Morphology and Quaternary geology of the Thames floodplain around Oxford

This report provides a summary of work undertaken on the geology and morphology of the River Thames floodplain around Oxford in the 13 km reach between Cassington in the northwest and Sandford-on-Thames in the southeast. The major part of the work was constructing 3D models and thickness maps of the valley gravels and alluvium using ArcGIS in conjunction with the 3D visualisation packages GSI3D and GOCAD. This work requires consideration of the available digital terrain models and how man-made features contribute toward the present-day floodplain topography. Surfaces were also constructed for areas of flooding based on their mapped extents from aerial photography. This allowed the interaction between terrain and flooding to be visualised in three dimensions.