The genesis and paleogeographical significance of residual dune ridges in the central European Sand Belt (Warsaw Basin, central Poland)

Abstract At the end of the last glaciation aeolian processes promoted the development of the European Sand Belt, generating one of the largest areas of cold-climate dune fields in the world. Specific processes that led to the development and stabilization of these dunes remain poorly understood because there have been limited attempts to reconstruct the Belt’s past aeolian environments. New paleoenvironmental information can now be provided through an assessment of residual dune ridges (RDRs), landforms that are characteristic of wet dune systems. We recently identified almost 2,000 RDRs within the Kampinos Forest dune field (central Poland) and examined them through detailed morphometric analysis. That search showed that the development of the RDRs was driven by seasonally increased fluvial runoff and, in the longer term, by climate amelioration—apparently during the Bølling–Allerød interstadial. The high density of dunes protected ridges from deflation, so was crucial towards RDR preservation. The study proved that the RDRs can exist for more than 10 ka years, thus they can be used as environmental proxies. Additionally, they can be used as an indicator of past flood-event frequency and magnitude, as well as act as repositories of information on past-dune transformation.