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North Sea Palaeolandscape
Topic
Today's North Sea shelf differs fundamentally from the environmental scenario at the transition from the last glaciation to the Holocene, when the sea-level was 110-130 m lower than today. Vast parts of the southern North Sea shelf formed a land mass that connected Great Britain to continental Europe, the so called Doggerland. A significant role in this deglacial landscape played the Elbe Palaeovalley (Elbe-Urstromtal) with its tributaries – a vast dewatering system draining the coastal lowlands.
Between 10 and 7 ka cal. BP the Doggerland was affected by a relative rapid rise in sea level of about 40 m, during which wide parts of the coastal lowlands were converted to shelf and coastal seas. The coast line and its associated river estuaries were shifted within a few thousand years toward their present locations. Within a few hundreds of years the rising sea-level caused the river valleys to be silted up rapidly before these finally submerged in the inundating North Sea.
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