Geological history of the Baltic. Volume 2. Evolution of the Baltic sea / Геологическая история Балтийского моря. Том 2. Эволюция Балтийского моря

Volume 2 presents the geological evolution of the Baltic Sea area from the Late Glacial, throughout the Holocene up to the modern times. A very detailed evolution of the Baltic Sea has been presented for the area of the Polish basin. Calculated by the author on the basis of geological research, the climatic cycle of the Earth allows better understanding of climatic changes and associated geological processes in the last 20,000 yrs on the area of the Northern Poland and the Baltic Sea basin. 
It should be noted that the current research on the evolution of the Baltic area, including the South Baltic region directly related to the Polish Baltic bottom and the Polish coast, which developed mainly under the influence of the great post-glacial transgression of the Baltic, did not solve the very complex issues related to this problem in a satisfactory manner. This was a fundamental inspiration for further research, detailed studies, many analyzes of source materials and the results obtained by the present author associated with connected to the transgression of the Baltic Sea over the last 9,000 yrs. Especially the matter related to the determination of the old sea levels, as it has been on the Polish coast, is still an open question and there are a lot of discrepancies around it. 
Chapter 1 is the most extensive and presents the geological evolution of the Baltic Sea since its inception, i.e., from the Late Glacial to the present day. The geological history of all evolutionary stages of the Baltic Sea is discussed in detail here, from the Baltic Ice Lake, through the Yoldia Sea, Ancylus Lake, Littorina Sea and Lymnaea Sea, to the Mya Sea as the modern stage of the Baltic Sea development. In this chapter, the author presents palaeoecological and palaeosedimentological analyses of various evolutionary stages of the Baltic Sea. Detailed paleogeographic maps of the development of the Littorina Sea, and Lymnaea Sea are displayed, covering especially the Polish Baltic Sea area. Moreover, characteristic geological cross-sections and synthetic stratigraphic sections representing individual areas of the Polish Baltic Sea coast are also shown here. This chapter also presents the characteristic parameters of individual Baltic transgressions that took place in the early, middle, and late Holocene. Such parameters include, for example, the average rate of sea rise of individual transgression cycles, the average rate of coastal erosion along the then spit and cliff areas. Also presented is an analysis of the course of sedimentary processes and paleogeographic transformations at the time of individual transgressive cycles of the Baltic Sea in tabular form, where the range of variability and average values of basic granulometric indices are given, such as average grain diameter (M1), sediment sorting index (M2), skewness index of grain size distribution (M3) and the magnitude of flattening of grain size distribution—kurtosis (M4). In addition, scanning images of quartz grains from selected lithostratigraphic levels showing various microstructures of the morphology of these grains referring to the course of various morphogenetic processes are also presented.  <...>