CASE 17 Isfjorden & CASE 18 Mosselhalvøya (Svalbard)
Report of the project:
42 scientists, wildlife monitors and logistic staff from Canada, France, Norway, Poland, Sweden, USA and Germany were involved in geoscientific fieldwork between end of June and early September 2015. Two research teams investigated the geology of Spitsbergen under the umbrella of the Arctic BGR research programme CASE. They worked in the Isfjorden area in Central Spitsbergen (CASE 17) and at the northern coast of the island (CASE 18). The terrestrial fieldwork was accompanied by a second team of BGR geophysicists working on board of the research vessel OGS EXPLORA in the northern Barents Sea (PANORAMA).
Working area CASE 17 & 18 (red boxes)
Source: BGR
Scientific goal of the terrestrial geological investigations were the stratigraphy, sedimentology and geochemistry of the post-Devonian sedimentary basin on Svalbard. Especially, the sedimentary sequences of Triassic and Jurassic age were of interest as outcrop analogues to hydrocarbon source rocks known from the Barents Sea. Another subject of the geological work was the reconstruction of the depositional history of the sedimentary units during the last 300 million years. In collaboration with the remote sensing group of BGR, rock samples were collected to correlate them with satellite images of these areas. This method can help to identify possible natural resources from satellites in the future. In addition, geomicrobiological research was carried out to study the ecology of the symbiotic community of the arctic seafloor, which are still poorly known.
Scientific investigations in the Isfjorden area (Ymerbukta)
Source: BGR
To understand the complex geological situation and the complicated plate tectonic evolution of the European Arctic, BGR has carried out simultaneous geoscientific studies onshore (CASE) and offshore (PANORAMA) in summer 2016 for the first time. While the onshore geological structures can be directly observed and investigated, information about the offshore geological structures and submarine strata can only be observed by geophysical methods. Therefore, combined geological onshore and geophysical offshore studies make it possible to better understand the geological evolution of the continental margin of the Barents Sea and the Arctic.