
Markus FuchsUniversity of Giessen | JLU
Markus Fuchs
Professor
About
224
Publications
61,127
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
5,624
Citations
Introduction
Markus Fuchs currently works at the Department of Geography, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Markus is interested in Earth Surface Processes and Geomorphology, Quaternary Sciences and Geoarchaeology. He is a specialist in luminescence dating.
Additional affiliations
September 2011 - January 2023
Publications
Publications (224)
Dating glacial and associated sediments is essential to provide a temporal framework for accurate reconstructions of past climatic conditions and for helping to determine the nature and magnitude of glaciation for landscape evolution studies. There are few widely applicable, accurate and precise methods available to date Quaternary landforms and se...
Anthropogenic induced soil erosion has occurred in the Mediterranean during historic and pre historic times, but precise timeframes for periods of past soil erosion are largely missing due to the lack of datable material and suitable dating methods. In this study, optical dating of colluvial sediments from the Phlious Basin, NE Peloponnese, Greece,...
Luminescence dating determines the last exposure to light of quartz and feldspar mineral grains and thus the time a sediment was laid down. Prerequisite is that the sediment grains were sufficiently exposed to light prior to deposition. For eolian deposits this seems a fair assumption, although exceptions may well exist. For other depositional envi...
For routine luminescence dating applications the commonly used Risø readers are bundled with analysis software, such as Viewer or Analyst. These software solutions are appropriate for most of the regular dating and publication jobs, and enable assessment of luminescence characteristics and provide basic statistical data treatment. However, for furt...
In the Late Holocene, both direct and indirect human activity increasingly impacted riverine landscapes and their floodplains, becoming the dominant influence in many European catchments. This transition from a natural- to a human-dominated floodplain system has been demonstrated since at least the Early Middle Ages and has resulted in considerable...
As part of the SPP 2361 “On the way to the Fluvial Anthroposphere”, the project aims at gathering information about timing and dynamics of the complex interplay between man and fluvial environment in the Northern Franconian Alb (Bavaria, Germany). We aim at establishing a regional chronostratigraphic framework based on OSL-dating of fluvial deposit...
Riverine landscapes and their floodplains are subject to constant changes throughout geologic time spans. In the Late Holocene the direct and indirect human activity on the floodplain increases and became the dominant factor in many European catchments, which led to a change from a natural- to a human-dominated floodplain system latest since the Ea...
As part of the DFG SPP 2361 "On the way to the Fluvial Anthroposphere" we investigate the interaction between human activity and the floodplain environment of the Wiesent River, Northern Franconian Alb / Bavaria. The landscape of the catchment has been influenced by human activities at least since the Middle Ages through direct (e.g., water mills)...
Spectroscopic investigations provide important insights into the composition of luminescence emissions relevant to trapped-charge dating of sediments. Accurate wavelength calibration and a correction for the wavelength-dependent detection efficiency of the spectrometer system are crucial to ensure the correct spectrum interpretation and allow for i...
Multiple parabolic sand dune fields formed in Arctic Sweden after the last deglaciation, facilitated by an abundance of loose glaciofluvial sediment, limited vegetation cover and strong winds. Following initial stabilisation, these dunes underwent repeated reworking after fire events, as evidenced by the presence of buried soils, charcoal layers an...
In this article, the authors present the salient archaeological results of a diachronic, interdisciplinary research project on rural settlement and land use in a region of low mountains in southern Germany. Despite clear locational disadvantages, in particular great distances to drinking water sources, archaeological excavations and an extensive da...
This chapter deals with the dating of dust archives, and mainly focuses on loess archives that are the most common terrestrial dust archives. It explores the various methods used for loess dating, including cyclostratigraphy based on observed patterns of variations of physical, chemical, and (or) biological parameters along loess-paleosol sequences...
We present results from a systematic interdisciplinary study on (pre‐)historic rural settlement and landscape development in an upland region of northern Bavaria, Germany. The archaeological and geoarchaeological investigations—supported by radiocarbon dating, optically stimulated luminescence dating, and palaeoecological analysis—were performed to...
The Holocene development of soils and sediments at three sites in the eastern Harz foreland was investigated using field and laboratory methods and integrated into the regional Holocene record of this central European landscape. Apart from early Holocene processes, the history of mid-to late Holocene slope erosionwas found to be closely linked to t...
Spectroscopic investigations provide important insights into the composition of luminescence emissions relevant to trapped-charge dating of sediments. Accurate wavelength calibration and a correction for the wavelength-dependent detection efficiency of the spectrometer system are crucial to ensure the correct spectrum interpretation and allow for i...
The Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2 is considered the coldest, driest and stormiest period during the last Glacial-Interglacial cycle in large parts of Eurasia. This resulted from strongly decreased northern hemisphere temperature and related maximum extension of northern ice sheets that strongly reinforced large-scale circulation modes such as wester...
Following a general trend in paleo-environmental research, a considerable and still growing number of luminescence dating studies have been focusing on sediment archives providing information on environmental conditions beyond the last glacial-interglacial cycle. This trend caused a revival of IRSL-based dating approaches using feldspar minerals. A...
