Environmental signals of Pliocene-Pleistocene climatic changes in Central Europe: Insights from the mineral magnetic record of the Heidelberg Basin sedimentary infill (Germany)
Introduction
Over the past several decades, the application of new proxy methods has improved our understanding of terrestrial environments and the evolution of climate conditions during the Pliocene-Pleistocene in Europe. It is well known that the late Pliocene climate in northwest Europe was characterised by a humid subtropical climate with mean annual temperatures well above (~ + 4 °C) those of the present day (Utescher et al., 2000). The terrestrial records that have been observed to date reveal a progressive cooling trend from the Miocene into the late Pliocene (e.g., Utescher et al., 2000; Utescher et al., 2012; Mosbrugger et al., 2005). During the Pliocene, the drop of the mean summer temperatures and mean winter temperatures point towards an increase in seasonality; palaeo-precipitation curves indicate wet summers and dry winters (Utescher et al., 2000). Evidence from pollen analyses reveal the vegetation to change from subtropical to boreal types, indicating a change from greenhouse to icehouse climatic conditions. The Quaternary climate was characterised by cyclic changes from warmer and cooler climates, as has been described by Zagwijn in his seminal papers and in several other studies (Zagwijn, 1985, Zagwijn, 1992, Raymo et al., 1992, Mudelsee and Schulz, 1997, Clark et al., 2006, Lisiecki and Raymo, 2007, Lawrence et al., 2010).
However, it must be noted that the palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental history of the Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene of the south-western parts of continental Central Europe are largely unknown. One primary obstacle to producing a detailed reconstruction of the Pliocene-Pleistocene climatic evolution of Central Europe is the lack of spatially distributed records with sufficient temporal resolution and age constraints (Utescher et al., 2012). The currently available information derives primarily from sites in northern Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain (e.g., Zagwijn, 1974; West, 1980; Zagwijn, 1992; Utescher et al., 2000; Mosbrugger et al., 2005; Westerhoff, 2009; Schreve and Candy, 2010), whereas data from sites located further south are exceptionally rare in Central Europe. The Pliocene successions in Southwest Central Europe are either eroded or lack robust age constraints. In the case of the Alpine foreland, the Tertiary bedrock has been reworked and deposited in Quaternary-age glacial, fluvial, and lacustrine deposits (Ellwanger et al., 2011). The fluvioglacial “Höhere Deckenschotter” in the Swiss midlands is considered to represent the oldest preserved remnants of the glacial cycles (Graf, 1993). An age between 1.8 Ma and 2.1 Ma was determined for these deposits through the identification of the tooth of a small mammal (Bolliger et al., 1996). However, this case represents an exception in the northern Alpine realm, where the deposits are generally highly fragmented and lack robust age constraints.
To obtain new data and promote a more detailed understanding of the climate evolution of the Alps and its connection to north-western Europe, the Heidelberg Basin Drilling Project was initiated (Ellwanger et al., 2005; Gabriel et al., 2008). The geological setting of the Heidelberg Basin and its geographical location between the North Sea Basin and the Alps provide an ideal framework for several geoscientific studies that have been performed since 2004 (e.g., Hagedorn, 2004; Buness et al., 2008; Hagedorn and Boenigk, 2008; Hahne et al., 2008; Hunze and Wonik, 2008; Knipping, 2008; Rolf et al., 2008; Lauer et al., 2010, Lauer et al., 2011; Reiter et al., 2013, Reiter et al., 2015; Tatzel et al., 2017; Li et al., 2018; Hülscher et al., 2018). In this paper, we focus on conclusions regarding the climatic and environmental evolution during Pliocene-Pleistocene times. These conclusions are based on age determinations derived from magnetic polarity stratigraphy (Scheidt et al., 2015) and detailed magnetic mineral characterisations (Scheidt et al., 2017) of three drill cores from the Heidelberg Basin. To characterise the climatic history of the Heidelberg basin from its sedimentary infill, the complex nature of all of the processes involved must be considered. This requires an understanding of the origin of the sediment, the transport mechanisms, and the depositional and post-depositional processes. We combine available information from the literature with new data from mineral magnetic analyses and major element analyses. As a side benefit, this study demonstrates the potential of rock magnetic studies of fluvial sediments to reveal details of past environmental and climate conditions.
