DEPARTMENT FOR GEOGRAPHY
PANGAEA Young Explorers Expedition
Baffin Island / Canada Arctic
Big Walls and Permafrost
Expedition to a changing wilderness
Textbook
Dr. Roswitha Stolz
Department of Geography, University of Munich (LMU)
Baffin Island (Qikiqtaaluk) and Bylot Island
Terra MODIS satellite image, 20.July 2005
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Baffin Island is with an area of 507,000 km2 the largest island in the Arctic Archipelago, and
the 5th largest in the world. It stretches 1200 km from NW to SE and is between 200 und 700
km wide.
Spanning the Arctic Circle, Baffin Island (Qikiqtaaluk) is located in the northeastern regions
of the Canadian Arctic lying south across the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay from Greenland and
north from the entrance into Hudson Bay. The eastern end of the island is separated from the
Ungava Peninsula of the Canadian mainland by the wide Hudson Strait. The western end of
the island is separated from the mainland's Melville Peninsula by the narrow channel of the
Fury and Hecla Strait.
The island was first discovered by Europeans in 1576. It is named after the English navigator
and explorer William Baffin. 1615 he entered the service of the English Muscovy Company
which controlled the whaling around Spitsbergen. Together with Captain Robert Bylot and his
crew they had the order to discover the Northwest Passage.
The topography of the island is highly varied, ranging from the most rugged mountains to the
flattest lowlands of the Canadian Arctic. The raised Canadian Shield forms mountain ranges
along the east coast, while the relief slopes downwards to the west to form a flat-bedded
Paleozoic sedimentary basin.
The ocean around Baffin is dominated by the sea ice. Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, to the
east, are often open during the summer, but the western side is typically closed by ice yearround.
Nunavut's capital, Iqaluit – formerly known as Frobisher Bay – is located on Baffin Island and
is home to 5236 people. Other communities include:
Inuktitut
Name
English Name
Population
Ikpiarjuk
Arctic Bay
646
Kangiqtugaapik Clyde River
785
Kimmirut
Lake Harbour
433
Kingiat
Cape Dorset
1148
Mittimatalik
Pond Inlet
1220
Nanisivik
77
Pannirtuuq
Pangnirtung
1276
Qikiqtarjuaq
Broughton Island
488
(www.oceandots.com).
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Some information about the places we will anchor:
Clyde River
(source: en.wikipedia.org)
Pond Inlet (source: http://www.pondinlet.ca/)
Clyde River (Kangiqtugaapik):
W 068° 31' 00.00"/N 70° 29' 10.00"
Magnetic Variation: W 41°36.2' (2008)
Clyde River, a community of about 800 inhabitants is located on the east coast of Baffin
Island. It is sometimes called the "Gateway to the Great Fiords". It was given its English
name by the Arctic explorer John Ross in 1818. The Inuktitut name, Kangiqtugaapik, means
"Nice Little Inlet". The community is situated on a flood plain on the shores of Patricia Bay at
the entrance to Clyde Inlet, a fiord which extends over 100km inland, almost to the tip of the
Barnes ice cap.
The area is inhabited since about 2000 years. It is believed that the Vikings were the first
Europeans to visit the Clyde River area over 1000 years ago. The first maps were drawn by
Robert Bylot and William Baffin 1616. In the 1820, whalers crossed Greenland to Baffin
Island in search of bowhead whales. As whaling declined early in the 20th century, trading
increased. In 1924, the Hudson's Bay Company opened a trading post was established at
Clyde River.
Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik)
W 077° 58' 08.00"/N 72° 41' 22.00";
Magnetic Variation: W 44°30.2‘ (2008)
The hamlet of Pond Inlet is a community located at the top of Baffin Island, overlooking the
waters of Eclipse Sound with a population of about 1350 people, predominately Inuit. It was
founded in the first half of the 20th century. 1903 a whaling station was built and abandoned
10 years later. 1921 the Hudson’s Bay Company opened a trading station.
The Pond Inlet is an ocean sound which connects the Eclipse Sound with the Baffin Bay.
Eclipse Sound is well known for its populations of Beluga whales, Narwhales (Monodon
monoceros) and Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) which life here during the summer
month
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Geology of Baffin
Baffin Island can be divided into two blocks with contrasting geological histories. The
northern part consists of the ca. 2.5 - 3.0 billion years old Committee belt), which lies within
the geological province of “northern Churchill” or “northern Rae”. This belt extends northeast
for at least 2000 km from southwest of Baker Lake to northwestern Greenland (see Fig.
below). It is characterized by episodic felsic plutonism and greenschist- to upper-amphibolitefacies supracrustal belts.
