Transport Direction and Scandinavian Source Regions of the Saalian Glacial and Glaciofluvial Deposits in a Case Study of Łubienica-Superunki (Central Poland)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In my opinion, the manuscript could be accepted in its current form. I have no more suggestions (except to close parentheses on lines 256 and 268).

Author Response

Dear Madam/Sir,

thank you for pointing out two shortcomings - the lack of closing the parentheses. Of course, I corrected the mistakes. Thank you also for accepting the revised version of the article, compliments,
Corresponding Author

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I read with pleasure your reply and the changes you made to the text.

I highly appreciate your efforts. In particular, I am really happy you moved to a more conservative position in your conclusions.

I still believe that more investigations would improve the quality of your results and I encourage you to work in this direction. Nonetheless, I am also convinced that the international community should be aware of your results. The changes you made to the text, figures and, above all, to the conclusions, made me recommend the publication of your paper. 

 

There are a couple of minor issues that I mentioned in my first revision that was not solved, though:

• figure 1a: you are using both numbers (1 to 9) and letters (a1, a2, b, c, d). Which is the reason for this difference? You should state clearly why you are using different notations, and possibly use different symbols for those sites indicated by numbers and those indicated by letters.
• figure 7: in the graphs, the significance of the colours are defined only in some cases (light purple and yellow). If you are not able to include all labels in the graphs, please remove all of them and define the significance of the colours in the caption.

 

Besides that, I am satisfied with your revision.

 

Best regards.

Author Response

Dear Madam/Sir,

thank you for paying attention to the ambiguities that could hinder the perception of the two figures. Of course, I corrected the mistakes. Thank you also for accepting the revised version of the article, compliments,

Corresponding Author

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presents results on petrographic studies of glacial and fluvioglacial deposits and the identification of areas of ancient ice sources.. The text is correctly structured and my overall opinion is that it could be accepted for publication in its current form. Only a few suggestions are included.

The introduction presents the topic adequately, although more references related with the topic could be included, in particular:

Woźniak, P. P., & Czubla, P. (2015). The Late Weichselian glacial record in northern Poland: A new look at debris transport routes by the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. Quaternary International, 386, 3-17.

Woźniak, P. P., & Czubla, P. (2016). Unravelling the complex nature of the Upper Weichselian till section at Gdynia Babie Doły, northern Poland. Geologos, 22.

Woźniak, P. P., Sokołowski, R. J., Czubla, P., & Fedorowicz, S. (2018). Stratigraphic position of tills in the Orłowo Cliff Section (Northern Poland): a new approach. Studia Quaternaria.

Górska, M. (1999). Advantages and disadvantages of petrographic analyses of glacial sediments. Geological Quarterly, 43(2), 241-250.

The presentation of the study area, the methodology and the results are also considered correct. In relation to Figures 5 and 7, as well as Table 2 and in the text, it is recommended to round to one decimal place instead of two.

In the discussion, the results are correctly assessed, comparing them with previous studies. In Figure 11, I recommend clarifying which works refer to the Middle and Upper Saalian and which to the Krznanian (perhaps in one case with color fill and not in the other).

Regarding the references, in many articles the doi is missing. Inclusion is recommended in all cases where it exists. Many references are in German or Polish. I suggest reducing these references as much as possible, in favor of others in international journals in English.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I read your paper with interest.

I am more familiar with glaciations that occurred in the Alpine chain, but you provided me with enough context to understand methods, results and discussions. Dealing with the northern hemisphere ice cap has been really interesting. 

You can find attached to this review a pdf file with punctual remarks and minor issues, but here I would like to stress the three main problems I found in your article: 

1 - the reference literature for this site is mainly written in Polish, which made it a bit hard to follow some connections and understanding the original data. This is obviously not your fault.

