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University of Silesia in Katowice

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No valley deepening of the Tatra Mountains during the past 300 ka

22.06.2020 - 10:15 update 15.03.2021 - 12:25
Editors: lukaszmalarzewski

No valley deepening of the Tatra Mountains during the past 300 ka

The general assumption is that valleys are widened and deepened by each subsequent glaciation. Data collected by Dr. Jacek Szczygieł from our Institute contradicts these assumptions. The caves evolve simultaneously with the mountain valleys, which was used to study the pace of development of the Tatra valleys in response to the Quaternary climate change. In the prestigious GEOLOGY, dr Jacek Szczygieł and team published evidence that the Tatra valleys have not been deepened by the last two glaciations, i.e. for about 320 kyr. This discovery has important implications not only for the evolution of the Tatra Mountains but on glacial erosion in general.

Szczygieł J., Hercman H., Hoke G.D., Gąsiorowski M., Błaszczyk M., Sobczyk A., 2020. No valley deepening of the Tatra Mountains (Western Carpathians) during the past 300 ka. Geology 48, https://doi.org/10.1130/G47635.1

Tatra Valley
A) location of the Tatra in the Carpathian Belt (white rectangle is the location of B); B) tectonic sketch of the Tatra (after Jurewicz, 2005), black rectangle shows the area of C; C) 1 arc-second SRTM hillshade with DEM. Black labels show caves with U-series ages (ka) of speleothems basal layers. The black line marks the extent of the LGM after Zasadni and Kłapyta (2014).
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