Ellesmere Island

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Image:Map indicating Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada.png

Ellesmere Island (French: Île d'Ellesmere) lying in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, is the most northerly of the Canadian Arctic islands. It comprises an area of 196,235 km² (75,767 square miles), making it the world's tenth largest island and Canada's third largest island.

1 History of Ellesmere Island
2 Geography
3 Population
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History of Ellesmere Island

The first inhabitants of Ellesmere Island were small bands of Inuit drawn to the area for Peary Caribou, muskox, and marine mammal hunting about 1000-2000 BC. <ref>Civilization.ca. Arctic History.</ref>

As was the case for the Dorset (or Palaeoeskimo) hunters and the pioneering Neoeskimos, the Post-Ruin Island and Late Thule culture Inuit used the Bache Peninsula region extensively both summer and winter until environmental, ecological and possibly social circumstances caused the area to be abandoned. It was the last region in the Canadian High Arctic to be depopulated during the "Little Ice Age," attesting to its general economic importance as part of the Smith Sound culture sphere of which it was occasionally a part and sometimes the principal settlement component. <ref>Late Thule culture developments on the central east coast of Ellesmere Island. Schledermann, P. McCullough, K.M. Copenhagen, Denmark : Danish Polar Center, 2003.</ref>

Vikings, likely from the Greenland colonies, reached Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island and Ruin Island during hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit groups. <ref>Inuit-Norse contact in the Smith Sound region / Schledermann, P. McCullough, K.M.</ref> Unusual structures on Bache peninsula may be the remains of a late-period Dorset stone longhouse. <ref>Peter Schlederman, " Eskimo and Viking Finds in the High Arctic ", National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 159, No. 5, May 1981:584 </ref>

The first European to sight the island after the "Little Ice Age," was William Baffin, in 1616. Ellesmere Island was named in 1852 by Edward Inglefield's expedition after Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere. <ref name=canencyc>"Ellesmere Island" from "The Canadian Encyclopedia Online". URL accessed April 7, 2006.</ref> The American expedition led by Adolphus Greely in 1881 crossed the island from east to west. <ref>Dick, Lyle (2001). Muskox Land: Ellesmere Island in the age of contact. University of Calgary Press.</ref> The Greely expedition found fossil forests on Ellesmere Island in the late 1880s. Stenkul Fiord was first explored in 1902 by Per Schei, a member of Otto Sverdrup's 2nd Norwegian Polar Expedition.

[edit] Geography

[edit] Protected areas

More than one-fifth of the island is protected as Quttinirpaaq National Park (formerly Ellesmere Island National Park), which includes seven fjords and a variety of glaciers, as well as Lake Hazen, the world's largest lake north of the Arctic Circle. Barbeau Peak, the highest mountain in Nunavut (2,616 m, 8,593 ft) is located in the British Empire Range on Ellesmere Island. The most northern mountain range in the world, the United States Range is located in the northeast region of the island. The northern lobe of the island is called Grant Land.

[edit] Glaciers and ice caps

Large portions of Ellesmere Island are covered with glaciers and ice, with Manson Icefield and Sydkap in the south; Prince of Wales Icefield and Agassiz Ice Cap along the central-east side of the island, along with substantial ice cover in Northern Ellesmere Island. Along the northwest coast of Ellesmere Island are some ice shelves, including the Ward Hunt ice shelf which experienced major breakup during summer 2002. <ref>NASA Earth Observatory. Breakup of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf.</ref>

[edit] Paleontology

Schei and later Nathorst <ref>Nathorst, A. G. 1915. Tertiare Pflanzenreste Aus Ellesmere-Land. Report of the Second Norwegian Arctic Expedition in the Fram, 1898-1902. The Society of Arts and Sciences of Kristiania. No. 35.</ref> described the Paleocene-Eocene (ca. 55 Ma) fossil forest in the Stenkul Fiord sediments. The Stenkul Fiord site represents a series of deltaic swamp and floodplain forests <ref>Kalkreuth, W.D., C.L. Riediger, D.J. McIntyre, R.J.H. Richardson, M.G. Fowler & D. Marchioni. 1996. Petrological, palynological and geochemical characteristics of Eureka Sound Group coals (Stenkul Fiord, southern Ellesmere Island, Arctic Canada). Int. J. Coal Sci. 30: 151-182.</ref>. The trees stood for at least 400 years. Individual stumps and stems of >1 m (>3 ft) diameter were abundant. Abundance of Metasequoia and possibly Glyptostrobus trees. [1]

In 2006, University of Chicago paleontologist Neil H. Shubin reported the discovery of the fossil of a Paleozoic (ca. 375 Ma) fish, named Tiktaalik roseae, in the former stream beds of Ellesmere Island. The fossil exhibits many characteristics of fish, but also indicates a transitional creature that may be a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs. <ref>Wilford, John Noble. "Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals", The New York Times, 2006, April 6.</ref>

[edit] Population

In 2001, the population of Ellesmere Island was recorded as 168. There are three settlements on Ellesmere Island including Alert, Eureka, and Grise Fiord. Politically, it is part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region.

Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert is the northernmost settlement in the world. With the end of the Cold War and the advent of new technologies allowing for remote interpretation of data, the overwintering population has been reduced to 50.

Eureka, which is the second northernmost settlement in the world, consists of three areas, the "airport" which includes "Fort Eureka" (the quarters for military personnel maintaining the island's communications equipment), the Environment Canada Weather Station and the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), formally the Arctic Stratospheric Ozone (AStrO) Observatory.