Brown, A.G., Basell, L.S. and Toms, P.S. (2019) The Quaternary Rivers of the Jurassic Coast Region: from the Neogene to the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 130 (3-4), 451-462. (doi:10.1016/j.pgeola.2018.02.005).
Abstract
The Jurassic Coast World Heritage Sites (JCWHS) is not only a 95 km long coastline and remarkable Mesozoic geological section, but also a slice through a Quaternary landscape. For the majority of the last two million years this landscape lay in the periglacial zone, just south of a waxing and waning ice margin and just north of an Atlantic inlet which eventually became the English Channel. This paper reviews how the previous landscape inherited from the Cenozoic, was modified through uplift, climatically driven fluvial activity and periglaciation. Much evidence of this Quaternary history can be been today in sections along the JCWHS coast which is cuts through a number of headwater valleys the largest of which are the Exe and Axe. Recent studies, largely funded from the Aggregate Levy Tax, have produced the first independent chronologies for the Exe and Axe valleys and a model of how periglaciation interacted with the layer-cake stratigraphy of the Mesozoic bedrocks of the JCWHS. The Quaternary history of the JCWHS is also preserved in raised beaches on the Isle of Portland, coastal landforms, and in Holocene alluvial sediments associated with human activity and which may constitute part of the putative Anthropocene. An appreciation of the Quaternary history of the JCWHS is also important in understanding modern geological hazards from landslides to flooding
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- Faculties (pre 2018 reorg) > Faculty of Engineering and the Environment (pre 2018 reorg) > Southampton Marine & Maritime Institute (pre 2018 reorg)
- Faculties (pre 2018 reorg) > Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences (pre 2018 reorg) > Geography & Environment (pre 2018 reorg) > Palaeoenvironment Laboratory (PLUS) (pre 2018 reorg)
Current Faculties > Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences > School of Geography and Environmental Sciences > Geography & Environment (pre 2018 reorg) > Palaeoenvironment Laboratory (PLUS) (pre 2018 reorg)
School of Geography and Environmental Sciences > Geography & Environment (pre 2018 reorg) > Palaeoenvironment Laboratory (PLUS) (pre 2018 reorg)
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