Geology of Hans Island and adjacent parts of Kennedy Channel, northwest Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) and northern Nunavut (Canada)

• Image 1
• Image 2
• Image 3
• Image 4

Résumé n'est pas disponible en français Hans Island lies in the middle of Kennedy Channel, a segment of Nares Strait which is the submarine valley that lies between eastern Ellesmere Island in northernmost Nunavut and coastal northwest Greenland. This island is the exposed part of a glacially-sculptured and, mostly, submerged bedrock hill that rises to a height of 168 m above sea level from channel sea floor that locally exceeds 400m depth. Other partly or entirely submerged bedrock hills are located elsewhere in Kennedy Channel. The largest and closest of these is associated with Franklin Ø which is located 20 km southwest of Hans Island. Bedrock of Hans Island is unmetamorphosed fossiliferous limestone, laid down in warm shallow seas during mid-Silurian time, about 430 million years ago. These are stratified rocks, about 195 m thick, best exposed in cliffs along the south coast but also on the tilted upland surface of the island. The island is ice-scoured and draped in a discontinuous till veneer comprised of locallyderived limestone gravel and some gneiss and granitoid material, almost certainly derived from a former north northeasterly-flowing valley glacier originating in Greenland. Marine geophysical profiles from the Hans Island region indicate that much of central Kennedy Channel is underlain by gently north-west dipping bedrock strata, not unlike that exposed on western Washington Land in northwest Greenland. The thickness of undeformed strata, down to the base of the Lower Cambrian, probably exceeds 3000 m. In contrast, northeastern Ellesmere Island is a Cenozoic mountain belt featuring giant mapscale folds in deformed Neoproterozoic to Devonian and Paleogene strata and a Paleogene array of sinistral strike slip and reverse faults. Commodities that might be considered for exploration purposes in the Hans Island and central Kennedy Channel region include sediment-hosted zinc, lead, copper and hydrocarbons. However, the potential for a commercial resource is not considered significant.... show more