Dunes and Fossil Soils

Dunes grow, change their shape and fade away. This book demonstrates that the evolution of eolian sand and dunes is under control of climatic change, permafrost, vegetational growth, soil formation and human interference. The European sand belt spreads from the Netherlands through Germany and Poland into Russia as inland dune fields up to a hight of several meters as well as large carpets of thin eolian sand, the so-called coversand. This book illuminates the origin of this enormous sand masses from their first traces during the Saalian glaciation through the Weichselian glaciation up to present times. Periods of strong eolian activity change with periods of dune stability. The interior of the dunes exhibits striking interruptions of eolian activity by a large variety of fossil soils. The individual character of these soils allows to interprete the eolian sand movements period by period through the history of the last 150.000 years. All in all the book offers details of modern research on dune sand as well as comprehensive chapters of the recent state of knowledge on dune formation.