Quaternay geological landscape evolution across borders: linking the Scheldt to Rhine-Thames Land

This poster presents paleogeographical scenario maps for the southwestern North Sea Basin, where onshore and offshore territories of Belgium, The Netherlands, France and England meet. Originally prepared and published as a backdrop for paleolithical geoarcheological research (Hijma et al. 2012; JQS), we are now expanding this with fieldwork in NW Belgium. NW Belgium is a key area to resolve current debates on the timing and rates of erosion and landscape change in this area over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles. With the Thames Estuary, it shares a history of drastic river valley network reconfigurations between successive glacials in the youngest 500,000 years. With the SW Netherlands it shares the sea level rise history in Eemian and Holocene. With NW France and SE England, it shares the river incision history that accelerates and changes in position with the opening of the Strait of Dover in the last 500,000 years. What are regionally separated issues in surrounding countries, comes together and superimposes in the Belgian Quaternary record. Our fieldwork aims at logging and sampling for a long-term landscape erosion studies, progressively over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles, and for generic regional quaternary geological mapping and dating