Anthropogenic modification of a fjord: Bay of Islands, Newfoundland

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The majority of Newfoundland fjords are relatively pristine. However, the Bay of Islands fjord, site of Corner Brook (Newfoundland's second-largest city with a population of 20 000), shows considerable anthropogenic modification. Submarine slides have been triggered by dock and road construction. Dredge spoil and a scuttled barge litter the seafloor. A large mound of wood chips extending into the Bay of Islands is waste from a paper mill. The Bay of Islands, western Newfoundland, is a fjord bounded at its seaward end by an arcuate submarine moraine (Fig. 1a) up to 100 m thick (Josenhans et al. 1990; Josenhans & Zevenhuizen 1993; Josenhans & Lehman 1999). The moraine formed after retreat of ice that formerly extended far out on the continental shelf (Shaw et al. 2006). The deepest areas of the fjord (295 m) are immediately landward of the shallow (30 m) moraine. The fjord has three principal arms, the largest of which (Humber Arm, Fig. 1a, c), averages 100 m deep and shallows steeply at its head where the Humber River enters. Humber Arm has many of the attributes of fjords elsewhere; it hosts thick glacimarine sediments (Fig. 1b) overlain by postglacial mud (Shaw et al. 2000 …