Late Pleistocene glaciation in the Eastern Carpathians – a holistic

Abstract

The Eastern Carpathians (EC) are the most extensive (600 km long) part of the Carpathians, but only 1.6 % of this area rises above 1500 m asl which mostly was enough high to support Pleistocene glaciers. Landforms of former glaciation are preserved here in 14 isolated mountain massifs that stretch over 300 km in the territory of Ukraine and Romania from the Polonyna Rivna (1480 m asl) in the NW to the Gurghiu Mountains (1775 m asl) in the SW. Here we present the first complete inventory of glaciation in the EC based on geomorphological mapping of glacial cirques (N=214) and maximal moraines together with GIS-based glacier reconstruction, and AABR 1.6 ELA calculation of 147 former glaciers. On the base of the EC glacier dataset, we propose a quantitative approach to define three distinct stages of glacial landscape development, which is based on the relationship between the glacial ELA and mountain hypsometry. The comparison between spatial trends of LGM ELA and modern temperature-precipitation ELA (tpELA) in the study area gives insight into the pattern and magnitude of atmospheric circulation and dominated moisture advection during the full glacial conditions in Central Europe.