In rare situations, clastic sediment archives (e.g. marine and partly lake sediments) represent quasi-continuous records of past environmental conditions. In contrast, most sediment archives like fluvial, colluvial or aeolian deposits are discontinuous in their character, mainly due to the nature of the geomorphological processes responsible for their formation or degradation. Since in many regions quasi-continuous archives are absent, non-continuous sediment archives have received increasing attention for palaoeoenvironmental reconstructions during the last years. In addition, non-continuous archives generally yield information about states of geomorphologic activity and stability, which can be traced back to climate change and human or tectonic activity. Breaks in sedimentation or hiatuses need to be understood and can in themselves provide important evidence concerning thresholds. In this context, transitions between different sedimentary phases are of great importance, and comparisons with other archives obligatory.
This session aims to pool contributions from the broad field of earth sciences that deal with different types of non-continuous sedimentary archives, highlighting their possibilities as well as their challenges. Besides case studies from single archives, conceptual and methodical contributions and those with a comparative character are especially welcome in this session.