Hofmann, Felix Martin; Vorwerg, Leo; Witschel, Robert (2025): Glacial landforms around the boundary between the central and northern Black Forest, south-western Germany [dataset]. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.983336

The aim of data collection was the reconstruction of the chronology and extent of the Late Pleistocene glaciation around the boundary between the central and northern Black Forest. This research has been undertaken as part of the 'Chronology of the last glaciation of low mountainous areas in Central Europe' project (funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)). This project is granted to Felix Martin Hofmann (see https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/534739108?language=en, last access: 13 June 2025). As a first step towards comprehensive glacier reconstruction, glacial geomorphological mapping according to present-day standard in the field of glacial geomorphology must be undertaken, allowing for the selection of suitable targets for dating campaigns. Previous cirque and moraine mapping led to valuable datasets but the adopted approach for the acquisition of data does not comply with up-to-date approaches in geomorphological mapping. Hence, a mapping campaign was undertaken to critically evaluate previous work on the region of interest to achieve the greatest possible accuracy during mapping. The acquired data represent the base of a manuscript which has been submitted to the Journal of Geomorphology for consideration for publication.

The acquired data are geodata, digitised from field maps. These geodata represent cirques, initial cirques, moraines, and moraine crests in the study region:

• Glacial cirques (Glaswaldsee_cirques_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)

• Initial glacial cirques (Glaswaldsee_initial_cirques_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)

• Moraine crests (Glaswaldsee_moraine_crests_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)

• Moraines (Glaswaldsee_moraines_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)

These are provided as ESRI shapefiles which can be easily opened and inspected with common geographical information system (GIS) software, such as QGIS (QGIS Development Team, 2024). Cirques, initial cirques, and moraine crests are represented as polylines, whilst the moraines are polygons. In addition, the dataset contains an ESRI shapefile (Glaswaldsee_Limit_study_region_ETRS89UTM32N.shp), representing the study region. Note that the coordinate reference system of all geodata is as follows: EPSG 25832: ETRS89 / UTM Zone 32N (https://epsg.io/25832, last access: 6 February 2025).

Data collection began in June 2024 CE, starting with the identification of potential glacial landforms with the aid of derivatives of a high-resolution digital elevation model. Several field campaigns were undertaken to verify the results in the field. Data collection ended in May 2025 CE.

Data collection was undertaken in a region (covering 64 km2) around the boundary between the central and northern Black Forest in south-western Germany. The minimum and maximum easting and northing (ETRS 1989 UTM Zone 32N) are as follows:

easting_min = 443000

easting_max = 451000

northing_min = 5362000

northing_max =5370000

Data acquisition, i.e., the mapping of glacial landforms followed the common holistic approach in glacial geomorphology (e.g., Di Costanzo & Hofmann, 2016; Chandler & Lukas, 2017; Hofmann et al., 2020), involving both the interpretation of derivatives of a high-resolution digital elevation model of the study region, the DGM025 (xy-resolution of 0.25 m; vertical accuracy of 0.15 m; LGL, 2021) of LGL, the Baden-Württemberg State Agency for Geoinformation and Land Development, and extensive field surveys. Since red relief image maps (RRIMs) proved to be useful for the mapping of the glacial record in the southern Black Forest (Hofmann & Preusser, 2025) and elsewhere (Köse et al., 2021, 2022; Altınay et al., 2022), a RRIM was established for the whole study region with the QGIS software (QGIS Development Team, 2024). Establishing the RRIM required generating raster files, representing the positive and negative openness (Yokoyama et al., 2002). Note that openness is a measure for the degree of dominance or enclosure of a location on an irregular terrain surface (Yokoyama et al., 2002). These raster files were derived with the relief visualization toolbox (RVT; Kokalj & Somrak, 2019) for QGIS, available at https://rvt-py.readthedocs.io/en/latest/rvtfor_qgis.html (last access: 27 February 2024).

The subsequent calculation of differential openness (Chiba et al., 2008) was based on the following equation:

(positive openness – negative openness)/2

Raster files representing the topographic slope and differential openness were finally blended with the 'multiply' option in QGIS. Candidates for glacial landforms were detected in QGIS.

Potential glacial landforms were then directly targeted during extensive field surveys and marked on print-out versions of the RRIM with superimposed contour lines (1:5000 scale). If available, exposures on ice-marginal landforms were inspected. The geomorphological field maps were finally digitised.

File descriptions:

Glacial cirques (Glaswaldsee_cirques_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)

Initial glacial cirques (Glaswaldsee_initial_cirques_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)

Moraine crests (Glaswaldsee_moraine_crests_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)

Moraines (Glaswaldsee_moraines_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)

Limit of the study region (Glaswaldsee_Limit_study_region_ETRS89UTM32N.shp)