CASE – Circum-Arctic Structural Events

Country / Region: Coastal areas of the Arctic Ocean: Arctic Canada (Ellesmere Island), Spitsbergen, North Greenland, Arctic Russia

Begin of project: January 1, 1992

Status of project: September 25, 2019

Outcrops investigated during the CASE-program Source: BGR

The circum-Arctic region has received considerable attention over the past several decades with vigorous debate focused on topics such as mechanisms for opening the Eurasian and Amerasian basins, importance of plume-related magmatism in the development of the Arctic Ocean, and tectonic models for ancient terrane translation along the Arctic margins. Public and political interest in the Arctic has also peaked around controversy regarding resource development and the establishment of firm political boundaries under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The CASE program (Circum-Arctic Structural Events) is an international Polar research effort organized and led by the Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR), Germany, to facilitate land-based geological research.

Initiation of CASE

The CASE-program was initiated in 1988 by Dr. Franz Tessensohn (Estrada et al., 2009, 30 years of terrestrial polar research - a retrospective (PDF, 6 MB)) under the name “Correlation of Alpine Structural Events in Spitsbergen and North Greenland.” After two pre-site surveys in cooperation with the University of Münster in 1988 and 1991, the first BGR expeditions were carried out to Spitsbergen in 1992 (CASE 1) and North Greenland in 1994 (CASE 2). The original study areas were subsequently extended to Ellesmere Island and Siberia, and the CASE program was renamed to “Circum-Arctic Structural Events” in 1998. Since 1992, BGR has organized expeditions to Svalbard, North Greenland, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Yukon North Slope, and Siberia in cooperation with the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), the Yukon Geological Survey (YGS), the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), the Norwegian Polar Institute (NP), the Karpinsky All Russian Geological Research Institute (VSEGEI), and a number of universities and natural museums. The CASE program has therefore provided an inclusive platform for government and university researchers to perform field-based multidisciplinary scientific studies in a very remote part of the world, the results of which inform and compliment offshore geophysical research also sponsored by BGR.

Working areas of the CASE-program Source: BGR

Worldwide cooperations

At the time of this writing, over 53 institutions (surveys, universities, and museums) from Canada, Denmark, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, USA, and Germany have been involved in the CASE-program, with a total of 110 different scientists, including 26 early career researchers, involved in circum-Arctic field research. In addition, fieldwork in the Arctic has been accompanied by CASE-workshops at BGR since 2010, which represents one of the only circum-Arctic terrestrial geology conferences. Research under the banner of the CASE program has included topics such as the late Mesozoic and Cenozoic plate-tectonic reconfiguration of the Arctic, the dating of volcanic ashes and paleoclimate reconstruction of circum-Arctic Paleogene deposits, the development of circum-Arctic Paleozoic–Mesozoic sedimentary basins, the collision of Svalbard/Pearya with the northern margin of Laurentia (Ellesmerian Orogeny), the evolution of the northern passive continental margin of Laurentia, the possible relationships of Caledonian movements from Svalbard across Pearya to the Yukon North Slope, and provenance analyses in Mesozoic, Paleozoic, and Neoproterozoic sedimentary basins. In the upcoming years, the CASE program will focus on the architecture and structural evolution of the North American Arctic continental margin and the evolution of circum-Arctic Neoproterozoic–Paleozoic foldbelts (Caledonides, Timanides, and Grenvillian).

The text was taken from Piepjohn, K., Strauss, J.V., Reinhardt, L., and McClelland, W.C., 2019, Introduction to Circum-Arctic Structural Events: Tectonic Evolution of the Arctic Margins and Trans-Arctic Links with Adjacent Orogens, in Piepjohn, K., Strauss, J.V., Reinhardt, L., and McClelland, W.C., eds., Circum-Arctic Structural Events: Tectonic Evolution of the Arctic Margins and Trans-Arctic Links with Adjacent Orogens: Boulder, Colorado, Geological Society of America Special Paper 541, p. 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1130/2019.2541(01).

Project contributions:

• CASE 16 Ellesmere Island (Smith Sound, Canadian Arctic)
• CASE 17 Isfjorden & CASE 18 Mosselhalvøya (Svalbard)
• CASE 19 Pearya (Ellesmere Island)
• CASE 20 Northeast Greenland
• CASE 21 Nordaustlandet (Svalbard)
• Little CASE 2016 Banks Island
• Little CASE 2018 Spitzbergen
• Little CASE 2022 Spitzbergen
• The CASE projects (Circum-Arctic Structural Events) of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources
• Volcanism in the Canadian Arctic and North Greenland related to the opening of the Arctic Ocean
• Volcanism in the Canadian Arctic and North Greenland related to the opening of the Arctic Ocean

Partner:

Map indicating cooperating institutions of the CASE-program Source: BGR

• Aarhus University, Denmark
• AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland
• A.P. Karpinsky Russian Geological Research Institute (VSEGEI), St. Petersburg, Russia
• Brandon University, Canada
• Cambridge Arctic Shelf Programme (CASP), Cambridge, UK
• Colorado School of Mines, Golden, USA
• Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
• Danish Cadastre Office, Copenhagen, Denmark
• Danish Lithosphere Centre, Copenhagen, Denmark
• Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA
• Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
• Geological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
• Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), Calgary, Canada
• Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), Copenhagen, Denmark
• Geological Survey of Norway (NGU), Trondheim, Norway
• Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Germany
• Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
• Komi Science Center, Syktyvkar, Russia
• Leibnitz Universität Hannover, Germany
• Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
• Memorial University, St. John´s, Canada
• Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Germany
• Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway
• Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP), Ottawa, Resolute Bay, Canada
• Polar Marine Geological Research Expedition (PMGRE), St. Petersburg, Russia
• Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada
• Senckenberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen, Dresden, Germany
• Sevmorneftegeofisika (SMNG), Murmansk, Russia
• Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yakutsk, Russia
• Sorbonne University, Paris, France
• Station Nord, Denmark
• Stockholm University, Sweden
• Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (SNSK), Longyearbyen, Norway
• United Institute of Geology, Geophysics and Mineralogy (UIGGM), Novosibirsk, Russia
• University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), Longyearbyen, Norway
• University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
• University of Bremen, Germany
• University of Calgary, Canada
• University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• University of Greenwich, London, UK
• University of Idaho, Moscow, USA
• University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA
• University of Lyon, France
• University of Ottawa, Canada
• University of Oxford, UK
• University of Reading, UK
• University of Sasketchewan, Canada
• University of Siena, Italy
• University of Toronto, Canada
• University of Warsaw, Poland
• Uppsala University, Sweden
• Villum Research Station, Denmark
• VNII Okeangeologia, St. Petersburg, Russia
• Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
• Yale University, New Haven, US
• Yukon Geological Survey (YGS), Whitehorse, Canada
• Zavaritsky Institute of Geology and Geochemistry, Ekaterinburg, Russia