The map of contemporary vertical crustal movements in Canada

Abstract

For years, the IUGG Interunion Commission on Recent Crustal Movements, voicing the wishes of various groups of geoscientists, has been urging its member countries to produce maps of geologically contemporary (i.e., at most, 100 years in the past) vertical movements in regions under their jurisdiction. In Canada, the work on such a map began early in 1977 in the form of a cooperative project between the Earth Physics Branch of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources and the Department of Surveying Engineering, University of New Brunswick. It had been well known, from previous projects, that data from repeated geodetic levelings in Canada were very sparse, except for those from a few fairly heavily inhabited regions. Thus the main expectation for this project was as complete as possible an inventory of existing releveled segments, tide gage records, and lake level differences.