Previous reconstructions conclude that the southern Black Forest, south-west Germany, temporarily hosted four ice caps during the Late Pleistocene (129 000–11 700 years before present). This work reviews existing studies on glacial landforms north-east of its highest summit, Feldberg (1493 m above sea level), in the light of new observations. Whilst this study largely confirms previous work, we reject and newly describe several glacial landforms.

The Mühlbach series has been given as evidence for a Late Pliocene/Early Pleistocene Aare–Rhine fluvial system in northern Switzerland and southwest Germany. We show that these deposits represent a variety of different units. At the type location, luminescence dating indicates an age of 55 ka, and we interpret the deposits as slope reworking. Beside methodological implications, our studies recommend caution regarding the interpretation of stratigraphic units for which limited data are available.

We determined ¹⁰Be concentrations in moraine boulder surfaces in the southern Black Forest, SW Germany. We applied three independent dating methods to younger lake sediments. With the aid of independent age datasets, we calculated the growth of ¹⁰Be concentrations in moraine boulder surfaces.

This study aims to reconstruct the last glaciation of the southern Black Forest. Ice-marginal positions in this region were, for the first time, directly dated. Glacier retreat from the last glaciation maximum position was probably underway no later than 21 ka. Re-advances and/or standstills of glaciers (no later than 17–16 ka, 15–14 ka and 13 ka) punctuated the subsequent trend towards ice-free conditions.

If topographical obstructions are present in the surroundings of sampling sites, exposure ages of rock surfaces need to be corrected. A toolbox for the ESRI ArcGIS software allows for quantifying topographic shielding with a digital elevation model, but it has only been validated with few field data. In this study, the output of the toolbox is evaluated with a more extensive dataset. If suitable elevation data are chosen, the toolbox provides a sound approach to determine topographic shielding.