Timing of the Baltic Ice Lake in the eastern Baltic

A shoreline database for the Baltic, covering the Late Weichselian and Holocene, was compiled. The database includes about 1600 sites from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, NW Russia, Poland, Sweden and was used to create a GIS-based palaeogeographical reconstructions on the development of the Baltic Ice Lake (BIL). The formation of thehighest shoreline of the BIL in Estonia was connected with the development of the Pandivere ice marginal zone (Estonia) and the lowest with the Salpausselkä ice-marginal formations (Finland). There was a well-accepted knowledge that the Pandivere ice marginal zone correlates with the Neva ice marginal zone in NW Russia dated to 13 300 cal yr BP. Recent studies of the late glacial sites in northern Estonia indicate that the age of the Pandivere ice marginal zone and hence the highest shoreline of the BIL A1 is about 13 800–14 000 cal yr BP. It was followed by the BIL stage A2, which formed in front ofthe Palivere ice marginal belt about 13 200–13 500 cal yr BP. The final drainage of the BIL took place about 11 650 cal yr BP. The timing of the BIL stages was derived from AMS-14C dates and correlated with varve chronology, OSL and 10Be dates

Cyclic sedimentation pattern in Lake Veetka, southeast Estonia: a case study

A sediment core from Lake Veetka, southeast Estonia, 1077 cm in length and covering 10,500 calibrated years, was examined using loss-on-ignition, grain-size distribution and AMS 14 C dating to reconstruct depositional dynamics. The studied core, recovered from the northern part of the lake, shows a cyclic pattern of organic and mineral matter concen -tration with cycle durations of 100-400 years. Cyclicity is displayed better in sediments laid down between 9,200 and 5,600 cal BP. Within two time windows (5,600–5,100 cal BP and from 1,200 cal BP to the present), sediment composition changed drastically on account of a high and fluctuating mineral matter content, obviously driven by different factors. Little Ice Age cooling is characterised by the highest proportion of mineral matter, and the Medieval Warm Period is typified by high organic matter content. The cyclic change of organic and mineral matter has been related to climate dynamics, most likely an alternation of wet and dry conditions, changes in the water level of the lake and differences in bioproduction