2 - however, as a direct consequence, some data are re-presented in a way that is almost a translation from already-published papers. In particular, figures 1B, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, are included almost identical in another paper written by you (Górska-Zabielska, M.; Smolska, E.; Wachecka-Kotkowska, L. Analiza Petrograficzna i Obszary Alimentacyjne Narzutniaków w Żwirowni Łubienica-Superunki. [Petrographic Analysis and Source Areas of Erratics in Łubienica-Superunki Gravel Pit]. Przegląd Geol. 2021, 69 (1), 4−54. http://dx.doi.org/10.7306/2021.4). As far as I understood, all petrographic data presented here are included also there, and some of the conclusions are the same, too (basing on the English abstract). Moreover, I noticed that in that paper the location of samples LSu-f1 and LSu-f2 is different from that one you depicted here in Figure 3, and the red dashed lines you mentioned in the captions of Figures 5 and 6 that I was not able to find are present there. These aspects are not necessarily a problem (despite the shift in the location of the samples, that is not good at all), but I think is up to the Editor to decide whether it is or not.

3 - most important and crucial point: I am not convinced by part of your reconstruction. You group together units LS-I and II, claiming they are part of the same glacial cycle, and I agree with you. However, you group together also units LS-III and LS-IV, and I do not agree on this. Whilst coarser gravel fractions seems to point in this direction, finer ones show remarkably different results from LS-II and IV samples. Moreover, the reconstructed TBCs point to a similar source area for LS-I, II and III, LS-IV being the only one that clearly differs from the others. Considering that no absolute chronological constrain is given, I think that more investigations are needed. In my opinion, comparing a single sample from each unit is not sufficient when such discrepancies arise. In particular, the basal part of unit LS-III has no samples at all, as well as the basal part of LS-I, and taking samples in that intervals may strengthen your data.

As the conclusions support scenarios already presented by other researchers, as you correctly declared, I suggest strengthening the results and the discussion prior to publication.

Best regards.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The current paper deals with the Polish part in Central Europe  covered by glacial and  fluvial-glacial sediments during the last glacial period. Their approach is the common glacial one also taken in neighboring  northern Germany as has largely been referred to by the authors in this text. There are so-called marker lithologies the gravel-sized lithoclasts of which are used to pinpoint and single out the main provenance areas in Sweden and Finland. As far as this part is concerned I can fully comply with the technique used and the genetic ideas presented by the authors.

There are, however, some additional remarks going beyond the visual petrographic examination which is especially valid in view of the boundary between glacial, glacial-fluvial and not to forget aeolian and mass wasting processes. It is widely known that provenance studies are strongly affected by the grain size considered, e.g., sand (heavy minerals) vs. gravel (lithoclasts). And here is where I have to raise some concerns and where the GMS tool comes in (Granulometry of clasts, Morphology of clasts and / “Situmetry”) orientation of clasts). I do not give a lecture on sedimentology in this review but refer to the following studies and strongly recommend these issues  considered at least used during their comprehensive discussion and thereby promote their study from the classical style to a more advanced level.

DILL, H.G., KUS J., BUZATU A., BALABAN S.-I. ,KAUFHOLD S., and BORREGO A. G. (2021) Organic debris and allochthonous coal in Quaternary landforms within a periglacial setting (Longyearbyen Mining District, Norway) -  A multi-disciplinary study (coal geology-geomorphology-sedimentology).- International Journal of Coal Geology (on-line)

 

DILL, H.G., BUZATU A., BALABAN S.-I. , UFER K., TECHMER A. SCHEDLINSKY, W., and FÜSSL M., (2020) The transition of very coarse-grained meandering to straight fluvial drainage systems in a tectonized foreland-basement landscape during the Holocene (SE Germany) – A joint geomorphological-geological study.- Geomorphology

 

DILL H.G., BUZATU A., GOLDMANN S., KAUFHOLD S., and BÎRGĂOANU D. (2020) Coastal landforms of “Meso-Afro-American” and “Neo-American” landscapes in the periglacial South Atlantic Ocean: With special reference to the clast orientation, morphology, and granulometry of continental and marine sediments.- Journal of South American Earth Sciences 98 (on-line).

 

These sedimentological methods help to better differentiate the various modes of transport and depositions, fine-tune the pathways of transport of clasts on a larger scale, particularly at the brink from the transport zone to the depositional zone and identify inhomogeneities in sedimentary profiles, such as reaction surfaces, reworking phases  and disconformities….

 

I wish the authors much success during their revision of this solid piece of work