The ca. 1.9–1.8 billion years old Baffin orogen comprises the rest of Baffin Island, extending
into northern Baffin Island, where it overprints the Committee belt. The Baffin orogen forms
part of the northeastern Trans-Hudson orogen, and extends into western Greenland, Melville
Peninsula, and northern Quebec–Labrador. In addition to these two main lithotectonic units,
Baffin Island has been divided into eight tectonic domains on the basis of differences in
aeromagnetic character, structural features, lithologies, faults and lineaments, and extant
geochronology.
In northern Baffin Island, there is general continuity in lithologies across these domain
boundaries, with the exception of several basins that consist of younger sediments.
Due to its geological history, large areas of Baffin Island consist of Archaen / Precambrian
gneiss and migmatite.
The mountains which belong to the old “Committee Belt” consist of rocks typical for the very
old Canadian shield: a mix of granites, metamorphic gneisses, and ancient sediments.
The mountains in the southern part of the Arctic Cordilliera, formed by the Baffin orogene are
dominated by volcanic rocks in age from 1.2 billion to 65 mio. years
To the west, the landscape drops to the Paleozoic sedimentary basins. Some of the world’s
oldest limestones can be found here. Most of the bedrock is covered by debris from actual
and Pleistocene glaciers
Baffin Island has an outcropping of rocks on a remote shore that may be almost as old as
Earth itself. Scientists from Boston University say that geochemical evidence they've
collected from volcanic rocks suggest that the mantle underneath is around 4.5 billion years
old and has been basically untouched since around the time the Earth was formed. Around
60 million years ago, the volcanic rocks were thrust out to the Earth's surface by a volcanic
eruption, bringing with it geochemical evidence from a more ancient past. After analyzing
samples from the rock, researchers found that the volcanic samples came from a mantle
“reservoir,” as they call it, which they think is between 4.55 and 4.45 billion years old. The
“reservoir” is believed to have the same composition as the mantle that was created after the
formation of the earth's core. Mantle is the layer of the earth that lies right beneath the thin
surface crust
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(source: Jackson & Bergmann, 2000)
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Landscape of Baffin and Bylot Island
The Arctic Cordillera runs along the eastern coast of Baffin Island. Alpine mountains
dominate the range with sharp peaks and ridges, though some flat-topped mountains are
present. The Penny and Barnes ice caps are the largest ice caps on the island and have
smoothly rolling terrain with no breaks in their coverage. North of the Penny ice cap, the
mountain range becomes lower and narrower, disappears into Pond Inlet, and then
reappears on Bylot Island. Lying off the northeastern coast of Baffin Island, Bylot Island is
almost completely covered in an ice cap, which is pierced by mountain peaks and ridges.
The topography of the island is highly varied, ranging from the most rugged mountains to the
flattest lowlands of the Canadian Arctic. Raised Canadian Shield forms mountain ranges
along the east coast, while the relief slopes downwards to the west to form a flat-bedded
Paleozoic sedimentary basin.
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Hall Peninsula and the promontory west of Frobisher Bay are lowlands of Precambrian
gneiss rock. The terrain is rough and rocky, with hills near the coast. Both peninsulas have
permanent ice; the Grinnel glacier on Hall Peninsula calves icebergs into Frobisher Bay.
Brodeur and Borden Peninsulas form a plateau in the northwest. Brodeur Peninsula has a
flat-topped terrain that is cut by deep river valleys and a coast lined with sheer cliffs.
Similarly, Borden Peninsula is composed of flat, dissected rock in the north, but wide river
valleys divide the scarps and flat-topped hills that occupy the south.
The area between the two northern peninsulas and Foxe Peninsula is lowland formed by the
Canadian Shield. The lake-studded coastal strip is a smooth and featureless plateau that
rises gradually in elevation from the west coast to the eastern mountains. The Great Plain of
the Koukdjouak, between Lake Nettiling and Foxe Basin, is broad grassland. South of the
plain, a strip of coastal grassland has grown on old beaches and rises to an elevated plain.
This coastal strip is littered with shallow ponds that are fed by runoff streams. Even farther
south, the Putnam Highlands form a flat, north-facing scarp.
Foxe Peninsula juts out the southwestern corner of Baffin Island. The southern half is high,
rough, and very rocky, but becomes increasingly low, drift-covered, and dotted with rocky
outcroppings towards the northern half.
Due to the heavily glaciations, the arctic climate and the block-faulted geology, a major
landscape feature of Baffin is rock debris
The Baffin Mountains
The Baffin Mountains run along the northeastern shore of the island and are a part of the
Arctic Cordillera. Mount Odin is the highest peak, with an elevation of at least 2,143 m (some
sources say 2,147 m). Another peak of note is Mount Asgard, located in Auyuittuq National
Park, with an elevation of 2,011 m. Mount Thor, with an elevation of 1,675 m, is said to have
the greatest purely vertical drop of any mountain on Earth, at 1,250 m.
