183Book reviews

the end of Wilhelm Kick’s active research on these glaciers.However, it is obvious that the author wants to inspire othersto carry on the research into the future and, not least, toprovide them with useful archival information.

The layout is rather systematic, proceeding from the gen-eral to the more specific. The work starts (section 1) with afew remarks on global glacier variations in general. A dis-cussion then follows of the peculiarities of glaciers in theAsian highlands, as typified by Nanga Parbat (section 2),glacier variations in the region (section 3) and a glacierinventory (section 4). There are then (section 5) detaileddescriptions of the eight most important Nanga Parbat gla-ciers. The work concludes (section 6) by comparing thesecular and decadal variations of the glaciers and suggestingthat recent fluctuations of glaciers in Nanga Parbat havebeen more variable than in the Alps.

The main interest of glacier research in Nanga Parbat isthat, thanks to Dr Kick and the many investigators to whomhe refers, this is one of the better studied parts of theenormous ice masses of the Asian mountains. According tothe World Glacier Inventory (Haeberli et al., 1989), Pakistanand India alone support a glacier cover of 40 000 km2, andAsia as a whole may account for nearly one-third of thetotal glacier cover outside of Greenland and the Antarctic.Asian glaciers are therefore of global interest. According toDr Kick’s glacier inventory, the Nanga Parbat area alonecontains as much glacier ice volume as Austria, and nearlya third as much as Switzerland, and Nanga Parbat glacierstherefore have a local and regional importance. The mostdepressing fact of modern glaciology is that we know a lotabout a few small glacier areas, and very little about muchbigger areas.

One of the main peculiarities of glaciers in Nanga Parbatis that they are nourished mainly by avalanches from thesteep surrounding topography rather than being fed by alarge accumulation area, where firn is slowly transformedto ice as in most Alpine glaciers. This type of glacier wastermed a Kesselgletscher or, in English a kettle or cauldronglacier, by the Schlagintweit brothers in the last century.However, I must admit that this term finds no resonancewith me, possibly because both glaciology and cookery havechanged in the last 150 yr. Modern glaciologists are nowmore broadminded about how glaciers should be nourishedor, alternatively, the concept of avalanche-fed glaciers isnow so well accepted that the analogy with an obsoletecooking pot is not as vivid as it was. However, potentialreconstructors of Quaternary climates, and scientists whowant to apply remote sensing methods, should be carefulhow they apply the concept of snow- or firnline to suchglaciers. For example, accumulation area ratios (AARs) maybe much smaller than the usual range of 0.5 to 0.7 found onEuropean and North American glaciers. Another pecularity ofthese glaciers is the enormous thickness of debris, whichinhibits ablation and modifies the advance–retreat cycle asexemplified by debris-free glaciers.

The book is well illustrated, with many dated photographsand sketch maps, and future visitors to any of the glaciersdescribed should be able to find out easily what has alreadybeen measured and where. The author has made a greateffort to dig up many otherwise obscure references, and thework has obviously been a labour of love. However, someof us are not very familiar with the general geography ofthe Himalaya, and I would have valued a simple mapshowing political and hydrological divisions, e.g. as inGardner (1986). In view of the high quality of the contents,the publishers could have furnished a brighter cover, and a

1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 13(2) 177–187 (1998)

list of the other 29 volumes in the series, of which this isthe 30th, would also have been interesting.

The main readers of this book will be German-speakerswith a taste for scientific history and exploration, but it willalso be essential reading for anyone planning long-termglacier monitoring in the Asian highlands. With a little bitof ingenuity, it ought to be possible to match modern tech-niques of remote sensing and surveying to the older datadescribed by Dr Kick so that future glacier variations aroundNanga Parbat can be related to a 1934 (or even 1856)datum. This will be of great value in studying the largeglacier variations that may occur in the coming century dueto expected global warming.

ReferencesGARDNER, J. S. 1986. Recent fluctuations of Rakhiot Glacier, Nanga

Parbat, Punjab Himalaya, Pakistan. Journal of Glaciology, 112(32),527–529.

HAEBERLI, W., BOSCH, H., SCHERLER, K., ØSTREM, G. andWALLEN, C. C. (eds) 1989. World Glacier Inventory. Status 1988.IAHS(ICSI), UNEP and UNESCO.

