Friday 7 December 2018

Mapping Mountains – Significant Height Revisions – 30-99m Twmpau and Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales


Burry Holms (SS 398 926)

There has been a Significant Height Revision to a hill that is listed in the 30-99m Twmpau and Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales, with the hill’s height, drop, dominance and status confirmed by LIDAR analysis conducted by Myrddyn Phillips.

LIDAR summit image of Burry Holms

The criteria for the two listings that this significant height revision applies to are:

30-99m Twmpau – Welsh hills at or above 30m and below 100m in height that have a minimum 30m of drop, with an accompanying sub list entitled the 30-99m Sub-Twmpau with the criteria for this sub category being all Welsh hills at or above 30m and below 100m in height with 20m or more and below 30m of drop, with the word Twmpau being an acronym standing for thirty welsh metre prominences and upward.
 
Y Trechol – The Dominant Hills of Wales – Welsh P30 hills whose prominence equal or exceed half that of their absolute height.  With the criteria for Lesser Dominant status being those addition Welsh P30 hills whose prominence is 33.33% or more and below 50% of their absolute height.  The list is authored by Myrddyn Phillips with the Introduction to the start of the Mapping Mountains publication of this list appearing on the 3rd December 2015.

The name of the hill is Burry Holms, and as this name implies the hill is a part of an island, and it is adjoined to the Gŵyr group of hills, which are situated in the western part of South Wales (Region C, Sub-Region C1), and is positioned at the western end of the Gŵyr, with the small community of Llangynydd towards the east south-east.

Although the island is not a part of open access land, and as such permission to visit should be sought, there is general acceptance for people to visit, with the nearest public footpath leading to the beach and island to the east on the western part of Broughton Burrows.

When the original Welsh 30-99m P30 list was published on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website this hill was listed with a 35m summit height based on information from David Purchase who had noted a 35m spot height on the Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 map.

Prior to LIDAR analysis the uppermost 30m ring contour on contemporary Ordnance Survey maps had been interpolated, giving an estimated summit height of c 33m.  However, even though the 1:10,000 mapping is prioritised over this interpolated summit height, the 35.1m height produced by LIDAR analysis still comes within the parameters of the Significant Height Revisions used within this page heading, these parameters are:

Extract from the Ordnance Survey Interactive Coverage Map hosted on the Geograph website

The term Significant Height Revisions applies to any listed hill whose interpolated height and Ordnance Survey or Harvey map summit spot height has a 2m or more discrepancy when compared to the survey result produced by the Trimble GeoXH 6000 or analysis of data produced via LIDAR, also included are hills whose summit map data is missing an uppermost ring contour when compared to the data produced by the Trimble or by LIDAR analysis.  As heights on different scaled Ordnance Survey maps are not consistent the height given on the 1:25,000 Explorer map is being prioritised in favour of the 1:50,000 Landranger map for detailing these revisions.

Therefore, this hill’s new summit height is 35.1m and this was produced from LIDAR analysis, this height is only 0.1m higher than the previously listed height of 35m which was derived from the Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 map, but it is 2.1m higher than the interpolated height of c 33m taken from contemporary Ordnance Survey maps.

LIDAR bwlch image of Burry Holms

ills of Wales, and are reproduced below@
The full details for the hill are:

Group:  Gŵyr

Name:  Burry Holms

OS 1:50,000 map:  159

Summit Height (New height):  35.1m (LIDAR)

Summit Grid Reference:  SS 39863 92603 (LIDAR)

Bwlch Height:  0.3m (LIDAR)

Bwlch Grid Reference:  SS 40173 92525 (LIDAR) 
 
Drop:  34.8m (LIDAR)

Dominance:  99.02% (LIDAR)


Myrddyn Phillips (December 2018)





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