River terraces of the Vltava and Labe (Elbe) system, Czech Republic, and their implications for the uplift history of the Bohemian Massif

The record of river terraces and related fluvial deposits from the Vltava and Labe (Elbe) rivers in the Czech Republic is reassessed. Field relations between the Labe terraces and sediments derived from Scandinavian ice sheets, together with biostratigraphy, provide the basis for correlation with the oxygen isotope record from the oceans. The resulting scheme allows an internally consistent correlation of these terraces with their more fragmentary counterparts downstream in Germany. It is also possible to use the terraces to estimate Late Cenozoic uplift in this region, which appears to have followed a similar pattern to other parts of Europe, in particular with a marked increase in uplift rates after ∼0.9 Ma. Previous schemes may, thus, have overestimated the ages of earlier parts of this Middle Pleistocene fluvial sequence in the Bohemian Massif. Analysis of the biostratigraphy reveals many similarities between interglacial faunas from southern England and the Czech Republic and raises questions about some of the previously published correlations.