The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Plain.
The Holocene is the current geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene together form the Quaternary period. The Holocene is an interglacial period within the ongoing glacial cycles of the Quaternary, and is equivalent to Marine Isotope Stage 1.
Lake Ladoga is a freshwater lake located in the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia, in the vicinity of Saint Petersburg.
The Great Belt is a strait between the major islands of Zealand (Sjælland) and Funen (Fyn) in Denmark. It is one of the three Danish Straits.
The Last Glacial Period (LGP), also known as the Last glacial cycle, occurred from the end of the Last Interglacial to the beginning of the Holocene, c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago, and thus corresponds to most of the timespan of the Late Pleistocene.
Littorina Sea is a geological brackish water stage of the Baltic Sea, which existed around 8500–4000 BP and followed the Mastogloia Sea, a transitional stage from the Ancylus Lake.
The Eemian Sea was a body of water located approximately where the Baltic Sea is now during the last interglacial, or Eemian Stage, Marine isotopic stage (MIS) 5e, roughly 130,000 to 120,000 years BP. Sea level was 5 to 7 metres higher globally than it is today, due to the release of glacial water in the early stage of the interglacial after the Saale glaciation.
Tephrochronology is a geochronological technique that uses discrete layers of tephra—volcanic ash from a single eruption—to create a chronological framework in which paleoenvironmental or archaeological records can be placed. Such an established event provides a "tephra horizon". The premise of the technique is that each volcanic event produces ash with a unique chemical "fingerprint" that allows the deposit to be identified across the area affected by fallout. Thus, once the volcanic event has been independently dated, the tephra horizon will act as time marker. It is a variant of the basic geological technique of stratigraphy.
The Atlantic in palaeoclimatology was the warmest and moistest Blytt–Sernander period, pollen zone and chronozone of Holocene northern Europe. The climate was generally warmer than today. It was preceded by the Boreal, with a climate similar to today's, and was followed by the Subboreal, a transition to the modern. Because it was the warmest period of the Holocene, the Atlantic is often referenced more directly as the Holocene climatic optimum, or just climatic optimum.
The Baltic Ice Lake is a name given by geologists to a freshwater lake that evolved in the Baltic Sea basin as glaciers retreated from that region at the end of the last ice age. The lake's existence was first understood in 1894. The lake existed between about 16,000 and 11,700 years ago with well defined evidence from the warming of the Bølling–Allerød Interstadial to the period of cooling called the Younger Dryas before the Holocene, the onset of which is close in time to the end of the ice lake. The lake drained into the raising world ocean on two occasions and when water levels became the same on the second, with a sea level passage in the Billingen region of southern Sweden, it became the Yoldia Sea.
Yoldia Sea is a name given by geologists to a variable brackish water stage in the Baltic Sea basin that prevailed after the Baltic Ice Lake was drained to sea level during the Weichselian glaciation. Dates for the Yoldia sea are obtained mainly by radiocarbon dating material from ancient sediments and shore lines and from clay-varve chronology. Such dates tend to vary by as much as a thousand years in the literature, but were corrected in 2021 for the whole of the Holocene. The sea can not have existed before the final drainage to sea level of the Baltic Ice Lake in 11,620 cal. year BP.
Ancylus Lake is a name given by geologists to a large freshwater lake that existed in northern Europe approximately from 8,750 to 7,850 years BC, being in effect one of various predecessors to the modern Baltic Sea.
Pulli settlement, located on the right bank of the Pärnu River, is the oldest known human settlement in Estonia. It is located near the present-day village of Pulli, two kilometers from the town of Sindi, which is 14 kilometers from Pärnu. According to radiocarbon dating, Pulli was settled around 11,000 years ago, at the beginning of the 9th millennium BC. A dog tooth found at the Pulli settlement is the first evidence for the existence of the domesticated dog in the territory of Estonia.
The Weichselian glaciation is the regional name for the Last Glacial Period in the northern parts of Europe. In the Alpine region it corresponds to the Würm glaciation. It was characterized by a large ice sheet that spread out from the Scandinavian Mountains and extended as far as the east coast of Schleswig-Holstein, northern Poland and Northwest Russia. This glaciation is also known as the Weichselian ice age, Vistulian glaciation, Weichsel or, less commonly, the Weichsel glaciation, Weichselian cold period (Weichsel-Kaltzeit), Weichselian glacial (Weichsel-Glazial), Weichselian Stage or, rarely, the Weichselian complex (Weichsel-Komplex).
The Epoch of Extreme Inundations (EEI) is a hypothetical epoch during which four landforms in the Pontic–Caspian steppe—marine lowlands, river valleys, marine transgressions and slopes —were widely inundated. Catastrophic events during the epoch are theorized to have influenced prehistoric human life.
The geology of the Baltic Sea is characterized by having areas located both at the Baltic Shield of the East European Craton and in the Danish-North German-Polish Caledonides. Historical geologists make a distinction between the current Baltic Sea depression, formed in the Cenozoic era, and the much older sedimentary basins whose sediments are preserved in the zone. Although glacial erosion has contributed to shape the present depression, the Baltic trough is largely a depression of tectonic origin that existed long before the Quaternary glaciation.
Lake Tauca is a former lake in the Altiplano of Bolivia. It is also known as Lake Pocoyu for its constituent lakes: Lake Poopó, Salar de Coipasa and Salar de Uyuni. The lake covered large parts of the southern Altiplano between the Eastern Cordillera and the Western Cordillera, covering an estimated 48,000 to 80,000 square kilometres of the basins of present-day Lake Poopó and the Salars of Uyuni, Coipasa and adjacent basins. Water levels varied, possibly reaching 3,800 metres (12,500 ft) in altitude. The lake was saline. The lake received water from Lake Titicaca, but whether this contributed most of Tauca's water or only a small amount is controversial; the quantity was sufficient to influence the local climate and depress the underlying terrain with its weight. Diatoms, plants and animals developed in the lake, sometimes forming reef knolls.
Curt Fredén is a Swedish Quaternary geologist. Most of his work has centered on the Holocene geology of the Baltic Sea. He was a member of the landslide commission that existed from 1988 to 1996. In 2002 he was awarded the prize Geologist of the Year by Naturvetarna. He has been editor for Berg och jord, the geology volume of the Swedish National Atlas and worked on various geological maps of Quaternary deposits. Fredén was one of geologists who helped make the High Coast a World Heritage Site.
The geology of Estonia is the study of rocks, minerals, water, landforms and geologic history in Estonia. The crust is part of the East European Craton and formed beginning in the Paleoproterozoic nearly two billion years ago. Shallow marine environments predominated in Estonia, producing extensive natural resources from organic matter such as oil shale and phosphorite. The Mesozoic and much of the Cenozoic are not well-preserved in the rock record, although the glaciations during the Pleistocene buried deep valleys in sediment, rechanneled streams and left a landscape of extensive lakes and peat bogs.
Chao Lake basin includes the geographical area around Chao Lake, 15km from Hefei City, China. It is the largest lake in Anhui province, and one of the five major freshwater lakes in China. The lake has formed for about 10 thousand years, with currently 5 million residents in the surrounding communities. Located in the monsoon climate zone, the weather has given rise to agriculture and economy as well as ruined settlements.
