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* Corresponding author at: Department of Geography, Durham University, Lower Mountjoy, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom. E-mail address: [email protected] (D.R. Bridgland).
INTRODUCTION
The Sudeten (Sudety) Mountains, or Sudetes, form a northwest (NW) to southeast (SE) trending range with their western end in Germany and separating southwestern Poland from the Czech Republic (Czechia). With the highest peak reaching 1603 m, this represents an uplifted block of rocks metamorphosed during the Variscan orogeny, in the Late Devonian to Early Carboniferous (Don and Zelaźniewicz, 1990). The Variscan involved complex faulting and thrusting, forming horsts and graben basins, the latter infilled during later tectonically quiescent geologic episodes, prior to significant reactivation of these structures in the Neogene–Quaternary (Oberc, 1977; Dyjor, 1986; Mignoń, 1997). The foreland region north of these mountains, into which these structures extend, is drained by the Odra (Oder) and several of its left-bank tributaries, the main river flowing NW and then northwards, forming the western boundary of Poland, towards the Baltic (Fig. 1). An earlier, somewhat different drainage pattern in the Sudeten Foreland is evident from the subsurface preservation of buried valley fragments, recognized from boreholes and quarries and now largely buried by glacigenic and later fluvial sediments (Krzyszkowski et al., 1998; Michniewicz, 1998; Przybylski et al., 1998). It is apparent, therefore, that this drainage system was disrupted by advances of Scandinavian ice from the north and NW (Krzyszkowski, 1996; Krzyszkowski and Ibek, 1996; Michniewicz, 1998; Salamon, 1998; Salamon et al., 2013; Fig. 1). The drainage has also been disrupted during the Quaternary by slip on the Sudetic Marginal Fault, the effects of which are readily visible in terms of vertical offset in terrace heights either side of the fault line (e.g., Krzyszkowski et al., 1995, 1998, 2000; Krzyszkowski and Bowman, 1997; Krzyszkowski and Biernat, 1998; Krzyszkowski and Stachura, 1998; Migoń et al., 1998; Štěpančíková et al., 2008; cf. Novakova, 2015). To these glacial and tectonic influences can now be added the effects on Quaternary landscape evolution of a complex history of crustal behaviour, potentially related to the characteristics of the Proterozoic to Palaeozoic crust in the region, as will be discussed subsequently.
Figure 1.
(colour online) Geology and location of the research area. The inset shows the limits of the various Quaternary glaciations...