Lake Hazen
| Lake Hazen | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Satellite image with Lake Hazen | ||
| Geographical location | 118 km southwest of Alert | |
| Tributaries | Glaciers of the Eureka Uplands , especially the Henrietta-Nesmith-Glacier and the Gilmour-Glacier | |
| Drain | Ruggles River → Chandler Fjord → Conybeare Fjord → Lady Franklin Bay | |
| Islands | St. John's, Gatter, Clay, Whisler, Dyas | |
| Places on the shore | Hazen Camp | |
| Location close to the shore | Alert (118 km) | |
| Data | ||
| Coordinates | 81 ° 45 '11 " N , 71 ° 2' 55" W | |
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| Altitude above sea level | 158 m | |
| surface | 537.5 km 2 | |
| length | 74 km | |
| width | 12 km | |
| volume | 51.4 km 3 | |
| Maximum depth | 269 m | |
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| Map of the Quttinirpaaq National Park with Lake Hazen | ||
The Lake Hazen ( German Hazensee) is in Quttinirpaaq National Park in the north of the island of Ellesmere . It is the northernmost major lake in Canada .
geography
Hazensee is located in the middle of the polar desert of Ellesmere Island. The Garfield mountain range, which is around 2,500 meters high, stretches along its northern flank, and in the south it is surrounded by the Hazen Plateau, which rises 300 to 1,300 meters. The Hazen Basin consists essentially of carbonate-rich sandstone and fine-grained sediment.
Located at an altitude of 158 meters and with a shore length of 185 km, it stretches from southwest to northeast and in the past was only completely free of ice in particularly warm years. This is now the case almost every year. Its northeast end is about 118 km southwest of Alert . There are several islands in the lake; the largest is St. John's Island, about 7 kilometers long, almost 1 kilometer wide and, like the lake, oriented from southwest to northeast. Other islands are Gatter Island and Clay Island (near the northeast shore) and Whisler Island and Dyas Island (near the south shore).
The lake is fed by the runoff from many ice fields and mostly unnamed glaciers from the surrounding Eureka Upland, including the massive Henrietta Nesmith Glacier (named after the wife of the lake's discoverer, Adolphus Washington Greely ) , which breaks through the Garfield mountain range . The catchment area of the lake covers 4,900 km².
The only outflow is the 22 km long Ruggles River, whose exit from the south-east coast of the lake does not completely ice even at -60 ° C; it flows into the Chandler Fjord, the waters of which flow through the Conybeare Fjord and Lady Franklin Bay to the Nares Strait .
Named tributaries
At the southwest end (from south to north):
- Very River
- Adams River
On the northwest coast (from southwest to northeast):
- Turnstone River
- Henrietta River
- Ptarmigan Creek
- Blister Creek
- Skeleton Creek
- Snow Goose River
- Abbé River
- Cuesta Creek
- Mesa Creek
- Gilman River
At the northeast end (from north to south):
- Turnabout River
- Salor Creek
On the southeast coast (only in the southwest near the southwest end):
- Cobb River
- Traverse River
Climatic conditions
The Hazen Sea is protected in the north by the Garfield Mountain Range and in the south by the Hazen Plateau against the cold polar air currents that sweep across the Queen Elizabeth Islands . Under the additional influence of the midnight sun , which shines on 148 days , its immediate surroundings therefore form a thermal “oasis” that remains frost-free for around 70 days in summer with average midday temperatures of up to 20 ° C. The lake itself is completely frozen for about 10 months, with the ice reaching a thickness between 1.64 and 2.36 meters in winter. Even in summer, 50 to 60% of the lake is often covered with ice, but in particularly warm years the ice cover can completely thaw. This is more and more the case due to global warming , so the lake was ice-free in almost every summer from 2000 to 2017 and the average temperature in the area around the lake increased by 2.5 ° C during this period.
history
About 4,000 years ago, Paleo-Eskimos of the Pre- Dorset culture were the first to come to the Hazensee. Archaeological traces show that they were later followed by people of the Dorset culture and finally the Thule culture .
In 1882, during the First International Polar Year , the then lieutenant and later General Adolphus Washington Greely discovered the lake from the American research station Fort Conger . Greely named him after General William Babcock Hazen (1830-1887), who organized the research expedition.
During the International Geophysical Year (July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958), "Hazen Camp" was set up as a research base on the north shore of the lake near St. John's Island ( location ). Since the region around the lake was not covered by glaciers during the last ice age, pre-ice age organisms were able to survive, which is still of great scientific interest after 1958 .
fauna and Flora
Compared to the surrounding mountains, the Hazensee oasis has developed stronger vegetation and thus also richer fauna. In late July, early August bloom on mats of mosses , lichens , dwarf birch and willow , yellow Arctic poppies , ganzblättrige Avens and red cushion stems lots Leimkrauts .
Musk ox and peary caribou run through the landscape . Arctic hares and lemmings also live here . The plants serve as food for all of them. They in turn feed predators such as arctic wolves , which have been shown to have been found here for more than 1,000 years, and arctic foxes .
Bird species are few and far between in the heart of Ellesmere Island; they breed on the coasts that are more nutritious for them.
There is only one species of fish in the Hazensee, the arctic char , which has grown to an unusual size here.
Tourist notes
The starting point for tours to Hazensee is Tanquary Camp, the base camp at the end of Tanquary Fjord ( location ) 70 kilometers southwest of Hazensee, which Parks Canada maintains as the entrance to the Quttinirpaaq National Park. Tourers usually set out from here to hike to Hazensee on one of the usual routes in eight to twelve days. The return is usually made on a pre-booked charter plane. Sometimes the reverse route is also chosen.
literature
- Miriam Dewar (Ed.): The Nunavut Handbook: Traveling in Canada's Arctic . Ayaya Marketing & Communications, Iqaluit / Ottawa 2004, ISBN 0-9736754-0-3 (English).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e f David R. Gray: Hazen, Lake . In: Mark Nuttall (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Arctic . Routledge, New York and London 2003, ISBN 1-57958-438-1 , pp. 835-836 ( excerpt (Google) ).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h G. Köck, D. Muir, F. Yang, X. Wang, C. Talbot, N. Gantner, D. Moser: Bathymetry and Sediment Geochemistry of Lake Hazen (Quttinirpaaq National Park, Ellesmere Iceland, Nunavut) (PDF; 896 kB). In: Arctic , Vol. 65, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 56-66.
- ↑ a b Climate change is changing even large lakes at science@orf.at, July 21, 2017