Section snippets
Geological setting
The Heidelberg Basin (Fig. 1) developed as part of the European Cenozoic Rift System and is a subordinate structure of the Upper Rhine Graben (URG). Rifting-induced subsidence began during the late Oligocene (Schumacher, 2002) and led to the accumulation of several kilometre-thick sediment packages (Bartz, 1974; Buness et al., 2008). The Oligocene-age basin infill was delivered by rivers that drained the subsiding URG to the north. Later, predecessors of the Rhine and the Rhine River itself
Sample materials
The present interpretation of the environmental and climatic evolution of the Heidelberg Basin sedimentary record is based on analyses of sample material described and discussed in previous studies. For this reason, only a brief overview of the sample materials is provided here.
The sedimentary material discussed here was taken from drill cores from the following three sites (Fig. 1):
- (1)
The Viernheim site is located in the geographical centre of the Heidelberg Basin, approximately 3 km north of the
The age of the deposits
Determination of the ages of the Pliocene and Pleistocene sediments of the Heidelberg Basin is a challenging task. No absolute dating method is available that covers the entire time interval represented by these deposits with sufficient accuracy, and biostratigraphic methods have limited applicability because the fossil remains within the deposit are insufficiently well preserved. Given the lack of viable alternatives, a major change in the drainage system that is expressed by the onset of
Measurement procedures
The instrumentation and measurement procedures that were used to obtain the comprehensive data set used here have previously been described in Scheidt et al. (2015) and Scheidt et al. (2017). The first article focuses on the magnetic polarity stratigraphy of the sediments of the Heidelberg Basin. Thus, this article describes the results of the alternating field (AF) and thermal demagnetisation experiments. Further, the procedures used in performing three-component IRM analyses are described.
Magnetic polarity stratigraphy
The palaeomagnetic analyses show that several reversals are present in all of the cores (Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5). The age-depth models indicate that minimum ages of 5.235 Ma and 4.187 Ma are highly possible for the bases of the Viernheim and Heidelberg cores, respectively (Scheidt et al., 2015). A comparable determination of the minimum age of core P36 is not possible because strong drilling-induced overprinting has obscured most of the palaeodirections within the Neogene part of the core. The
Discussion
Fluvial deposits are not generally preferred for the reconstruction of past environmental and climatic conditions using rock magnetic techniques. The main reasons are related to the highly energetic depositional environments in which fluvial sediments are laid down. These environments feature a complex combination of processes that are involved in the genesis and diagenesis of fluvial sedimentary materials and produce records with superimposed signals.
The primary compositions of the magnetic
Conclusion
The data obtained from the Heidelberg Basin succession represent the first (semi-)continuous documentation of the evolution of environmental and climate conditions from the late Pliocene to the present day in the southern part of Central Europe. We use data from two completed studies on magnetic polarity stratigraphy and magnetomineralogy to trace the environmental development of the region. The climatic conditions of the late Pliocene were likely warm and humid and alternated with dry periods.
Data availability
Datasets related to this article is provided at PANGAEA, an open access library for data from earth system research: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.901170, https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.901371, and https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.901920.
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; RO2170/8-1, RO2170/8-2, HA2193/10-1 and HA2193/10-2). Q.H. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41625010 and 41888101). We would like to thank Frank Korte for carrying out the WD-XRF analyses in the laboratory in Hannover. Further, we wish to thank the students and technical staff for their efforts in the laboratories. Without their help, the large amount of sample material employed in the prior studies
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2022, Quaternary InternationalCitation Excerpt :During the transition between the Late Pliocene and the Early Pleistocene, the beginning of the Glacial/Interglacial cycles and the onset of cooler, unstable, and highly seasonal climates drove crucial environmental changes, both globally and regionally (Lisiecki and Raymo, 2007; Pisareva et al., 2019; Scheidt et al., 2020 among others).