TY - JOUR
T1 - A detailed record of deglacial and early post-glacial fluvial evolution
T2 - The river Ure in north Yorkshire, UK
AU - Innes, James
AU - Mitchell, Wishart
AU - O’brien, Charlotte
AU - Roberts, David
AU - Rutherford, Mairead
AU - Bridgland, David
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF), which was established by the UK government to raise funds to mitigate the environmental impact of aggregates extraction. This project was entitled ?The Late Quaternary Landscape Evolution of the Swale-Ure Washlands, North Yorkshire?. We are grateful to Chris Orton of the Cartographic Unit, Geography Department, Durham University for producing the figures and to Peter Marshall for undertaking the dating program. We thank Mike Griffiths & Associates for assistance with the fieldwork and providing survey information, and landowners for access to the sites, in particular Lafarge Aggregates Ltd. for Marfield and Tarmac for Nosterfield. We are grateful to Professor Antony Long for helping to design this project and acquire the funding, and to English Heritage for administering this project. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/3/8
Y1 - 2021/3/8
N2 - The lower reaches of the River Ure, on the flanks of the Pennine Hills in northern England, contain sedimentary and erosional landforms that are a record of fluvial activity during deglaciation and valley-glacier retreat at the end of the last (Devensian) glacial period, and in the subsequent post-glacial Holocene. Terraces and channels, most of which are now relict features well above the altitude of the present river, attest to the impacts of massive meltwater discharge and deposition of sand and gravel outwash, and dynamic river regimes with rapid incision. Through field survey, we have created a detailed geomorphological map of these landforms and glacial and fluvioglacial surface deposits, as well as the terraces and palaeochannels that were abandoned by the river due to avulsion and incision-driven course changes. We have recorded the nature of the outwash gravels, now effectively terrace features, from exposed sections in working quarries, one of which we discuss here. The palaeochannels have accumulated sediment fills and we have examined several which lie within the range of 100 and 16 m above present sea level. The results of lithostratigraphic, palynological, and radiocarbon analyses at two main and three subsidiary sites indicate that palaeochannel ages range from almost 14,000 to approximately 4000 calibrated years ago in a clear altitudinal sequence. The oldest are probably caused by rapid incision due to deglaciation-driven isostatic uplift. The similarity in date of the three downstream sites suggests that a late Holocene combination of climatic deterioration and increased human activity in the catchment caused instability and entrenchment. Pollen data from the channel fills provide relative dating, and agree well with pollen records from other regional Lateglacial and Holocene sites. Non-pollen palynomorph (NPP) analysis at one of the sites allows reconstruction of the hydrological history of channel infill. This research shows that the application of an integrated suite of research techniques can yield a highly detailed understanding of fluvial evolution and landscape history.
AB - The lower reaches of the River Ure, on the flanks of the Pennine Hills in northern England, contain sedimentary and erosional landforms that are a record of fluvial activity during deglaciation and valley-glacier retreat at the end of the last (Devensian) glacial period, and in the subsequent post-glacial Holocene. Terraces and channels, most of which are now relict features well above the altitude of the present river, attest to the impacts of massive meltwater discharge and deposition of sand and gravel outwash, and dynamic river regimes with rapid incision. Through field survey, we have created a detailed geomorphological map of these landforms and glacial and fluvioglacial surface deposits, as well as the terraces and palaeochannels that were abandoned by the river due to avulsion and incision-driven course changes. We have recorded the nature of the outwash gravels, now effectively terrace features, from exposed sections in working quarries, one of which we discuss here. The palaeochannels have accumulated sediment fills and we have examined several which lie within the range of 100 and 16 m above present sea level. The results of lithostratigraphic, palynological, and radiocarbon analyses at two main and three subsidiary sites indicate that palaeochannel ages range from almost 14,000 to approximately 4000 calibrated years ago in a clear altitudinal sequence. The oldest are probably caused by rapid incision due to deglaciation-driven isostatic uplift. The similarity in date of the three downstream sites suggests that a late Holocene combination of climatic deterioration and increased human activity in the catchment caused instability and entrenchment. Pollen data from the channel fills provide relative dating, and agree well with pollen records from other regional Lateglacial and Holocene sites. Non-pollen palynomorph (NPP) analysis at one of the sites allows reconstruction of the hydrological history of channel infill. This research shows that the application of an integrated suite of research techniques can yield a highly detailed understanding of fluvial evolution and landscape history.
KW - Fluvial evolution
KW - Fluvioglacial sediment
KW - Geomorphological mapping
KW - North Yorkshire
KW - Palynology
KW - River Ure
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104638155&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/quat4010009
DO - 10.3390/quat4010009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85104638155
SN - 2571-550X
VL - 4
JO - Quaternary
JF - Quaternary
IS - 1
M1 - 9
ER -