The WASA core catalogue of Late Quaternary depositional sequences in the central Wadden Sea - A manual for the core repository

The reconstruction of submerged palaeolandscapes and detection of settling surfaces along coastal zones became a major research topic within the last two decades. In this context, the WASA project made use of a multidisciplinary approach for defining the extension and describing the characteristics of the Late Pleistocene to Holocene deposits in the central Wadden Sea region. In addition to sub-bottom transects, more than 140 sediment cores were taken in such an area for stratigraphic reconstruction, making use of multi-proxy analysis. To harmonize these data with the existing regional core database (LBEG archive) a new core catalogue was developed, that allows the identification of the local Late Quaternary sedimentary sequences and their characteristic facies. The WASA core catalogue has been successfully applied for reviewing the published data about the stratigraphic sequence of the Wadden Sea, for a better definition in terms of stratigraphic sequences and spatial extent of the Quaternary geological evolution of the region, and for a detailed reconstruction of the coastal palaeoenvironments.

Automated summary

The reconstruction of submerged palaeolandscapes and detection of settling surfaces along coastal zones has become a significant research topic in the past two decades. The WASA project utilized a multidisciplinary approach to define the extent and characteristics of Late Pleistocene to Holocene deposits in the central Wadden Sea region. By using sub-bottom transects and sediment cores, the project was able to reconstruct stratigraphy and identify local sedimentary sequences. The WASA core catalogue has been successfully applied to review published data, define stratigraphic sequences and spatial extent, and reconstruct coastal paleoenvironments in the region.