BRITICE Glacial Map, version 2: a map and GIS database of glacial landforms of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet

Citation

Clark CD, Ely JC, Greenwood SL, Hughes ALC, Meehan R, Barr ID, Bateman MD, Bradwell T, Doole J, Evans DJA, Monteys X, Pellicer XM & Sheehy M (2018) BRITICE Glacial Map, version 2: a map and GIS database of glacial landforms of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet. Boreas, 47 (1), pp. 11-e8. https://doi.org/10.1111/bor.12273

Abstract
During the last glaciation, most of the British Isles and the surrounding continental shelf were covered by the British–Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS). An earlier compilation from the existing literature (BRITICE version 1) assembled the relevant glacial geomorphological evidence into a freely available GIS geodatabase and map (Clark et al. 2004: Boreas 33, 359). New high-resolution digital elevation models, of the land and seabed, have become available casting the glacial landform record of the British Isles in a new light and highlighting the shortcomings of the V.1 BRITICE compilation. Here we present a wholesale revision of the evidence, onshore and offshore, to produce BRITICE version 2, which now also includes Ireland. All published geomorphological evidence pertinent to the behaviour of the ice sheet is included, up to the census date of December 2015. The revised GIS database contains over 170000 geospatially referenced and attributed elements – an eightfold increase in information from the previous version. The compiled data include: drumlins, ribbed moraine, crag-and-tails, mega-scale glacial lineations, glacially streamlined bedrock (grooves, roches moutonnées, whalebacks), glacial erratics, eskers, meltwater channels (subglacial, lateral, proglacial and tunnel valleys), moraines, trimlines, cirques, trough-mouth fans and evidence defining ice-dammed lakes. The increased volume of features necessitates different map/database products with varying levels of data generalization, namely: (i) an unfiltered GIS database containing all mapping; (ii) a filtered GIS database, resolving data conflicts and with edits to improve geo-locational accuracy (available as GIS data and PDF maps); and (iii) a cartographically generalized map to provide an overview of the distribution and types of features at the ice-sheet scale that can be printed at A0 paper size at a 1:1250000 scale. All GIS data, the maps (as PDFs) and a bibliography of all published sources are available for download from: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/staff/clark_chris/britice.

Notes
Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article at http://www.boreas.dk. Data S1. Reference list for sources used to compile the database. Data S2. Glacial Maps as PDFs: A. Cartographically generalized Glacial Map (poster) for viewing or printing at A0 paper size and scale of 1:1 250 000. B. Three full-resolution PDF maps: Ireland; England, Scotland&Wales; Northern Scotland and offshore. Data S3. Esri GIS shapefiles of features stored as separate layers per theme (e.g. eskers).

Journal
Boreas: Volume 47, Issue 1

People

Dr Tom Bradwell

Senior Lecturer, Biological and Environmental Sciences