Aeolian dunes of central Sweden

Sammanfattning: In the Swedish inland there are aeolian deposits present, ranging from scattered single dunes to dune fields of more than 10 km2. These dune fields often pass unnoticed since they presently are covered by vegetation. However, they contain a rich palaeoenvironmental archive. Only a few research papers have been published regarding these aeolian deposits during the last 90 years. The primary scope of this thesis has been to determine why these dunes formed, when they formed, and what they can tell us about the environment during their formation. The results from these investigations are presented in four research papers.The shape and orientation of a dune is determined by the local environment during its formation, such as the abundance of sediment available for entrainment by the wind, groundwater table fluctuations, changes to precipitation and temperature, presence/absence of vegetation, mode of the wind et cetera. By determining the type of dunes it is possible to determine the local environment during their formation. If one also can determine when these dunes formed and stabilised one can determine the palaeoenvironment, and in extension the palaeoclimate, during a specific time period.In this thesis, new findings are presented regarding the geomorphology, geochronology and palaeoenvironment of a number of dunes and dune fields in south and central Sweden, based on state-of-the-art methods, such as LiDAR (light detection and ranging) based remote sensing and optically stimulated luminescence dating. The previous hypotheses concerning the formation of these dunes have also been evaluated.The findings show that the dunes of central Sweden are primarily of a transverse type, i.e. their dune ridges are transverse to the dune forming winds and they were formed in a setting devoid of vegetation and with an abundance of sediment. The primary dune forming winds for these transverse dunes appear to have been north-westerly and westerly winds. The investigated dunes further to the south show signs of having been reworked after their initial formation and are often of a parabolic type, i.e. curved/crescentic in shape with their arms facing upwind. These dunes have been described as strongly linked to the presence of vegetation, and can often be considered secondary dune forms. These more southern dunes appear to also mainly have been formed by north-westerly and westerly winds, although they display a bigger scatter in wind directions than the more northern dunes.The luminescence ages suggest that most of the dunes formed during the early Holocene, and later events of sand drift have been uncommon with only minor impact on the dune morphology. There seems to have been a primary dune stabilisation phase ~10-9 ka, irrespective of the latitude of the dune fields. This means that some dune fields formed close after local deglaciation, while others formed millennia later. This suggests that dune formation and dune stabilisation of central Sweden have been controlled by regional environmental conditions. Extremely low lake levels in southern and south-central Sweden 10.5-9.5 ka BP in conjunction with an unstable climate during early Holocene probably delayed dune stabilisation by vegetation. After the vegetation had stabilised the dunes, they became much more resilient to further fluctuations in the climate.