Riss glaciation

The Riss glaciation (German: Riß-Kaltzeit, Riß-Glazial, Riß-Komplex or (obs.) Riß-Eiszeit) is the second youngest glaciation of the epoch in the traditional, quadripartite glacial classification of the Alps. The literature variously dates it to between about 300,000 to 130,000 years ago and 347,000 to 128,000 years ago. It coincides with the Saale glaciation of North Germany. The name goes back to Albrecht Penck and Eduard Brückner who named this cold period after the river Riß in Upper Swabia in their 3 volume work Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter ("The Alps in the Ice Age") published between 1901 and 1909.

The Riss glaciation was defined by Penck and Brückner as the Lower (Niedere) or Younger Old Moraines and Old Terminal Moraines High Terraces (Jüngere Altmoränen und Alt-Endmoränen-Hochterrassen). The type locality lies near Biberach an der Riß in the area of the outer northeastern Rhine Glacier. Results gained from over a century of research show that in almost all glacial periods, several ice advances took place. Today it is reckoned that there were, in toto, at least eight to fifteen ice advances. In the Riss stage, too, there were several advances of the ice sheet, so that it can be divided into interstadials (ice retreats) and stadials (ice advances) and at least one hitherto unnamed warm period.

The present-day division differs from the original Penck classification. The beginning of the Riss ice age, according to the 2002 Stratigraphic Table of Germany, was the end of the Holstein interglacial (known as the Mindel-Riss interglacial in the Alpine Foreland and corresponding to the Samerbe, Thalgut, Praclaux and La Côte). Its end is the start of the Eem interglacial (Riss-Würm interglacial). It is thus roughly contemporaneous with the Saale glaciation of the North German glacial sequence. The Riss is paralleled by MIS 6, 8 and 10, which would therefore place it about 350,000 and 120,000 years ago. Excluded from the Riss glaciation is the so-called Old Riss (Ältere Riß), the time of the greatest ice advance in the Alpine region: today it is referred to as the Haslach-Mindel complex (in Bavaria and Austria), Hoßkirch complex (in Baden-Württemberg) or Great Glaciation in Switzerland.

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