Franz Josef Land (in the Arctic)
Wednesday, 4. November 2009, 20:07:28
Few people know where Franz Josef Land is, or have ever heard of it. Except for a few Russian army border guards, Franz Josef Land is totally uninhabited. It has no native inhabitants. This is not because the area is small - Its 191 islands have a total area of 16,134 km². It is however situated far up north in the Arctic - and was furthermore completely closed to visitors for roughly 60 years until 1991. It is the most northerly group of islands associated with Eurasia and the Eurasian continental plate. Gakkel Ridge further north is normally seen as on the border zone between The Eurasian and the North American plate.
The situation may change now that the sea ice in the Arctic is melting and icebreakers in a few years perhaps no longer may be needed to reach the islands (Most of the Russian icebreakers in the area are - as far as I know - nuclear icebreakers). Since 2005 cruises are organised from Murmansk.
The archipelago is dominated by Jurassic to Tertiary basalts, but there are also late Triassic and Jurassic sediments lying in near horizontal strata. Fossil tree trunks show that the climate here was warmer in the Mesozoic. The basalt layer above the Jurassic sediments is up to 500 m thick and part of a Large Igneous Province (LIP) formed in the Cretaceous, and called the High Arctic Large Igneous Province (HALIP). This is a major Late Cretaceous large igneous province located in the Arctic. It includes the Ellesmere Island Volcanics, Strand Fiord Formation, Alpha Ridge, Franz Josef Land and Svalbard. These areas were closer to each other in the Cretaceous - since then the spreading ridge (Gakkel Ridge) has brought them further apart. A multitude of tectonic fault lines has broken the archipelago into many relatively small islands. The age of the HALIP volcanic rocks is rather uncertain, but a long period of magmatism between ca. 136 and 80 million years ago has been suggested for the whole LIP.
From 15 June 2009 the archipelago became part of the newly established Russkaya Arktika National Park.
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http://maps.unomaha.edu/maher/svalbard/wwwHALIP/
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http://www.largeigneousprovinces.org/06apr.html
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Google Books - Bradt's Spitsbergen Guide
WIDGETIZE
53north # 4. November 2009, 20:50
nielsol # 5. November 2009, 09:18
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/avetisov/CHAP1.htm
and http://www.ceme.gsras.ru/eng/index.htm
In 1948 a magnitude 6.6 earthquake occurred between Franz Josef Land and Svalbard (82.5°N, 41.5°E). Smaller quakes occur regularly.
cf. (USGS) seismic region “645 FRANZ JOSEF LAND, RUSSIA”
There is a seismic station KHE in Franz Josef Land (80.37°N, 58.03°E).
Ocean bottom seismometer profiles are regularly collected in the Barents sea.