Loess palaeosol sections (LPS) in northern Armenia exhibit at least three alternating loess and pedocomplex units, indicative of an environment changing between erosional/depositional and stable conditions. The LPS they are located in a central key position between loess in Europe, central Asia and the Russian/Ukrainian Plains. Since an accurate ch...
Infrared radiofluorescence (IR-RF) is a technique with the potential to date sediment deposition beyond 1000 Gy. However, the total IR-RF signal is composed of several emissions whose separate characteristics are still poorly understood. We obtained RF emission spectra for two sediment samples dominated by K-feldspar in the wave-
lengths ~600–1000...
The μDose system is a recently developed analytical instrument applying a combined α- and β-sensitive scintillation technique for determining the radioactivity arising from the decay chains of 235U, 238U and 232Th as well as from the decay of 40K. The device was designed to meet the particular requirements of trapped charge dating methods and allow...
Infrared Radiofluorescence (IR-RF) is a relatively new method for dosimetric dating of the depositional timing of sediments. This contribution presents an interlaboratory comparison of IR-RF measurements of sedimentary feldspar from eight laboratories. A comparison of the variability of instrumental background, bleaching, saturation, and initial ri...
The loess-palaeosol section Achajur is part of the Sevkar loess area in north-eastern Armenia and comprises three prominent pedocomplexes with intercalated loess units, probably spanning at least three glacial-interglacial cycles. With its central position between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, the Sevkar loess area serves as important bridge b...
Since the beginning of the Neolithic era (circa 5500 BCE) agriculture became one of the dominant factors of soil erosion. Agriculture, livestock farming, and the clearing of large areas of forest changed the landscape permanently. An ever-changing natural balance challenged its inhabitants, resulting in a complex human-environment relationship repr...
The Negev Highlands (Israel) are characterized by a rich settlement history over the last millennia. To sustain life in this arid environment, measures to collect and store water were introduced. Two types of installations to collect and store runoff water were built in the region: open reservoirs, and more elaborate subterranean rock-cut cisterns....
This paper aims to reconstruct Middle Bronze Age (MBA; 1600–1250 BCE) land use practices in the northwestern Alpine foreland (SW Germany, Hegau). We used a multi-proxy approach including the analysis of biogeochemical proxies from colluvial deposits and buried topsoils in the surroundings of the well-documented settlement site of Anselfingen and of...
The µDose-system is a recently developed analytical instrument applying a combined α- and β-sensitive scintillation technique for determining the radioactivity arising from the decay chains of 235U, 238U and 232Th as well as from the decay of 40K. The device was designed to meet the particular requirements of trapped charge dating methods and allow...
Luminescence dating methods on natural minerals such as quartz and feldspars are indispensable for establishing chronologies in Quaternary Science. Commonly applied sediment dating methods are optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL). In 1999, Trautmann et al. (1999a, b) proposed a new related technique ca...
This paper aims to reconstruct Middle Bronze Age (MBA) land use practices in the north-western Alpine foreland (SW Germany, Hegau). We used a multi-proxy approach including the biogeochemical proxies from colluvial deposits in the surrounding of the well-documented settlement site of Anselfingen and offsite pollen data from two peat bogs. This appr...
Colluvial deposits are considered as sedimentary archives for the reconstruction of the sedimentation and climate history, past pedogenesis and phases of land use. However, the human contribution to the formation of colluvial deposits is mainly based on assumptions derived from the local chronostratigraphy and archaeology. For this reason, there is...
New stratigraphic (including GPR profiles) and chronological data provide a detailed understanding of the emplacement of aeolian sands in the Aquitaine basin (SW France). The main phase of coversand deposition ranges from 25 ka to 14 ka. The ages cluster around two periods that match Heinrich events (He-2 and He-1) and reflect increased sedimentati...
In the present study, we performed gastropod analyses on loess–palaeosol sequences from northeast Armenia (Southern Caucasia) covering at least three glacial–interglacial cycles. The elaborated ecostratigraphy shows significant patterns of species composition related to the succession of pedocomplexes and loess, respectively. Pedocomplexes included...
The global character of the millennial-scale climate variability associated with the Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) events in Greenland has been well-established for the last glacial cycle. Mainly due to the sparsity of reliable data, however, the spatial coherence of corresponding variability during the penultimate cycle is less clear. New investigations...
The μDose system was developed to allow the measurement of environmental levels of natural radioactive isotopes. The system records α and β particles along with four decay pairs arising from successive decays of ²¹⁴Bi/²¹⁴Po, ²²⁰Rn/²¹⁶Po, ²¹²Bi/²¹²Po and ²¹⁹Rn/²¹⁵Po. Under the assumption of secular equilibrium, this allows assessing the specific rad...
The global character of the millennial-scale climate variability associated with the Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events in Greenland has been well-established for the last glacial cycle. Mainly due to the sparsity of reliable data, however, the spatial coherence of corresponding variability during the penultimate cycle is less clear. New investigations...
