Late Quaternary Coastal Records of Rapid Changes the Eastern Baltic
Keywords:
Baltic Sea, Eemian Sea, transgression, regression, sea-level change, Holocene, Late-glacialAbstract
In the eastern Baltic area, comprising the countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and the St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad Districts of Russia, there are a lot of phenomena suggesting rapid changes in sea level due to different factors. At the end of the Pleistocene, the present-day Baltic Sea was a big Ice-dammed (local Ice lakes) or Ice-influenced (Baltic Ice Lake) lake with complicated water-level fluctuations. The drop of the Baltic Ice Lake at Billingen in Central Sweden about 10,300 yr BP resulted in the drainage of 25-30 m. A typical freshwater Ancylus Lake mollusk fauna discovered beneath the brackish water Litorina Sea mollusc fauna in a tectonically rising area near the settlement of Partsi on the island of Hiiumaa, Estonia, provides evidence of the catastrophic lowering of the water level by at least 25-30 m at the end of the Ancylus stage about 8500 yr BP.