Geophysical Characteristics

Abstract

Abstract The first measurements of gravity in Arctic Canada were made on Melville Island in 1819-1820 (Sabine, 1821). Gravity measurements in the Arctic did not resume until 1957 when five gravity control stations were established by the Canadian Government (Bancroft, 1958), and in 1958 about 200 gravity observations were made over Gilman Glacier in northeastern Ellesmere Island (Weber, 1961). The same year, as a contribution to the International Geophysical Year (IGY), a subtense bar and gravity traverse was carried out from Clements Markham Inlet on the Arctic coast across the United States Range to Archer Fiord on Kennedy Channel (Weber, 1961). In 1958 the Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP) was established, in the then Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, to coordinate most of the scientific studies carried out in the Arctic by the Canadian Government. From 1960, under the aegis of the PCSP, systematic gravity surveys have been carried out in the Arctic by the Dominion Observatory (later renamed the Earth Physics Branch [EPB], of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, and now part of the Geological Survey of Canada) primarily over the relatively flat areas of the Innuitian Region and adjacent continental margin (Sobczak, 1963; Sobczak et al., 1963; Picklyk, 1969; Sobczak and Weber, 1970; Sobczak and Stephens, 1974; Sobczak and Sweeney, 1978). Except for small areas completed in the southern, central, and northern parts of Ellesmere Island, gravity surveys of the mountainous areas of Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere islands have been deferred until reliable elevations can be