UK Quaternary Domains

This is an interesting report, which outlines how the geologists of the BGS have gone about defining the details of British Quaternary stratigraphy -- using the same principles as they do for solid rock units. They are, after all, geologists and not geomorphologists..........  

ENTWISLE, D C, WILDMAN, G. 2010. Creation of the Till Thematic Layer. British Geological Survey Internal Report, IR/10/041. 14pp.

http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/21121/1/IR10041.pdf

The pap above is a very interesting one  -- designed to appeal to a geographer like me!  It's a sort of landscape regions map, but with Quaternary surface characteristics and sediments added.

One thing of interest is the apparent acceptance of the BGS geologists that the Anglian ice pressed against the coasts of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall all the way from Weston super Mare to the Isles of Scilly.  So they must accept the presence of Quaternary sediments and landscape features all the way along the cliffline.  That is, of course, in tune with what many geomorphologists have said over the years, although there are many others (frequently cited on the pages of this blog) who vehemently disagree and who claim that the Anglian ice edge was located somewhere far to the west in the outer reaches of the Bristol Channel or in the Celtic Sea. (This latter view looks more and more untenable, especially as evidence accumulates for a Devensian Irish Sea Glacier that pushed far to the south of the Isles of Scilly.)  So the Anglian ice edge as shown on this map appears, in some places at least, to coincide with the position of the Devensian ice edge.

It follows that the Devensian ice limit, as shown for Wales on this map, has to be very unreliable indeed.

I'll shortly do another post on this, and on the Penfro Till Formation (supposedly of Anglian age) which the BGS lists in its lexicon, apparently on the basis of very dodgy evidence supplied by Prof Dai Bowen.

Here is another useful BGS Report:


http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/3241/1/RR04004.pdf

MCMILLAN, A A, HAMBLIN, R J O, and MERRITT, J W. 2005.
An overview of the lithostrati- graphical framework for the Quaternary and Neogene deposits of Great Britain (Onshore).
British Geological Survey Research Report RR/04/04 38pp.

This map shows the glacigenic groups in Southern Britain, including the "Abion Glacigenic Group" outside the putative Devensian limit and the "Caledonia Glacigenic Group" within the Devensian limit.  The proto-river pattern is much discussed.  Note that the ice of the Anglian Glaciation is assumed to have affected both shores of the Severn Estuary, as far out as Flatholm, Steepholm and Brean Down.

You can see the relationship between the maps above and the "traditional" map showing ice edges and glacier flowlines -- after Boulton, Wright, Zeuner and many others.  The "Older Drift" / "Newer Drift" distinction is of course perpetrated by the use of maps such as this.  in reality, as ever, things are much more complicated than the maps suggest......