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January/February 2010 issue	In this issue Table of Contents IPY: What is IPY? IPY: Kluane research station IPY: Inuit health IPY: Arctic mercury mystery IPY: Arctic scientist IPY: Future Arctic research IPY: Multimedia The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte Mosaic Book Reviews

Map of the cap
Hearts are broken and eyes light up as the Arctic’s geology comes into focus
By Steven Fick and Liana B. Baker

Click map to enlarge

Maps have a way of settling old arguments and creating new ones. Consider this first-of-its-kind Geological Map of the Arctic that reveals what lies beneath the water, ice and snow. The map synthesizes centuries of data gleaned from scientific expeditions, aboriginal knowledge and fieldwork completed in all seven polar nations: Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Near the centre of the map is the contentious Lomonosov Ridge, a series of cliffs, crags and canyons. In 2001, Russia applied to the United Nations for sovereignty of the ridge, arguing that it was part of its land mass. The map shows that Russia has a point, but the country is tens of millions of years too late to make its claim. It turns out that at its birth 61 million years ago, the Lomonosov Ridge (see map below) was connected to the East European Platform. But, says Marc St-Onge of the Geological Survey of Canada, a co-leader of this international mapping project, it’s been “drifting away from that platform longer than the Himalayas have been growing in Southeast Asia,” to where it now sits beneath the North Pole.

Despite the high stakes involved, the geological surveys of the seven polar nations shared their national databases without question. Conflict did arise when it came time to orient the map, as all countries wanted to be the reference point. Luckily, the geologists had a precedent, and a very old one at that: Gerardus Mercator, the Flemish cartographer who produced the first Arctic maps in 1595 and 1606, used Greenwich, England, as his reference. No one was going to object 400 years later.

To prospectors, the map is a treasure trove of knowledge. While no new mineral, gas or oil deposits are revealed, the map holds all the geological clues companies need to identify good places to look. The northernmost parts of Baffin Bay, for example, could harbour natural-gas deposits since its rocks are similar to those in the Beaufort Sea, which has many active gas wells. “That makes a big difference for any exploration company, because where do you start otherwise?” says St-Onge. “This is a first tool.”

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