Soil erosion and related sediment deposition caused by climatic variations and human activity are important geomorphic processes in Central Europe during the Holocene. Since the Neolithic Period (c. 5.500 BCE) humans turned natural into cultural landscapes and thus further altered sediment dynamics. In the last decades, many studies have shown the...
This is a reminder to register to the International Symposium on "Loess Deposits as Archives of Environmental Change in the Past" that takes place on September 15 to 22 in Yerevan (Armenia). Beside two conference days there will be the opportunity to join a 5 days or alternatively 3 days field trip with a main focus on the various loess sections/ a...
The present study combines archaeological data with
archaeopedological data from colluvial deposits to infer Neolithic
settlement dynamics between the Baar region, the Black Forest and the Swabian Jura.
A review of the state of archaeological research and an analysis of the
processes leading to the discovery of the Neolithic sites and thereby the
f...
Interpreting paleoenvironmental conditions by means of n-alkane biomarker analyses is challenging because results depend on different influencing factors. Thus, regional calibration of n-alkane patterns is needed because of different plant chemo-taxonomic behavior. We investigated for the first-time leaf wax-derived n-alkane biomarkers from modern...
The poster gives a first overview of different loess and dust sections that have been discovered in the framework of the DFG funded project "Loess in Armenia". All sites, together with a couple of other sections will be visited in the course of the post-conference excursion following the International Symposium on "Loess deposits as archives of env...
While numerous high-resolution studies concerning Last Glacial aeolian sequences are available for Europe, the approach of the penultimate glacial in this geographical area is still poorly developed. In order to bridge this gap, this study focuses on the Bulgarian sequence of Harletz, along the Danube River, where extremely high sedimentation rates...
The $\mu$Dose system was developed to allow the measurement of environmental levels of natural radioactive isotopes. The system records $\alpha$ and $\beta$ particles along with four decay pairs arising from subsequent decays of $^{214}$Bi/$^{214}$Po, $^{220}$Rn/$^{216}$Po, $^{212}$Bi/$^{212}$Po and $^{219}$Rn/$^{215}$Po. Under the assumption of se...
The International Symposium on «Loess Deposits as Archives of Environmental Change in the Past» will take place in September 15th to 23th 2019 in Armenia. The Symposium is organized by the Institute of Geological Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, supported by the Technische Universität Dresden (Department of G...
The Harletz loess‐palaeosol sequence is located in northwestern Bulgaria and represents an important link between well‐studied loess sequences in eastern Romania and further sites to the west of the Carpathians (e.g. Serbia and Hungary). The aim of this study was to establish a chronostratigraphy of the deposits, using various methods of luminescen...
Our 1-day field trip will first lead us to an area south of Mar- burg in the middle reach of the Lahn valley. After an intro- duction to the natural settings of the area, we will visit the gravel quarry of Niederweimar, one of the largest of its kind in Hesse. The gravel quarry exposes three units of gravel which possibly represent the remains of d...
In antiquity, the development of techniques to collect and store water was fundamental to sustain life in arid regions. One way to overcome the problem of water supply in the desert was to construct water reservoirs and cisterns which collect surface runoff during rare rain events. Indeed, open reservoirs and rock‐cut cisterns are widely spread ove...
Colluvial deposits, as the correlate sediments of human-induced soil erosion, depict an excellent archive of land use and landscape history as indicators of human–environment interactions. This study establishes a chronostratigraphy of colluvial deposits and reconstructs past land use dynamics in the Swabian Jura, the Baar and the Black Forest in S...
Stone pavements are typical landforms in arid environments, composed of a monolayer of clasts at the surface, associated with an underlying unit of eolian fines. They represent important paleoenvironmental sediment archives, for which reliable chronostratigraphic age constraints are needed. In a first study on stone pavements from the Mojave Desert...
We discuss the dose recovery behaviour IR-RF from K-rich feldspar extracts from modern-analogue sediment samples. The zero-dose of these samples was previously confirmed by quartz OSL and feldspar IRSL measurements. In our experiments, the IR-RF curve (RFnat) from the naturally bleached sample was taken as a regenerated curve within dose recovery e...
What data can be collected to portray particular land use practices in Bronze Age (∼2200-800 BCE)? And how can the Bronze Age agricultural society be described? Are small-scale movements and local impact on landscape as-certainable for these populations? Can differences and shifts between allegedly favorable and unfavorable regions be identified? T...
The Black Forest is considered to be a rather unfavorable area, having a short vegetation period, low mean annual temperatures, high precipitation, and a pronounced relief. These conditions do not favor agricultural land use and thus it is widely accepted that people only began using the land intensively during the Middle Ages. In this integrated s...
In central Europe, earliest societies started in the Neolithic (c. 5.500 BCE), turning natural landscapes into cultural landscapes which triggered soil erosion, thus further altered sediment dynamics and continually replaced climate as a key factor in controlling sediment fluxes at the catchment scale. Although many studies have shown the importanc...
Loess-palaeosol sequences (LPS) in Armenia represent a new and important sedimentary archive for the Caucasus region, showing great potential for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, with the possibility of closing the gap between loess distributions of E-Ukraine, S-Russia and Iran. The sequences are characterized by an alternation of loess layers,...