The Tweedsmuir Hills, Scotland, contain excellent examples of glacial landform assemblages (including hummocky moraine) classically associated with a Lateglacial deglaciation (c. 14.7 – 11.7 cal. ka BP) in the UK. Although attracting considerable interest since initially documented in 1855, detailed systematic geomorphological investigations are lacking for this upland region meaning glacier-climate reconstructions in the Tweedsmuir Hills are patchy, outdated and lacking chronological control. Furthermore, the area represents an important geographic locality between ice masses in the Scottish Highlands, English Lake District and Wales which have been the subject of recent landsystems analyses and palaeo-glacier reconstructions. This necessitates an investigation of the glaciation in the Tweedsmuir Hills, using modern mapping and visualisation techniques.

Reconstructing glacier development over large upland areas permits a macro-scale, synoptic, picture of past glacier-climate interactions. Such data are required to refine numerical models used to predict climatic changes, as the majority of such models at present rely on observational climate data covering only relatively short time-spans. This limitation can be overcome through providing palaeo-data from glaciated areas for which no data exists from other proxies. Given the emerging evidence that ice-masses survived, during or throughout the Lateglacial in a number of regions in Scotland, reconstructions for this area will improve the number of palaeo-glacier data points with potential to investigate the wider pattern of Lateglacial ice-mass distribution and climatic gradients across the UK.

This work presents initial findings from geomorphological mapping using a morphostratigraphic approach, indicating a more extensive plateau icefield style of glaciation than previously recognised, with clear within valley landsystem changes and significant differences in sediment transfer between outlets.