Climate- and tectonics-related surface processes in the Southern Carpathians and Northern Balkan Mountains. A geochronological approach at different timescales (ChronoCaRP)
Project summary
It is a scientific project supported by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Plan for Romania.
The research aims at a better understanding of the relationship between climate oscillations and Quaternary landscape evolution in SE Europe. This area is in a key position influenced by North-Atlantic, Mediterranean and Siberian air masses however, the number of paleoclimate data from this region is very limited. Our research aims to fill this gap by providing state-of-the-art datasets in two major landscape types (and two timescales) following a quantitative, multidisciplinary approach. The mountain ranges of the Southern Carpathians and Northern Balkan Peninsula serve as an excellent natural laboratory to study the response of the sensitive alpine environments to the glacial to interglacial changes covering mainly the last glacial cycle and the following warming (the last ~25.000 years). Here glacier reconstruction and numerical age determination of the glacial phases and periglacial forms and processes (rock glacier activity, rock slope failures) will shed light on the timing and extent of the last glaciation and on landforms dynamics after deglaciation. The described glacial and periglacial processes and landforms will then be used for a paleo-environment reconstruction. The data will be combined with the in-depth analysis of the sedimentary archives of the alpine and sub-alpine lakes, which accumulate excellent environmental proxies allowing for paleo-climate and environmental changes to be reconstructed. In order to acquire information about the influence of the preceding glaciations as well, the terraces of the Danube River cut through the Danube Gorges between the studied mountain ranges will also be examined. The goal of this part of the study is to set up a terrace chronology based on high-resolution terrace mapping and numerical age determination, which will support the estimation of the Danube incision rate and uplift rate of the surrounding mountains.