Thursday, January 8. 2009
The New Geological Map of the Arctic: Canada leads the way
The new "Geological Map of the Arctic", which was recently released by the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), began as a Russian proposal, submitted in July 2003, for the international consideration of an Atlas
of geoscience maps of the circumpolar Arctic at a scale of 1:5 million. International ministers of natural resources debated the Russian proposal at the 2004 International Geological Congress (IGC) held in Florence and, later that year, the proposal was endorsed by the general assembly of the Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW).
Development of the map and its related database was led by a Canadian team (based in Calgary and Ottawa) with the active participation of scientific and technical staff from the geological surveys of Russia, the United
States, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Project work began in February 2006, and a completed draft version of the map was presented, as intended, in Oslo in August 2008. The map was subsequently finalized and published as GSC Open File 5816 on November 18, 2008.
The "Geological Map of the Arctic" is supported by the first complete, seamless, spatial database of onshore and offshore bedrock geology for approximately half of Russia and Canada (including most of Canada's three territories), most of Alaska and Scandinavia, and the entire Arctic offshore north of 60. Included in the database and portrayed in simplified form on the paper copy map are tens of thousands of spatial objects including: 1) geology units coded for composition, age, temperature of formation, and plate tectonic domain; 2) geological contacts, faults and oceanic spreading ridges, and; 3) selected point data (kimberlites (i.e. the rocks that bring up diamonds from depth), salt and gypsum diapirs, volcanoes, and meteor impact structures.
All
things considered the new "Geological Map of the Arctic", at 1.3 metres in diameter, is the largest and perhaps the most intricate map of its kind ever produced in the 168 year history of the Geological Survey of Canada.
Interested in visiting places listed on the New
Geological Map of the Arctic? Join Adventure Canada and Geologist Nat Rutter on the out of the Northwest Passage Expedition, September 1st - 16th, 2009. For more information please click here.
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