Sea conceals an extensive former landscape of Late Pleistocene and Holocene date that was progressively submerged as result of rising post‐glacial sea levels. Although an increasingly detailed picture is emerging of these submerged palaeolandscapes, well‐dated palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from the North Sea Basin remain few and far between. Pollen, foraminifera, ostracod, plant macrofossil and molluscan data are presented from a radiocarbon‐dated core retrieved from the site of the Dudgeon offshore wind farm, located in the southern North Sea Basin. The palaeoenvironmental analysis provides new data on changing local physical and vegetation environments in the southern North Sea Basin, occurring against a background of global climate change and rising sea levels. Subalpine plant communities gradually gave way to hazel‐dominated woodland during the early Holocene, with freshwater environments replaced by increasing signs of estuarine influence from ca. 9500 to 9000 cal a BP. The thin upper peat (8411–8331 cal a BP) raises the possibility that the final inundation of the Dudgeon site may be linked to meltwater pulses following the collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and the draining of the proglacial Lakes Agassiz and Ojibway.