Introduction to the Circumpolar World: Module 1

This module introduces students to a course, called The Circumpolar World, and to the interdisciplinary study of this fascinating part of the globe. After a brief explanation of the six major learning objectives, the module goes on to describe the approach taken in the course, an approach that emphasizes that while the circumpolar north has often been viewed as a distant, exotic place, it can also be viewed more intimately, more familiarly. The module then introduces one of the course's key learning aids, a map of the region, and then defines some of the terms used to refer to the world's northernmost places. After covering some of the historical forces that have shaped the region and its peoples, the module concludes with a discussion of what interdisciplinary study is and why it is so important. Educational levels: High school, Undergraduate lower division

Circum-Arctic Late Tertiary/Early Pleistocene Stratigraphy And Environments - A Preface

...During the 1980s the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) initiated a program of joint workshops and cooperative field excursions. The first meeting took place in Calgary, Alberta, in 1984. It dealt with correlation of Quaternary deposits in northwestern North America, but touched on the Tertiary. A second GSC/USGS workshop in early 1987 concerned the Quaternary history of interior basins of Alaska and Canada, but once again the Tertiary became an item of discussion because some of the basins contain a thick sequence of Pliocene and Miocene sediments. It was apparent from the questions that arose at these meetings that there was a need for a dedicated forum on the late Tertiary. The authors organized and convened a workshop with that theme in Denver, Colorado, in October 1987. The papers in this special issue are based on presentations and discussions at that meeting. ..

Structural and Stratigraphic Studies of the Northern Ellesmere Ice Shelf

Report complementary to Hattersley-Smith and others' (AB. No 40304). Ice cores obtained near Ward Hunt Island (83 05 N, 75 W) and on trips along the coast showed four ice types composing the shelf: iced firn, glacier, lake, and sea ice. The thick primary portion of the shelf seems to be composed stratigraphically of three major ice units. The uppermost consisting of granular iced firn untouched by sea water, with associated lenses of lake ice, is separated by a dirt layer from the middle unit, similarly composed but soaked by migrating sea water. Evidence indicates the lowest unit to be glacier ice (or sea ice interfingered with glacier or lake ice) upon which the iced firn accumulates. The process is briefly described

Beaufort Formation (Late Tertiary) as Seen from Prince Patrick Island, Arctic Canada

The Beaufort Formation, in its type area on Prince Patrick Island, is a single lithostratigraphic unit, a few tens of metres thick, consisting of unlithified sandy deposits of braided rivers. Organic beds in the sand have yielded more than 200 species of plants and insects and probably originated during the Pliocene, when the area supported coniferous forest. This Beaufort unit forms the thin eastern edge of a northwest-thickening wedge of sand and gravel beneath the western part of the island. These largely unexposed beds, up to several hundred metres thick, include the Beaufort unit and perhaps other older or younger deposits. On the islands northeast and southwest of Prince Patrick Island (Meighen Island to Banks Island), the name Beaufort Formation has been applied to similar deposits of late Tertiary age. Most recorded Beaufort beds on these islands are stratigraphically and paleontologically equivalent to the "type" Beaufort, but a few sites that have been called Beaufort (such as Duck Hawk Bluffs and the lower unit at Ballast Brook, on Banks Island) differ stratigraphically and paleontologically from the "type" Beaufort. This paper recommends that these deposits (probably middle Miocene) and others like them be assigned new stratigraphic names and not be included in the Beaufort Formation as now defined. Informal names Mary Sachs gravel (Duck Hawk Bluffs) and Ballast Brook beds are proposed as an initial step. Formal use of the name Beaufort Formation should be restricted to the western Arctic Islands.