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The presence of Holocene cryptotephra in Wales and southern England

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Date
12/05/2017
Author
Watson, E. J.
Swindles, G. T.
Lawson, I. T.
Savov, I. P.
Wastegård, S.
Keywords
Chronology
Peatlands
Tephra
Volcanic ash
GE Environmental Sciences
DAS
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Abstract
There have been few detailed studies into the tephrostratigraphy of southern Britain. We report the tephrostratigraphy of two sites, one in southern England (Rough Tor, Cornwall) and one in Wales (Cors Fochno, west Wales). Our study extends the known southernmost reach of Icelandic cryptotephra in northern Europe. Given the large distance between sites in southern England and eruptive sources (e.g. Iceland 1500–1700 km distant), most of the cryptotephra layers consist of sparse numbers of shards, even by the standards of distal tephrostratigraphy (as low as 3 shards cm−1), each layer spanning only 1 or 2 cm in depth. We identify multiple cryptotephra layers in both sites, extending the known distribution of several tephra layers including the MOR-T4 tephra (∼AD 1000) most probably of Icelandic origin, and the AD 860 B tephra correlated to an eruption of Mount Churchill, Alaska. The two sites record contrasting tephrostratigraphies, illustrating the need for the inclusion of multiple sites in the construction of a regional tephrostratigraphic framework. The tephra layers we describe may provide important isochrons for the dating and correlation of palaeoenvironmental sequences in the south of Britain.
Citation
Watson , E J , Swindles , G T , Lawson , I T , Savov , I P & Wastegård , S 2017 , ' The presence of Holocene cryptotephra in Wales and southern England ' , Journal of Quaternary Science , vol. 32 , no. 4 , pp. 493-500 . https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.2942
Publication
Journal of Quaternary Science
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.2942
ISSN
1099-1417
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 The Authors. Journal of Quaternary Science Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
This research was undertaken while E.W. held a NERC-funded Doctoral Training grant (NE/K500847/1). This research was also supported by a Young Research Workers award to E.W. from the Quaternary Research Association.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.2942/full#footer-support-info
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/10639

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