Glacial geomorphology of the Kola Peninsula and Russian Lapland

Abstract

At present, there remains uncertainty surrounding the glacial history of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet on the Kola Peninsula and Russian Lapland, northwest Arctic Russia. This is attributed to the lack of high-resolution ice sheet-scale geomorphological data in the region. This paper presents 245,997 landforms in a new high-resolution, glacial geomorphological map of the Kola Peninsula and Russian Lapland. Individual landforms were mapped from relief-shaded renditions of the 2 m resolution ArcticDEM alongside 3 m resolution PlanetScope Ortho Scene data in a Geographic Information System (GIS). Digital mapping was accompanied by field mapping in selected areas. The map, which is presented at a scale of 1: 675,000, will form the basis of a palaeoglaciological reconstruction of northwest Arctic Russia that will inform ice sheet dynamics – at both a regional- and ice sheet-scale – and provide an important framework through which numerical ice sheet models can be constrained.

Keywords

• glacial geomorphology
• fennoscandian ice sheet
• kola peninsula
• russian lapland
• arctic russia