PRELIMINARY MAPPING OF GLACIAL LANDFORMS IN NORTHEAST OHIO FROM SATELLITE IMAGERY AND DIGITAL ELEVATION MODELS

Northeast Ohio is a dynamic landscape that comprises rolling hills, morainal ridges, and large meltwater channels. The Grand River and Cuyahoga Lobes of the Laurentide Ice Sheet created these landforms, part of the Allegheny Plateau, during the last glaciation. This region differs significantly from the flat-lying western plains of western Ohio that are dominated by multiple morainal ridges surrounded by ground moraine and lake plains. This study is the first in the region to integrate both multispectral satellite imagery and Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) in order to map in detail landforms associated with the last glaciation in the region. Experiments with Landsat 7 data have revealed numerous large channels several kilometers across that are previously unmapped. Several of these channels trend in directions oblique to the reconstructed ice flow directions in the region. These are inferred to be meltwater channels. In addition, 1:24,000 scale DEM data for all of NE Ohio have been merged and analyzed using RiverTools and ArcView. Simple slope analysis reveals many large-scale ridges and channels that have not been mapped before. The DEM data and satellite data have been merged to provide a comprehensive understanding of landscape morphology in northeast Ohio.