Little CASE 2016 Banks Island
Report of the project:
Between July 1 and July 23, 2016, Karsten Piepjohn (BGR) was invited by the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC Calgary) to participate in a geological expedition to Banks Island west of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. In total, four scientists from GSC and BGR participated in the fieldwork, which was partly related to the Arctic BGR programme CASE.
Working area Little CASE 2016 (red boxes)
Source: BGR
Devonian, Cretaceous and Paleogene sedimentary rocks were investigated from two base camps located at Nelson Head in the south and at Polar Bear Cabin (Aulavik National Park) in the north of Banks Island. Besides the investigation of stratigraphic and sedimentological sections, numerous samples were taken for Quaternary geology, paleontology and geochemistry as well as for age determinations (volcanic ash layers). Another important aspect was structural fieldwork, which was carried out on Banks Island for the first time ever, to determine and document possible tectonic events in this area at the continental margin of North America. Before that, Devonian, Cretaceous and Paleogene deposits on Banks Island have been described as being mostly undisturbed und only gently bent into widely spanned anticlines and synclines. However, the new fieldwork here has shown that the deposits are deformed in local areas along NNE-SSW striking faults and afterwards affected by extensional tectonics parallel to the continental margin.
Field work with the helicopter
Source: BGR
The analysis of the structural data indicates that the newly found local tectonic structures on Banks Island can be related to tectonic movements on Spitsbergen, Ellesmere Island and in Yukon North Slope in the Paleogene. These data can possibly be important for the interpretation of the opening of the Arctic Ocean. In the future, based on the scientific results of the expedition „Little CASE – Banks Island“, the structural fieldwork is planned to be extended towards the islands north of Banks Island (western Parry Islands) to better understand the architecture and tectonic evolution of the entire North American continental margin.