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Palaeoenvironmental significance of fluvial facies and archives of Late Quaternary deposits in the floodplain of Damodar River, India

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Abstract

Statigraphic exposures, fluvial archives and borehole data have been allowed to reconstruct the alluvial history of Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene and climate changes in the monsoonal wet–dry region of lower Damodar Basin (West Bengal, India). The facies architectures and climate proxies suggest that five to six climate changes occurred in between ∼14 and 6 kiloannum (ka). Supporting evidence from the floodplain of Damodar River demonstrates that the successive phases of aggradation and incision were linked to the south-west monsoonal variability of Late Quaternary period. The onset of semi-arid climate was associated with caliches, pond and backswamp deposits of waning low-energy floods. The relatively warm-humid climate was associated with sandy bedforms, valley fills, slack water deposits and ferruginous nodules. This paper presents a synthesis of the available palaeoclimatic records from the lower Ganga Basin and the rivers of western and central India for the palaeoenvironmental significance of Late Quaternary deposits and discusses the influence of palaeoclimatic controls on the fluvial architectures and archives that developed below the floodplain of Damodar River. We have taken some representative studies from the region to reveal the spatial variability in fluvial successions in response to climate changes during this period.

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Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank to the editor in-chief, associate editors and reviewers of the Arabian Journal of Geosciences for their cordial supports to enhance our work in an organised way. We are very much thankful to Springer publication for giving us the platform of publishing our research work. We also thankful to the Department of Geography, The University of Burdwan for providing the necessary facilities to undertake this work.

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  1. Department of Geography, The University of Burdwan, Burdwan, 713104, West Bengal, India

    Sandipan Ghosh & Sanat Kumar Guchhait

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Ghosh, S., Guchhait, S.K. Palaeoenvironmental significance of fluvial facies and archives of Late Quaternary deposits in the floodplain of Damodar River, India. Arab J Geosci 7, 4145–4161 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-013-1079-y

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