Grant:           INQUA – International Union for Quaternary Research. u sklopu TERPRO Commission (Terrestrial Processes, Deposits & History)

Duration :   from 1.1.2025. to 31.12. 2025.

Funds:         8.000€

Project leaders: Lidija Galović (Croatian Geological Survey) contact person lgalovic@hgi-cgs.hr

Koen Beerten (Belgian Nuclear Research Centre) kbeerten@sckcen.be

All over Europe, the stepwise amelioration in climate during the Late Glacial period is preserved in the geological record of sandy terrains. However, in strong contrast with loess archives, this continental-wide sandy archive has to be unlocked yet concerning the timing and nature of paleoenvironmental changes that took place.

Therefore, the research question of this project can be described as follows: (1) does the current Late Glacial palaeosoil record allow us to investigate if palaeosoil development was synchronous or diachronous, and, if so, can we identify spatiotemporal patterns, and (2) does the available information on paleopedological development allow us to infer in which paleoenvironmental conditions the spatiotemporal evolution took place.

The project will be organized around a specific meeting and meeting-related field trip, in the Deliblato sand area, Serbia, since this site is also located in the southern part of the Pannonian Basin allowing to make direct correlations with the Đurđevac Sands. The latter aeolian sand and palaeosoil archive, located in Croatia, has been unlocked during the ACCENT project (Abrupt Climate Changes – Evidence from Quaternary Sedimentological Sequences in Croatia, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation). Alltogether, these two sites will be the starting point for building a European-wide database of palaeosoils in Late Glacial sandy terrains.