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

Clark, CD, Ely, JC, Greenwood, SL, Hughes, ALC, Meehan, R, Barr, Iestyn, Bateman, MD, Bradwell, T, Doole, J, Evans, DJA, Jordan, CJ, Monteys, X, Pellicer, XM and Sheehy, M (2017) BRITICE Glacial Map, version 2: a map and GIS database of glacial landforms of the last British-Irish Ice Sheet. Boreas, 47 (1). 11-e8. ISSN 0300-9483

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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 relevantglacial geomorphological evidence into a freely available GIS geodatabase and map (Clarket al. 2004: Boreas 33, 359).New high-resolution digital elevation models, of the land and seabed, have become available casting the glaciallandform record of the British Isles in a new light and highlighting the shortcomings of the V.1 BRITICE compilation.Herewe present awholesale revision of the evidence, onshore and offshore, to produce BRITICE version 2, which nowalso 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 170 000 geospatially referenced andattributed 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, rochesmoutonnees, whalebacks), glacial erratics, eskers, meltwater channels (subglacial, lateral, proglacial and tunnelvalleys), moraines, trimlines, cirques, trough-mouth fans and evidence defining ice-dammed lakes. The increasedvolume 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 editsto improve geo-locational accuracy (available as GIS data and PDF maps); and (iii) a cartographically generalizedmap to provide an overviewof the distribution and types offeaturesat the ice-sheet scale that can be printed at A0 papersize at a 1:1 250 000 scale. All GIS data, the maps (as PDFs) and a bibliography of all published sources are availablefor download from: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/staff/clark_chris/britice.