Time-history of the gravel sheet in Ardennian rivers over the last 100,000 years

It is generally held that, in north-western Europe, the main part of the gravel sheets under river beds were deposited during the Weichselian period in a periglacial environment. However, other parameters such as propagation of knickpoints in fluvial networks may also influence incision or aggradation. However, only few studies have dated the periods of formation of the gravel sheets and have described their properties.

The first aim of this research was to determine the thickness of the gravel sheets still remaining under the river beds and to estimate the potential incision of these rivers before reaching the bedrock. Then we tried to answer a number of other questions: When did these thick gravel deposits fill the valley bottom? When were the lowest terraces abandoned? When did the rivers incise the bedrock? What is the morphology of the bedrock under the gravel layer?

Numerous boreholes were made by percussion drilling in different floodplains of the Ardenne Massif and core samples were taken, down to the bedrock. Afterwards, different volcanic tephra from the Late Pleistocene were used as stratigraphic markers to date the relative periods of terrace formation and to reconstruct the past evolution of the gravel sheets. Pollen and metallurgic slag were also used to date the periods of bed level evolution.

In the Ardennian massif, the thickness of the gravel sheet beneath the river beds is very variable (from 10 m in the downstream part of the Ourthe River to less than 1 m in the upper catchments). In some valleys, weathered bedrock has been observed under the gravel sheet to a thickness of several meters.

Different phases of accumulation and incision over the last 100,000 years have been dated. Some evolutions can be clearly linked to climate changes but some modifications of bed levels also occurred during the Weichselian period and could be a response to the propagation of knickpoints in the fluvial networks.