Cultural and Environmental Park Piesberg – Information board Ice Age

Traces of the ice age on the Piesberg

In the course of approximately 4½ billion years of Earth’s geological history, there were always individual phases in which the poles of the earth were glaciated. About 2.6 million years ago, large glaciers had again formed on both poles. This started the Quaternary period, the most recent period of Earth's history. In this age, cold and warm times alternated. At least twice the glaciers from frozen Scandinavia reached the Osnabrücker Land.

Only relatively few remains from the advance of the glaciers during the Elster glaciation, which began around 400,000 years ago, are left in the Osnabrücker mountain areas. Most of the Elster ice age deposits were removed again.

During the Saale ice age, which began about 300,000 years ago, glaciers once again advanced to the Osnabrück area and eventually to the northern edge of the Sauerland (about 75 miles south of Osnabrück). The ice coming from the north probably initially surrounded the Piesberg. (1)

On the southwest side of the Piesberg, large amounts of meltwater deposits in the form of sand and gravel were preserved. Only at a later stage was the Piesberg completely "run over" by the ice masses. The stones carried along at the base of the glacier left behind large amounts of glacier striations in the Piesberg sandstone. (2)

After the ice melted, what remained on the Piesberg were glacial loams. Glacial loam consists of the material that the glacier had absorbed during its long journey from Scandinavia and carried in the form of cobble, sand, silt, and clay.

During the Weichselian glaciation (corresponding to the Devensian in the British Isles and to the Wisconsin in North America), glaciers did not reach the Osnabrück area. The ice edge was north of the Elbe river (near Hamburg). This cold period began about 115,000 years ago. During the Weichselian glacial period, treeless tundra-vegetation was predominant in our landscape. As a result of the wind, clay, silt, and sand were blown away and deposited in available places as loess or, in the case of higher sand content, as sand loess. Sand loess still covers the southern and eastern slopes of the Piesberg. In other places, sand flowed and was deposited elsewhere on slopes or lowlands. Such sediments occur on the northern slope of the Piesberg.

Legends
Limit of the glacier during the Weichselian glaciation
Thickness of the ice sheet during the Elster and Saale glaciations
Orientation of the glacier striations on the Piesberg (433 measurements, Sept. 1979)
Direction of movement of the Saale Glacier