Ice-flow and meltwater landform assemblages in the Gulf of Bothnia

The Gulf of Bothnia is a shallow, elongate basin dividing Sweden and Finland, and is located in the centre of the terrain formerly occupied by the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet (FIS). It is considered to have hosted a variety of different glaci-dynamic environments during the evolution of the FIS, but direct glacial geological or geomorphological evidence from the Gulf itself is almost entirely lacking. Recent acquisition of high-resolution multibeam data enables direct investigation of the basin for the first time. These data reveal a wealth of glacial landforms in the Gulf of Bothnia including glacial lineations, ribbed moraine, eskers, meltwater channels, moraines, crevasse-squeeze ridges and iceberg ploughmarks with a variety of different morphologies. Distinct landform assemblages record multiple ice-flow events or phases of differing glaci-dynamic character. Two contrasting glacial landform assemblages are presented from the western and northern Bothnian Sea.