Large - Scale Glaciation in the Bohemian Forest Mountains: New insights

Abstract

Localities glaciated during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in central European uplands are of interest for their location between Alpine glaciation and the Fenno-Scandinavian ice sheet (Ehlers et al. 2011, Mentlík et al. 2013). Research of these localities can bring new paleoclimatic proxies that are so far limited. The Bohemian Forest is a Hercinian central European upland situated at the border of the Czech Republic, Germany, and Austria (Fig. 1). Both past and modern research focuses mainly on i) 8 glacial cirques with lakes (Raab and Völkel 2003, Mentlík et al. 2010, Vočadlová et al. 2015) and glacial cirques without any lakes (Mentlík et al. 2010, Křížek et al. 2012), or ii) glacial landforms across the whole mountain range (Hauner et al. 2019, Krause and Margold 2019). However, the opinion about glacial type and extension is not consistent. Most of recent works (e.g. Raab and Völkel, 2003; Reuther, 2007, Mentlík et al., 2010, Vočadlová et al. 2015) argue for limited glaciation, consisting of cirque glaciers mainly on the leeward flanks, some of them advancing to relatively short (with maximum length of 3000 m) alpine glaciers. Ergenzinger (1967), Hauner (1980), Hauner et al. (2019), Krause and Margold (2019) argue for more extensive glaciation (valley glaciers with maximum length of 7000 m). We consider the solution of this discrepancy crucial for a correct paleoclimatic reconstruction, therefore, the main goal of this research is to determine which of the abovementioned hypotheses is relevant.