Late Weichselian glacial and geomorphological reconstruction of South-Western Scania, Sweden

Sammanfattning: This study was carried out to deliver new insight into the late Weichselian landscape development of South Western Scania and to make regional scale glaciation models of South-Western Scandinavia more accurate. The goal of this study is to find out how the latest ice advances affected the study area. Until now, it was unclear if all ice advances overrode all parts of the study area or if different areas were affected differently. The reconstructions presented in this paper are based on an interpretation of the geomorphology and on a sedimentological analysis of a section in Vellinge. The investigated parameters were sedimentary structures, clast provenance and deformation structures. These results were then used to reconstruct the depositional environments. Two diamicts divided by a unit of sorted sediments were observed in Vellinge. While the diamicts are interpreted as subglacial deformation tills formed by two different ice advances from the Baltic basin, the sediments in between represent a deglaciation sequence. All of the area was overridden by the early stages of the young-Baltic ice advances. Those earlier advances left behind dead-ice in the areas that are hummocky today. This dead-ice diverted the latest stages of the ice advances which only reached the coastal plains. These advances were ice streams and formed the present landscape in their subglacial system while the areas further inland kept their hummocky appearance. These results imply thin and highly dynamic ice streams for the last part of the late Weichselian. They also imply an early and rapid deglaciation of central Scania.