ROGER J. BRAITHWAITEDepartment of Geography

The University of ManchesterOxford Road

Manchester M13 9PLEngland

Glacial deposits in north-eastEuropeJURGEN EHLERS, STEFAN KOZARSKI andPHILLIP GIBBARD (eds)

Publisher A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam, 1995 (ix + 626 pp)£92.00 ISBN 90-5410-189-X

This is the third book on the Glacial Deposits of Europeedited by Jurgen Ehlers and colleagues and published byBalkema of Rotterdam. The first appeared in 1983 on theGlacial Deposits in North-west Europe, followed in 1991 bya volume on the Glacial Deposits in Great Britain andIreland, and all three volumes have the same format withmultiple contributors presenting papers on aspects of glaci-ation and glacial deposits of particular regions, printed onA4 size pages, with abundant diagrams, high quality photo-graphs, some of which are in colour, and a comprehensivereference list (40 pages in this volume) and index. Like theearlier books this is expensive, but Balkema do offer a verysubstantial discount to members of appropriate academicsocieties such as the QRA and DEUQUA, and members ofthese societies should look to their newsletters/circulars ifthey wish to purchase this text.

The seeds of this book were sown in the mid-1980s, butdevelopment was retarded by the political situation in east-ern Europe, where access to many important Quaternarysites was prohibited, and the study of glacial deposits wasrestricted to a limited number of individuals for economicor strategic reasons. With the collapse of the Berlin Wall on9 November 1989 the region gradually became accessible toscientists from other parts of the world and most important,scientists from ‘Eastern Block’ countries were able to com-

184 JOURNAL OF QUATERNARY SCIENCE

municate, unhindered, with scientists from elsewhere. Asexplained by Stefan Kozarski in the preface, this allowedthe concept of an Eastern European volume to reach fruition,and the authors, along with Anto Raukas who also providedmuch help in managing contacts with colleagues in theformer Soviet Republics, should be complimented for bring-ing together a major contribution on Quaternary science.Sadly, Stefan Kozarski died in January 1996—this book is atestimony to his research.

The countries covered under the title of eastern Europe areFinland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine,Poland, the Czech Republic, and the eastern part of Germany(the former GDR), each of which is represented by a numberof articles, representing roughly the amount of work donein the areas and the extent of the region.

Certain issues reflect specific parts of the area. Forinstance, the study of glacial landforms is restricted largelyto the areas covered by the Scandinavian ice sheet duringthe late Weichselian, and especially during the YoungerDryas. In these areas ice-parallel and ice-transverse lineations(drumlins, flutes, eskers, rogen and De Geer moraines, pushmoraines, ice-contact glaciofluvial deltas and fans—in Fin-land and western Russia) and isolated, upstanding massesof glaciogenic sediments (insular uplands—in Estonia, Latviaand Belarus) are studied in order to reconstruct complexpatterns of ice movement, and to determine the positionand sequential development of major ice streams. In theglacier marginal regions most attention is given to stratigra-phy and the history of glaciation prior to the Late Pleisto-cene. In this respect, excellent descriptions by Eissmann andcolleagues describe the type area (the Leipzig lowlands ofGermany) for glacial activity during the Elsterian and SaalianStages, and descriptions from southern Russia and Ukraineprovide the most complete indication of glaciation in Europeprior to the Elsterian. Clearly, preservation of these depositsand stratigraphical sequences reflects lack of subsequentglacierisation and low-energy sub-aerial geomorphologicalprocesses, which failed to erode surface deposits andexplains why these areas retain this type of information, butit is worth recording that similar low levels of erosion andextensive sediment survival are also recorded in the regionbeneath the central part of the Scandinavian ice sheet aroundthe head of the Gulf of Bothnia.

In contrast to these areas with special characteristics,extensive sheets of glaciogenic deposits characterise all ofthe areas concerned, and the method applied to the studyof these sediments is very similar throughout. Typically,glacial diamictons receive the most attention and clast litho-logical and clast fabric analysis is applied to these depositsin order to separate the different till units and reconstructthe ice movement directions associated with their deposition.In most cases this appears to be the sole objective of thescientists concerned, although in some others, especially inPoland, attention is also given to the processes of deposition.The effects of glaciotectonism are also reported widelyespecially in the area of the Salpausselka in Finland, theBaltic region of Germany, and in many parts of Poland,where this subject has long received expert attention.

