The Geographical Journal, Vol. 27: Including the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society; January to June, 1906 (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from The Geographical Journal, Vol. 27: Including the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society; January to June, 1906

All undiscovered Arctic land probably rises from the continental shelves, just as all discovered Arctic land does. There can scarcely be any land rising out of an ocean with a depth of 2000 fathoms.

The question of the continental shelves and of the bathymetrical features of the North Polar sea has been considered in great detail by Dr. Nansen in his last volume; and his conclusions have been carefully summarized by Prof. Spencer in the April number of the American Geologist (vol. My main object now is to bring their conclusions to the notice of English geographers.

We learn that all along the coast of Siberia, from Alaska to Franz Josef Land, the width of the continental shelf is nearly uniform, with a general depth of less than 100 fathoms. The soundings have revealed deep submarine valleys opening towards the polar sea. This, however, is not the case on the shelf along the Siberian coast. Nansen accounts for the absence of these valleys by the coast-wise distribution of sedi ment brought down by the great rivers, which has filled them up.

In the Kara and Barents seas there are many of these submarine ravines or valleys, and the whole bottom appears to have been elevated above the sea-level, probably at some not very remote geological period.

Spitsbergen and Franz Josef are on the outer edge of the shelf, there being a width of only 30 miles to the north before the deep ocean is reached. Here the depths are irregular, because the platform is cut by valleys running north from the Barents sea.

We know much less of the width and depth of the shelf to the north of Greenland, Ellesmere island, and the Parry archipelago. We have the sounding taken by Sir Albert Markham at his furthest north, 30 miles from the land, in 70 fathoms. From the characteristic of narrow shelves in front of high lands, from the absence of land for 100 miles, and from the depth, Prof. Spencer infers that the edge of the continental shelf was here nearly reached by Markham, and actually crossed by Peary.

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