Little CASE 2018 Spitzbergen
Report of the project:
From 11th of July to 31st of July 2018, Nikola Koglin (BGR) was invited by the University Uppsala and the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków to take part in an expedition to northwestern Spitsbergen. In total, 14 scientists from BGR, AGH University of Science and Technology (AGH-UST) Kraków, Polish Academy of Science (PAS) Kraków, Norsk Polarinstitutt (NPI) Tromsø, University of Iowa, Uppsala University and Slovak Academy of Science were involved in this expedition, which partly took place in the frame of the Arctic BGR programme CASE.
Working area Little CASE 2018 (red box)
Source: BGR
Field work took place in two different areas: on the Biskayarhalvøya in the farthest northwest of Spitsbergen and on the southern coast of St. Jonsfjorden in WNW Spitsbergen. All field work was done on foot. During the first part, the scientists were transported to the shore by rubber boats from a ship that was anchored in Raudfjorden. The second part of the expedition in St. Jonsfjorden was operated from a base camp.
Camp at the southern coast of St. Jonsfjorden
Source: BGR
Main aims of the expedition were the ultra high-pressure and high-pressure metamorphic rocks of the “Vestgötabreen High-Pressure Metamorphic Complex” and the “Richarddalen Complex”. More than 500 million years ago, the protoliths of these rocks – basalts, gabbros, etc. – were dragged down in a subduction zone to depths of more than 35 km. In these depths, the rocks were transformed by extremely high pressure into eclogite and blueschist. They are found nowadays on the surface due to later exhumation processes. In combination with greenschist and serpentinite, which represent former ocean floor and mantle rocks and are found together with the eclogite and blueschist, such rocks can give information about the formation of the ocean floor and the following subduction processes in Cambrian times. The correlation with similar rocks in northern Ellesmere Island, Canada, helps in reconstructing the plate tectonic processes in Palaeozoic times and are of major importance for the reconstruction of the opening of the Arctic Ocean.