Recent Geology of Spitzbergen

Abstract

The Spitzbergen archipelago consists of many islands upon a submerged plateau. The largest, known as West Spitzbergen, is not far from 300 miles long from north to south, and its southern point, South Cape, is in N. L. 760 20', about 150 miles north from the outlying Bear or Cherry Island. The western coast is indented by bays extending inland 20-80 miles. The surface, as seen from the western side, is a succession of plateaux, 300-900 feet near the coast, and rising to 1,6oo feet farther inland, with irregular peaks, 2,000-4,000 feet high, scattered over it. The climate of the region in middle Tertiary times was not more severe than that of our latitude, and familiar types of tertiary deciduous trees, described by Heer and later by Nathorst, occur abundantly at a locality about 8 or o10 miles south from Icefiord. The rainfall up to a comparatively recent period must have been abundant to bring about the baseleveling of the area and afterward to cut the deep valleys, filled in later times by the glaciers. The rainfall now must be insignificant, as during the very brief summer the temperature seldom rises above 40 C. In West Spitzbergen, glaciers begin at a few miles north from South Cape and, at Horn Bay, several come down to the water, some of which seem to reach back to the inland ice north from that bay. On Recherche Bay, a branch of Bell Sound, and about 90 miles from South Cape, two fine glaciers remain: one on the west side coming down from Bell Mountain, 4 or 5 miles away, and another on the southeast, which extends southward to the high inland ice. Between these is a deep valley, in whose lower portion no ice remains. Northward to Icefiord, 20 or 25 miles, ice is present in notable quantity on the upland, but reaches into few of the valleys, many of which are open from the sea almost to the plateau. On the northwesterly side of Icefiord, a vast glacier, beginning at 6 or 7 miles from the sea, extends almost unbroken along the coast from Safe Harbor to Cape