CASE 21 Nordaustlandet (Svalbard)
Report of the project:
Between July 15 to August 15 2019, the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) carried out the geoscientific expedition CASE 21 to Nordaustlandet in the North-East of the Svalbard Archipelago. Six scientists of BGR, Dartmouth College (USA) and the universities of Oxford (UK) und Yale (USA) as well as two wildlife monitors participated in the expedition.
Working area CASE 21 (red box)
Source: BGR
Main target of the field work was the pre-Devonian, Caledonian basement that occurs in this region. There is an ongoing debate, at what time and under what circumstances the different crustal fragments or terranes of Svalbard amalgamated. Also, the pre-Devonian provenance of the Svalbard terranes is not well understood.
To better understand the structural, geological and geochronological relations of the Caledonian basement units of Svalbard with rocks of other regions in the Arctic (East Greenland, Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Alaska, Siberia), particularly age determinations and provenance analyses of detrital zircons are of major importance.
Neoproterozoic sediments at Murchisonfjorden, west coast of Nordaustlandet
Source: Karsten Piepjohn
The studies involved the following thematic complexes:
i) stratigraphic-sedimentological investigations of Neoproterozoic to Palaeozoic sedimentary sequences and provenance studies of detrital zircons in comparison to coeval rocks in East Greenland;
ii) petrology and geochronology of Caledonian intrusions, migmatites and metamorphic series;
iii) structural geology and relationships of Caledonian units;
iv) structural geology and age dating of Palaeogene fault zones (Eureakan) and thermochronological studies.