Holocene
The strath of the Dunbeath Water
Postglacial landforms and processes
Around 15
thousand years ago, the last ice sheet disappeared to leave a barren, scoured
terrain. As temperatures rose rapidly, pioneer plants arrived from the south and
the low ground was soon carpeted with a rich herbaceous cover. For a bleak
thousand years or so, there was a reversion to Ice Age conditions, only arctic
species clung on and the ground was permanently frozen. The amelioration of
climate at the start of the Holocene, around 11 thousand years ago, the pace of
environmental change slackened. The present interglacial has seen many slow
changes in the landscape, with the development of soils, the succession of
vegetation types and the rise of sea level. The steady pace of change has been
interrupted by a sequence of natural disasters, including sudden shifts in
wetness, heavy falls of volcanic ash and extreme storms. Man has been the main
agent of landscape change in the last 5000 years, initially causing the loss of
trees through felling and grazing by domestic animals but later affecting the
entire landscape mosaic of soils, vegetation and peat development.