Correlation and consideration of stratigraphical sequencesreceives a very variable treatment. Within the area coveredby the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), radiocarbon datingprovides a reasonably reliable geochronology, but in mostother cases conventional biostratigraphy is the basis ofchronostratigraphy. Inevitably the value of this method isconstrained by the well understood problems associatedwith the problem of pollen assemblage biozone signatures,although the application of faunal LADs and FADs (first and

1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 13(2) 177–187 (1998)

last appearance datums) provides a more credible, if lowresolution, stratigraphical framework for the earliest glaci-ations in Russia. In Poland, thermoluminessence (TL) dateshave formed the basis of more complex stratigraphicalschemes, which are much closer to the climatic forcingpattern recorded in ocean cores, ice cores or lake andloess sequences, although doubts are expressed about thereliability of the TL method in these cases. The editorsprovide a very useful, albeit heavily qualified, stratigraphicalsummary in the final chapter (table 23, p. 548), which pro-vides a convenient summary of the terminologies and strati-graphical schemes set out earlier in the book. What emergesfrom this summary is the lack of any rational conceptualframework relating to known climatic forcing. This is likelyto remain a problem until more reliable geochronologicalmethods are available.

It is clear from the discussion above that this volumeprovides an invaluable summary of the glacial deposits andglacial history of a region about which little recent researchwas available before the political changes of the last decade,and for this the editors must be commended highly. Withoutseeking to criticise the volume I do feel that certain importantworks should have been included, and I would like to referto certain other relevant work that has been investigatedsince the publication of the volume. The limited (and poorlyillustrated) treatment of glaciation in the northern part ofRussia and the offshore Barents Sea does not do justice tothe importance of this area (Elverhøi et al., 1993), andthe absence of a contribution from Dariusz Krzyskowski isconspicuous, in view of his important and distinctive studiesof the glacial deposits and glacial stratigraphy of southwest-ern Poland (see references in Krzyskowski, 1995). Of moreimportance, however, is the absence of any attempt toreconstruct the glaciers that deposited the sediments,especially as significant contributions have been made inthis field by Boulton and colleagues (Boulton et al., 1985;Boulton and Payne, 1994).

Since publication of the volume some issues have cometo the fore, making an important contribution to the subject.The availability of remote sensed imagery has allowed Pun-kari (1995) to provide hitherto unavailable detail about thezone of confluence between the Scandinavian and NovayaZemlay ice sheets. Innovative studies on the role of subgla-cial groundwater hydrology have made significant contri-butions to our understanding of glacial sedimentation pro-cesses and the formation of glacial landforms andsedimentary structures associated with the southern marginof the Scandinavian ice sheet (Boulton et al., 1993, 1995;Boulton and Caban, 1995; Piotrowski, 1997). These, how-ever, are matters that can be considered, should there be arevision of the series.

ReferencesBOULTON, G. S. and CABAN, P. E. 1995. Groundwater flow

beneath ice sheets: Part II—its impact on glacier tectonic structuresand moraine formation. Quaternary Science Reviews, 14: 563–587.

BOULTON, G. S and PAYNE, A. 1994. Northern Hemisphere icesheets through the last glacial cycle: glaciological and geologicalreconstructions. IN: Duplessy, J.-C. (ed.), Long Term ClimaticChange: Data and Modelling, 177–212. NATO ASI Series 122,Springer, Stuttgart.

BOULTON, G. S., SMITH, G. D., JONES, A. S. and NEWSOME, J.1985. Glacial geology and glaciology of the last mid-latitudeice sheets. Journal of the Geological Society of London, 142,447–474.

BOULTON, G. S., CABAN, P. E. and VAN GIJSSEL, K. 1995.

185Book reviews

Groundwater flow beneath ice sheets: Part I—large scale patterns.Quaternary Science Reviews, 14, 545–562.

BOULTON, G. S., SLOT, T., BLESSING, K., GLASBERGEN, P.,LEIJNSE, T. and VAN GIJSSEL, K. 1993. Deep circulation ofgroundwater in overpressured subglacial aquifers and its geologi-cal consequences. Quaternary Science Reviews 12, 739–745.

ELVERHØI, A., FJELDSKAAR, W., SOLHEIM, A., NYLAND-BERG,M. and RUSSWURM, L. 1993. The Barents Sea ice sheet—amodel of its growth and decay during the last ice maximum.Quaternary Science Reviews, 12, 863–873.

KRZYSZKOWSKI, D. 1995. An outline of the Pleistocene stratigraphyof the Kleszczow Graben, Belchatow outcrop, central Poland.Quaternary Science Reviews, 14, 61–83.

PIOTROWSKI, J. A. 1997. Subglacial hydrology in north-westernGermany during the Last Glaciation: groundwater flow, tunnelvalleys and hydrological cycles. Quaternary Science Reviews, 16,169–185.

PUNKARI, M. 1995. Glacier flow systems in the zone of confluencebetween the Scandinavian and Novaya Zemlya ice sheets. Quat-ernary Science Reviews, 14, 589–603.

