The deglaciation pattern of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet during the dynamic Last Termination (190 000-11 000 years ago) forms an excellent laboratory to study ice sheet behaviour in a warmer world.

New long sediment cores taken from strategic points in the Baltic Sea and covering this critical time period, will allow bridging the gap between the existing local clay-varve chronologies and would provide a means of assessing how rapid ice sheet decay was and if it was linked to local, rather than climatic conditions.

This project suggest a coring transect consisting of 5 locations along a line extending from northern Gotland to southern Öland.

Researchers and departments: Barbara Wohlfarth, Svante Björck, Sarah Greenwood, Richard Gyllencreutz, Martin Jakobsson and Matt O’Regan; Department of Geological Sciences