Sediments and Topography of Kane Basin l 



By Elazar Uchupi 

 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 



Introduction 



Kane Basin, located between Greenland and 

 Ellesmere Island, has an area of about 27,000 

 km 2 , approximately the size of the State of New 

 Jersey. With the exception of a few scattered 

 soundings, no data on the submarine geology of 

 the area are available. Sediment samples from 

 USCGC Evergreen described in this report are the 

 first that have been collected from the region. 



Kane Basin was first explored by the Second 

 Grinnell Expedition under the command of 

 Elisha Kent Kane. The destination of this ex- 

 pedition was the northernmost penetrable point of 

 Baffin Bay from which a search for the missing 

 vessels of Sir John Franklin was to be attempted. 

 Kane and the other members of the expedition 

 sailed as far north as 78°45' N. aboard the brig 

 Advance before they were stopped by the ice. 

 During their stay in the region, from the fall of 

 1853 to the spring of 1855, the coasts of Kane 

 Basin were charted and Kennedy Channel and 

 Humboldt Glacier were discovered (fig. 48). In 

 addition, meteorological, magnetic, astronomical, 

 tidal, geological, and botanical observations were 

 made and the animal and eskimo life of the area 

 were investigated (Kane, 1856, 1857a, 1857b, 1858, 

 1859, and 1860). In May 1855 Advance, still 

 trapped in the ice, was abandoned and the party 

 reached Upernavik in south Greenland (Latitude 

 73° N.) in 83 days where they were found by a 

 Government expedition under the command of 

 Lieut. H. J. Hartstene. 



Geologic Setting 



Imposing sea-cliifs hundreds of meters high 

 border most of Kane Basin. On the east side, 

 Humboldt Glacier, a 100-meter high and 100- 

 kilometer long feature extending from Cape Agas- 

 siz in the south to Cajie Forbes in the north, di- 

 vides the ice-free Greenland coastal strip in two 



' Woods Hole Oeeanograiihic Institution Contribution 

 No. 1463. 



(figs. 48 and 49). South of the glacier is Ingle- 

 field Land with a relief of 300 to 700 meters along 

 the coast and reaching an elevation of 1,000 meters 

 near the inland ice (Malaurie, 1955). Washington 

 Land, an ice- free 120-kilometer wide plateau, north 

 of Humboldt Glacier is bordered on its seaward 

 side by an escarpment hundreds of meters high. 

 Along the Ellesmere Island side of Kane Basin the 

 cliffs are incised by seven rather narrow fjords 

 that trend in an east-west direction and extend 

 inland for nearly 100 kilometers. The remarkably 

 linear coast along the Kane Basin and the region 

 to the north and south suggests that the east coast 

 of Ellesmere Island may be a fault scarp (fig. 50). 

 Wilson (1963) has named this fracture the Weg- 

 ener Fault. Left lateral movement along this 

 fracture supposedly caused Greenland to migrate 

 eastward, separating it from the Canadain Archi- 

 pelago, leading to the formation of Kane Basin 

 and the other basins and channels between Elles- 

 mere Island and Greenland. 



Rocks in the region range in age from Precam- 

 brian to lower Paleozoic. Archean granites, 

 granitic and garnetiferous gneisses and gneissoid 

 quartzites associated with acid and basic igneous 

 rocks occur throughout the area south of Johan 

 Peninsula in Ellesmere Island and Inglefield Land 

 in Greenland (Berthelsen, 1961, and Blackadar 

 and Fraser, 1961). In these two areas the Arch- 

 ean rocks are unconformably overlain by Pro- 

 terozoic dolomites, coarse sandstones and sandy 

 conglomerates. From Johan Peninsula to Cape 

 Collinson on the Ellesmere Island side of Kane 

 Basin and from Inglefield Land to Washington 

 Land on the Greenland side, a thin sequence of 

 relatively undisturbed Paleozoic limestones and 

 detrital sedimentary rocks rest unconformably on 

 the Precambrian rocks (Cowie, 1961, and Thor- 

 steinsson and Tozer, 1961). North of Cape Col- 

 linson a thick sequence of Ordovician limestones, 

 dolomites, red, white, and gray sandstones and 

 bituminous shales is exposed along the sea cliffs. 



61 



