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Holocene and La te Wstulian Paleogeography and Paleohydrolagy Prace Geograficzne nr 189 (2003)

Vojen Lożek, Vaclav Cilck

HOLOCENE FACIES DEVELOPMENT IN MID-EUROPEAN

UPLANDS

1. INTRODUCTION

The name “Holocene” or “recent whole” for the post-glacial epoch of last 12 thousand years seems to have been proposed for the flrst time by Sir Charles Lyell in 1833, and adopted by the International Geological Congress in Bo-logna in 1855. However Lyell himself used the term “Recent” which was by U.S. Geological Service abandoned as late as in 1968. The Holocene stratig-raphy was based on the succession of vegetation that was originally studied on the area of Denmark and adjacent Southern Scandinavia (Iversen 1973; Farrand 1990). The changes of vegetation were initially recorded on the ba-sis of macroscopical remnants preserved in peatbogs as a sequence of four distinct climatic periods, namely dry Boreal, humid Atlantic, dry and warm Subboreal and morę humid and colder Subatlantic concluded by Recent or Presence. This division established by Norvegian botanist A. Blytt and Swe-den scientist R. Sernander was as early as at the end of 19th century amend-ed by transitional phase between the Late Glacial and Boreal that was called the Preboreal. The pollen analysis developed by L. v. Post in 1916 served as a principal tool of paleobotanical research not only in Northern Europę but virtually everywhere where peat and marsh pollen bearing sediments could be found. The Mid-European region pollen pattern was described in mono-graphs by F. Firbas (1949, 1952), E. Krippel (1986) and in number of later studies (e.g. Pokorny and Jankovska 2000). Besides a number of local strati-graphies N. Roberts (1998) suggested that the Holocene represents a series of climatic shifls which should not be handled as individual climatic periods (Wright et al. 1993). Newly P.J. Crutzen and E.F. Stoermer (2000) proposed that “recent epoch” starting at the onset of Industrial revolution of latter part of the 18' century could be called “Anlhropocene” to emphasize the central role of human activilics in forming new global environment.