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The Ellesmere Ice Shelves, Nunavut, Canada

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Arctic Ice Shelves and Ice Islands

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Abstract

The Ellesmere ice shelves are located on the northernmost edge of Canada, the northwest coast of Ellesmere Island, facing the perennial pack ice of the Arctic Ocean. They are the only ice shelves in Canada and the most extensive in the entire Arctic. The special nature of the Ellesmere ice shelves extends to the essential role that sea ice has played in their initiation, maintenance and replacement. This chapter describes ice physical features, types and properties that inform the knowledge and understanding of the origin and development of the ice shelves. There are three main sections. The first is a brief history of the scientific investigation of the ice shelves. The second section describes features at the ice surface, including the characteristics and origin of the rolling topography, geological and biological materials, fractures and channels, and ice rises. The third section describes what is found below the ice surface, including the thickness and types of ice. These include marine ice (ancient and modern), formed by freezing of seawater and brackish water, and meteoric ice formed by surface accumulation of superimposed ice and lake ice (both originating as snow), and bottom accretion of freshwater.

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Acknowledgements

This chapter was written while I was on leave from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and working on secondment from 2006 to 2010 at the National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of Polar Programs, Division of Arctic Sciences, under the terms of the Inter-Governmental Personnel Act. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of either NSF or the Office of Naval Research. I am very grateful to Ron Verrall (1941–2014, formerly of the Defence Research Establishment Pacific and Defence Research and Development Canada) for allowing me to use unpublished data on multiyear landfast sea ice topography and thickness in Moss Bay. The SAR images were provided by the Alaska Satellite Facility using data credits made available by NASA. I thank Derek Mueller and Luke Copland for inviting me to write this chapter, and Derek Mueller and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.

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  1. Office of Naval Research, Arctic and Global Prediction Program, Arlington, VA, USA

    Martin O. Jeffries

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  1. Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Luke Copland

  2. Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Derek Mueller

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Jeffries, M.O. (2017). The Ellesmere Ice Shelves, Nunavut, Canada. In: Copland, L., Mueller, D. (eds) Arctic Ice Shelves and Ice Islands. Springer Polar Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1101-0_2

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