Ice-flow indicators

A better understanding of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet flow history is important for designing, implementing, and interpreting geochemical and mineralogical data from drift prospecting surveys. To aid this, a compilation of ice-flow indicators digitally captured from published and unpublished surficial geology, terrain, glacial features, and bedrock geology maps has been produced for British Columbia and Yukon.

Open File 2020-03 is the most recent compilation and consists of 152,980 ice-flow indicators across British Columbia and Yukon. Building on ice-flow indicator compilations for British Columbia and Yukon by Arnold et al. (2016), this database illustrates major ice-flow directions for the Canadian sector of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet during the Late Pleistocene. A total of 506 ice-flow features in British Columbia have been added to the compilation from 25 bedrock geology maps. The data were derived from published and unpublished surficial geology, terrain, bedrock geology, and glacial feature maps.

All features are classified into a common legend using definitions and symbols outlined by Deblonde et al. (2018). Symbol orientations are those of the original authors (Appendix 1). However, we did not reconcile discrepancies in azimuth as reported by individual authors, and adjacent features with opposing orientations may be artifacts. Data density is largely a function of the original scale of mapping with larger-scale mapping being more likely to produce higher densities of features.

This compilation will be updated and available for download as new ice-flow indicators are mapped.

The current version of is downloadable here.