The main paths of the Pleistocene glaciers are marked by deep U-shaped valleys, which in
coastal areas merge with steep-sided fjords that may rise over 1 000 m above the sea. Some
of the fjords are reaching a depth of more than 900m. Past and present glaciers have
created bowl-like cirque basins, pyramidal peaks called horns, knife-edged ridges or aretes,
and other landforms. After being depressed into the Earth's crust by the colossal weight of
Pleistocene ice, the landscape is now rising, in places by as much as 30 cm per century.
Raised beaches now well back from existing shorelines attest to this continuing process.
The ice sheets left large deposits of till (an unsorted mixture of clay, gravel and boulders),
especially along the old ice margins, such as the distinct moraine features along eastern
Baffin Island, and on the islands south of the Parry Channel
Mount Asgard
(www.oceandots.com; photographer: Ansgar Walk)
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Mount Thor, commonly regarded as the highest
purely vertical drop on Earth (1,250 m), with an
average angle of 105°
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_ Thor.jpg)
The glaciated areas
Baffin Island has mostly mountain glaciers, some reaching tidewater, but there are also two
ice caps - the Penny and the Barnes. The Penny Ice with a size of about 6,000 km2 rests on
the top of the high mountain region of the Auyuittuq National Park Reserve on the
Cumberland Peninsula with ice tongues flowing in several directions. It forms an almost
2000m high barrier.
The Barnes ice field (also about 6000 km²) lies west of Clyde River like an elongated loaf of
bread on the sloping surface of the Shield, well to the west of the height-of-land. It has been
suggested it is a remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, because it contains Canada’s oldest
ice, some being 20,000y old.
The actual development is dramatic: Between 2004 and 2006, the ice cap was thinning at a
rate of 1 m / year. Actual melting glaciers and ice caps on Baffin Island contribute roughly
half of the sea-level rise from all ice in Arctic Canada, although they comprise only ¼ of the
total ice in the region.
The deglaciation by the Laurentide Ice Sheet occurred generally slowly and steadily
throughout the Holocene to its present margin (Barnes Ice Cap) except for two periods of
rapid retreat: An early interval 12 to 10 ka when outlet glaciers retreated rapidly through
deep fiords and sounds, and a later interval 7 ka when ice over Foxe Basin collapsed. The
Clyde Foreland was already deglaciated ca.14,000 y b.p.
The western part of Baffin Island
The western side of the island is covered largely by tundra. The area is rather flat. It is
covered by numerous small freshwater lakes and ponds – waterfilled kettles, but also
permafrost melting ponds.
The largest lakes are located in the south. Lake Nettilling (5,066 km²) is the largest body of
freshwater in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It is fed by both Amadjuak Lake, the second
largest lake on Baffin Island (3.115 km²), and by numerous streams. Nettilling Lake empties
into the Koukdjuak River, which flows west to discharge into the Foxe Basin. Both lakes
remain frozen for most of the year.
3 fish species are inhabiting the lakes:
- The Arctic Char (Salvelinus alpines, Seesaibling)
- The Ninespine Stickleback (Pungitius pungitius, Stichling)
- The Threespine Stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus).
Especially the tundra around the lakes are the area of large Caribou herds. During spring the
herds are meeting around lake Amadjuak to start their annual migration.
The Climate of Baffin Island
Baffin Island lies in the path of a generally northerly airflow all year round, so like much of
eastern Canada. It is classified as “Polar Tundra Climate – ET” in the Koeppen-Geiger
Classification. This brings very long, cold winters and foggy, cloudy summers. Spring thaw
arrives much later than normal for a position straddling the Arctic Circle; around early June at
Iqaluit in the south-east to early/mid July on the north coast where glaciers run right down to
sea level. Snow, even heavy snow, occurs at any time of the year, although is least likely in
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July and early August. Average annual temperatures at Iqaluit are around −8.5 °C (16.7 °F),
compared with Reykjavík, around 5 °C (41 °F), which is at a similar latitude.
Climate data of Clyde, 70°27'N 68°33'W.
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The average temperature: -11.9 °C
The range of average monthly temperatures is 33.5 °C.
Daily average (°C): July 4.4 °C, August 3.9, September 0.
The warmest average max/ high temperature is 9 °C in July, 7°C in August.
The coolest average min/ low temperature is -33 °C in February.
The highest ever measured temperature in July is 22 °C and in August 20°C
The extreme minimum (lowest ever measured temperature): August -5.6, September
-16°C
Average annual precipitation: 222 mm;
Average August precipitation: 31.4 mm (24mm rainfall, 7.4 mm snow)
The month with the wettest weather is September when on balance 36 mm of rain,
sleet, hail or snow falls across 14 days.
Extreme daily rainfall in August: 37.3mm
Extreme daily snowfall in August: 30.7 mm
There are about 10 days with rainfall in August (> 0.2mm < 5mm) and 4 with snowfall
In September: 4 days with rainfall and 10 days with snowfall
(Source: www.ce.gc.ca/climate_normals)
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