JAMES ROSEDepartment of Geography

Royal HollowayUniversity of London

EghamSurrey, TW20 0EX

England

Palaeoecological events duringthe last 15 000 yearsB. E. BERGLUND, H. J. B. BIRKS, M. RALSKA-JASIEWICZOWA and H. E. WRIGHT (eds)

Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Chichester 1996 (784 pp)£100.00 ISBN 0-471-95840-9

At a regular interval of five years, Bjorn Berglund seems topresent voluminous books to the scientific community. Firstcame the Handbook of Holocene Palaeoecology and Palaeo-hydrology in 1986 with 869 pages, then The Cultural Land-scape During 6000 years in Southern Sweden in 1991 with‘only’ 495 pages, and now Palaeoecological Events duringthe Last 15 000 Years with altogether 790 pages. If I havecalculated correctly, this means editing a total of 215 pagesper year!

The present volume contains a regional synthesis ofpalaeoecological studies of lakes and mires in Europe andsummarises the final results of the UNESCO/IGCP Project158B ‘Palaeohydrological Changes in the Temperate Zonein the Last 15,000 years: Lake and Mire Environments’. TheIGCP 158 Project (with Bjorn Berglund as the leader ofsubproject 158B) ran between the years 1977 and 1987,and was directed at (i) detecting environmental changes(vegetation, lake development, mire and lake hydrology, soilerosion, human impact) on the basis of multidisciplinary,stratigraphical studies of lake and mire deposits and(ii) correlating them on a regional and continental scale. Toachieve these objectives, each country was subdivided intogeographically uniform type regions. Within these typeregions, representative reference sites (lakes and/or mireswith preferably continuous sedimentation since the lastdeglaciation) were selected, which were regarded as suitable

1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 13(2) 177–187 (1998)

for detailed interpretation of past environmental changes, forthe general palaeovegetational development and forobtaining a good chronological age control. Although theIGCP 158 Project was meant originally to cover the temper-ate and subarctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere, itlater concentrated on Europe only.

This volume is called ‘Palaeoecological Events during theLast 15000 Years. However, I have to warn the reader, thatit does not deal with all aspects of palaeoecology, but mostlywith pollen stratigraphies and pollen diagrams. Unfortu-nately, palaeocological research seems still to be concernedmostly with a reconstruction of past vegetation and seemsto neglect many other important environmental parameters.Furthermore, only few data are presented for the time periodbefore 10 000 14C yr BP and the main focus is here onthe present Interglacial. The data compilation comprises 21European countries: Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, FaroeIslands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russian Kare-lia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech and Slovak republics,Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sloveniaand Bulgaria. Based on 500 reference sites in various typeregions within each country, 95 regional event stratigraphiesare presented. Each event stratigraphy follows a standardisedscheme, which includes a radiocarbon time-scale, regionalvegetation and soil development, hydrological and climaticchanges and human impact. Unfortunately, the geographicalcoverage of these syntheses is somewhat patchy. Whereasrepresentative type regions have been described in detail forIreland, Scotland, England, the Faroe Islands, Denmark andPoland, descriptions and syntheses for a few type regionsonly are available from Switzerland, Scandinavia, Poland,the Czech republics, Belgium, France, Spain, Austria, Ger-many, former Yugoslavia, the Baltic countries, northwestRussia and Bulgaria. Furthermore, no data is presented forIceland, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Hungary, Romania,Ukraine and Belorussia. The 21 chapters of the volume arearranged along a more or less west–east transsect, startingwith Ireland in the west (Chapter 1) and ending in thesoutheast with Bulgaria (Chapter 21). Individual chaptersare subdivided into (i) introduction, (ii) description of therepresentative type regions and (iii) conclusions.

In the introduction, a short overall presentation for eachcountry is given (topography, geology, vegetation, climate,and soils), the type regions are defined and the reasons forselecting specific type regions are discussed. Figures illus-trate, for example, bedrock, topography, and location of thetype regions and vegetation zones.

In the second subchapter, each type region is describedin detail (altitude, climate, geology, topography, population,vegetation, soils, land use, and reference to earlierinvestigations) and illustrated by one or more reference sites.After short site descriptions, an overview follows of thelocal pollen assemblage zones, with figures illustrating pollendiagrams and the arrival and presence of trees. The eventstratigraphies, which are presented for each type region,summarise the regional vegetation development, other biotic,hydrological, climatic, soil, and anthropogenic events and,in some case also lake conditions and lake level changes.The chronology of these event stratigraphies is based on a—from country to country more or less firm—radiocarbon time-scale. The text summarises common and unique vegetationpatterns, hydrological, climatic and anthropogenic events foreach type region.

In the conclusions, time–space correlations of type-regionpollen assemblage zones are presented, and common,unique and diverging patterns are discussed in respect to