Baffin Island
- The Hamlet of Pond Inlet Pond Inlet, located at approximately 72.5 degrees N, overlooks Admirality Inlet as it faces the heavily glaciated mountains of Bylot Island. Pond Inlet's economy gets a boost in the summer months, when tourists (as well as the odd geologist) arrive to experience the whale-watching (narwhal and beluga), birding (large snow goose breeding grounds), fishing (arctic char, yum!), and the magnificent geology.
- Once the sea ice has broken, making the use of dogsleds and skidoos impossible, the helicopter becomes an important mode of transport. Helicopters for arctic research are typically chartered through the Polar Continental Shelf Project, Natural Resources, Canada.
- Travelling by air over the ice-covered Milne Inlet, through the glaciated landscape of Paleoproterozoic and Archean granites and gneisses, on the way to the 1.2 Ga Bylot Supergroup.
- Called the "Rainbow Cliffs", the Society Cliffs Formation at Tay Sound alights in colorful cycles of grey (sub-to-intertidal dolostone), white and yellow (inter-to-supratidal dolostone), and red and green (largely supratidal terrigenous shale).
- To the North, on Bylot Island, shallower water environments prevail and the cliffs are awash in the red colors of supratidal terrigenous shale, marking the tops of peritidal cycles.
- Small columnar stromatolite from the peritidal Society Cliffs Formation. Black material is early diagenetic chert, which in thin section reveals these stromatolites to be composed predominantly of seafloor-precipitated aragonite fans.
- Taking a break from measuring section along Milne Inlet to cool off on a chunk of sea ice that was beached during high tide.
Linda Kah
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
1412 Circle Drive
Knoxville, TN 37996-1410
Phone: (865) 974-6399
Email: lckah@utk.edu