Filling the North Sea Basin: Cenozoic sediment sources and river styles (André Dumont medallist lecture 2014)

Abstract

1. IntroductionThe recognition that the present landscape is a product of the long-term interaction of tectonics and climate is one of the fundamental concepts in historical geoscience. Determining the response of the environment to these changes has been further emphasised by attempts to understand the relationship between rates of tectonic activity and sedimentation or erosion and the interplay of these factors with climate change (e.g. Cloetingh et al., 2005). Moreover, the dynamic linkage of erosion and tectonics results in major impacts on changes of the Earth’s climate through the evolution of major continental topography and vice versa.The form of the Earth’s topography actually results from the net interaction of processes operating at a wide range of time scales. These include long- and short-term tectonic uplift, subsidence, phases of glaciation, and climatic and environmental changes. In northern Europe, these processes, operating simultaneously through the Cenozoic, have left a record of changing conditions that have determined the form of the present landscape. The emphasis recently has been on relatively short-term interactions involving quasi-simultaneous uplift followed shortly by incision, paced alongside Late Pleistocene marine isotope stages, and interacting with climatic fluctuations. Here we take a longer view, that of Cenozoic uplift centres changing in intensity and location, and thus sediment feeds and alluvial styles, feeding into a depositional basin