Axel Heiberg Island
| Axel Heiberg Island | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Waters | Arctic Ocean |
| Archipelago | Queen Elizabeth Islands |
| Geographical location | 79 ° 45 ′ N , 91 ° 0 ′ W |
 |
|
| length | 380 km |
| width | 220 km |
| surface | 43,178 km² |
| Highest elevation | White Crown Mountain 2120 m |
| Residents | 8 to 12 researchers (only in summer) <1 inh / km² |
| main place | (McGill Station) |
 |
|
Axel Heiberg Island is the seventh largest island in Canada with over 43,000 km² . It is one of the Queen Elizabeth Islands and belongs to the Qikiqtaaluk region in the northeast of the Nunavut Territory .
geography
The island, which is strongly indented by fjords, lies between 78 ° and 81 ° N and 85 ° and 97 ° W. L. on the western flank of Ellesmere Island , from which it is separated by the Eureka and Nansen Sounds . Sverdrup Canal and Massey Sound separate the island in the southwest from Meighen , Amund Ringnes and Cornwall Island .
The Axel-Heiberg-Insel is 43,178 km² and reaches at its highest point, the White Crown Mountain , a height of 2,120 m.
Ice and glaciers cover 14,733 km² of the total area. It is dominated by the Müller ice cap , which is named after the Swiss glaciologist Fritz Müller (1926–1980), and the Steacie ice cap .
The island is uninhabited. The McGill research station, which can comfortably accommodate eight to twelve people, is only occupied in summer .
history
Natural history
In 2006, scientists led by geophysicist John Tarduna from the University of Rochester discovered the well-preserved fossil of an Asiatic turtle, which could be dated to an age of 90 million years, which has shown that temperatures are considerably higher than those on the island today. In 1985, a helicopter pilot and a geologist independently discovered a mummified forest that grew here in the Eocene 40 to 50 million years ago. At the Geodetic Hills there were about 50 cm high and one meter thick tree stumps of the sequoia species Metasequoia glyptostroboides , plus tree trunks of water spruce ( Glyptostrobus ) and other species such as hickory , bald cypress , cedar, pine, spruce, larch, etc. The sequoia trees had a stature height of 50 m and reached an age of a thousand years. By 1883 at the latest, wood finds from Ellesmere Island had become known; In contrast to petrified forests, the wood is still available and therefore combustible.
Paleo-Eskimo, Dorset culture, pre-European history
In the east of the island, artifacts of the Dorset people were discovered from the early 1970s , such as a stone box from the late Dorset phase and traces of ocher , which indicate ritual use. Between 4,000 and 3,700 BP , Paleo-Eskimos hunted musk ox here, a time when the north was rapidly being colonized by them.
Discovery and first expeditions (from 1899)
The European discovery of the island was made by Otto Sverdrup in April 1899 . He named it after the consul Axel Heiberg , a co-founder of the Norwegian brewery Ringnes , which financially supported the polar expedition. On April 11 of the following year he landed for the first time on the island near Cape Southwest, but he did not succeed either on this expedition to prove that it was an island, nor in the next year. In 1900 he tried westward, in 1901 eastward. Evidence was only possible in 1912. The next to reach the island was Robert Peary , who landed on June 26, 1906 at Cape Thomas Hubbard. Nearby, Frederick Cook began his North Pole expedition on March 18, 1908; From here in 1914 Donald McMillan (1874–1970) searched in vain for the nonexistent Crocker Land . In 1926, McMillan attempted to set up an airborne base from Etah in Greenland, but gave up after three weeks. This company caused Canada, which apparently feared American claims, to set up its own expedition for the first time. A crew of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police led by AH Joy explored the island in 1926, again in 1929.
In 1932 an expedition of this police force under Richard Stallworthy was looking for the missing members of the Second Hessian Greenland Expedition , which had consisted of Hans Krüger , Åge Rose Bjare and the Inuit leader Akqioq. They hadn't been heard from for two years. Stallworthy also drove around Axel Heiberg, where the only trace he found at Cape Thomas Hubbard was a message from April 30, 1930. At least three other expeditions took place, like in 1938 and 1940, the latter by the geologist Johannes Troelsen.
Research (since 1955)
Scientific exploration of the island only began in 1955 through Operation Franklin, carried out by the Geological Survey of Canada. The British Army carried out the first mountain ascent in 1972. Led by AJ Muston, the men climbed 48 peaks east of the Middle Fiord. They brought numerous minerals and botanical finds with them.
McGill University in Montreal has been operating a research station on the west coast with a landing pad for STOL aircraft since 1960 . The station consists of several small buildings, can accommodate 8-12 people and is around 8 km from the coast of the Expedition Fjord. Since 1959/60, the glaciological mass balance at White Glacier, an outlet of the Fritz Müller- Icecap, has been measured regularly. This makes it the longest, continuous mass balance series of all Arctic glaciers. The formation and further development of the Arctic compression moraine on the neighboring Thompson Glacier has also been an internationally known research object for 50 years (see literature and illustrations).
literature
- Kälin, M .: The active push moraine of the Thompson Glacier, Axel Heiberg Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago. - Axel Heiberg Island Research Reports, McGill University, Montreal. Glaciology No. 4, 68 pages, 1971.
- King, L. and G. Hell: Photogrammetry and geomorphology of high arctic push moraines, examples from Ellesmere Island, Canadian Arctic and Spitsbergen, Svalbard Archipelago. - Zs. Für Geomorphologie, NF Suppl.-Volume 92, pp. 21-38, 1993.
- Lehmann, R .: Arctic push moraines, a case study of the Thompson Glacier Moraine, Axel Heiberg Island, NWT, Canada. - Zs. For Geomorphology NF, Suppl.-Vol. 86, pp. 161-171, 1992.
- Mills, WJ: Exploring Polar Frontiers. A Historical Encyclopedia , Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2003, Volume 1, pp. 45f.
Web links
- Axel Heiberg Island ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
Remarks
- ↑ The Atlas of Canada - Queen Elizabeth Islands ( Memento from January 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
- ^ Wayne Pollard: Axel Heiberg Island . In: Mark Nuttall (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Arctic . tape 1 . Routledge, New York and London 2003, ISBN 1-57958-436-5 , pp. 181–183 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ Mueller Ice Cap - History ( Memento from July 7, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), Canadian Glacier Inventory Project, accessed on December 17, 2017 (English)
- ↑ Field Stations ( memento from September 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the mcgill arctic geomorphology group, accessed on April 14, 2013
- ^ Shelagh D. Grant: Polar Imperative: A History of Arctic Sovereignty in North America , Vancouver 2010, p. 27.
- ↑ Ansgar Walk: Mummified forest on Axel Heiberg Island (79 ° 55 ′ N / 88 ° 58 ′ W) ( Memento from April 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Études inuit / Inuit studies, 27 (2003), p. 198.
- ↑ Peter C. Lent: Muskoxen and Their Hunters. A history . University of Oklahoma Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-8061-3170-2 , pp. 62 (English, limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ William Robert Morrison: Showing the Flag. The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894-1925 , University of British Columbia Press 1985, pp. 169 f.