The Kansan Glaciation (known in the UK as the Anglian glaciation, Elster glaciation in northern Europe, and the Mindel glaciation in the Alps) was a severe glacial period in the Pleistocene. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located "Glacial" and "Glaciation" redirect here For the geological periods see Glacial period. The Pleistocene ('plaɪstəsin is the epoch from 18 million to 10000 years BP covering the world's recent period The Kansan Glaciation is generally taken as covering the period between 410,000 and 380,000 years before the present. However, with the increasing evidence that glacial maxima are shorter than previously thought, its peak is not clearly known. It is considered that the Kansan Glaciation marks the absolute maximum extent of continental ice sheets in the Quaternary. An ice sheet is a mass of Glacier Ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50000 km² (20000 mile²) Overview The term Quaternary ("fourth" was proposed by Giovanni Arduino in 1759 for alluvial deposits in the Po river valley in northern
The name, generally used only in North America, comes from the evidence that ice sheets reached as far south as Douglas County, Kansas, which is more than 300 miles further south than the limits of maximum glaciation during the Last Glacial Maximum. Douglas County (county code DG) is located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM refers to the time of maximum extent of the Ice sheets during the last Glaciation (the Würm or Wisconsin glaciation) approximately In Europe, ice sheets extended as far south as present-day Slovakia and London. Slovakia (long form Slovak Republic; Slovak:, long form, is a Landlocked country in Central Europe with a population of over five million London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom.
Because the last glacial maximum has buried most evidence of the severe Kansan glaciation, establishing environmental conditions elsewhere during this period is very difficult and can be done only via oceanic studies. These, however, indicate that the jet stream during the Kansan glaciation might have been as much as five degrees further south than it was during the last glacial maximum. Jet streams are fast flowing relatively narrow air currents found at the Tropopause, the transition between the Troposphere (where temperature decreases (This would place it over Sonora state in Mexico and over southern Morocco in Africa). Sonora is one of the 31 federal states of Mexico and is located in the northwest of the country The United Mexican States ( or commonly Mexico (ˈmɛksɪkoʊ () is a federal constitutional Republic in North America. Morocco (المغرب "al-Maghrib" officially the Kingdom of Morocco (المملكة المغربية is a country located in North Africa
These findings suggest strongly that the Kansan glaciation had much greater effects on the distribution of flora and fauna than more recent glacial periods. In Botany, flora ( Plural: floras or florae has two meanings The first meaning flora of an area or of time period, refers to all Fauna is all of the Animal life of any particular region or time Particularly, many small ice-free refugia in North America are likely to have been completely ice-covered during this period, while in West and Central Africa, and southern Australia, most of the hypothesised forest refugia of the last ice age are likely to have lost their forest cover. In biology a refugium (plural refugia is a location of an isolated or Relict Population of a once widespread animal or plant species West Africa or Western Africa is the Westernmost Region of the African Continent. Central Africa is a core Region of the African Continent often considered to include Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. A forest is an area with a high density of Trees There are many definitions of a forest based on various criteria Glaciers probably also occupied much larger areas in the mountains than they did at the last glacial maximum. "Glacial" and "Glaciation" redirect here For the geological periods see Glacial period. (For instance, periglacial features in the Drakensberg suggest glaciation at some period in the Quaternary, but other evidence suggests the mountains were not glaciated during the last glacial). The Drakensberg ( Afrikaans: "Dragon's Mountain" Mountains are the highest mountain range in Southern Africa, rising up to in height
The Amazon rainforest, which retained much of its present extent at the last glacial maximum, may have been constricted to a few refugia during the Kansan glaciation. The Amazon Rainforest (Brazilian Portuguese: Floresta Amazônica or Amazônia; Spanish: Selva Amazónica or Amazonía These refugia have been shown to have the highest biodiversity as well as the wettest climate. Biodiversity is the variation of Life forms within a given Ecosystem, Biome or for the entire Earth. Climate encompasses the temperatures humidity rainfall atmospheric particle count and numerous other meteorogical factors in a given region over long periods of
Ice core carbon dioxide content related to glaciation