CASE 23 Svalbard
Report of the project:
As part of its CASE program, the BGR carried out new geological and geophysical investigations on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. For six weeks, a team including scientists from the Technical University of Darmstadt as well as from the universities of Hamburg, Hannover, Helsinki and Tromsø participated in the geoscientific research along the west coast of Spitsbergen, along the north coast of Nordaustlandet and around Longyearbyen.
Working area CASE 23 (red box)
Source: BGR
The scientific target of the expedition "CASE 23-Svalbard" was the geological and tectonic history of basement areas older than 450 million years. Previous research has shown that the crystalline provinces of Svalbard are composed of a mosaic of numerous crustal blocks - so-called terranes - whose origin can be assigned to the former continents Baltica and Laurentia.
Motor vessel Ulla Rinman
Source: BGR
In order to get more precise information about the origin and history of the various terranes, the 13-members expedition team carried out extensive studies of the tectonic inventory (including cleavage, folding, fold axes, slickenside lineations, and paleostress analyses) and took samples for age determinations. Another important aspect of the work was petrological investigations and sampling, since such data are lacking for large areas of Svalbard.
For the field work along the west coast of Spitsbergen and in Nordaustlandet , the research team used a chartered motor vessel that was used for transportation and as a mobile base camp. The investigations were supported by drone flights in order to create three-dimensional models of the geological outcrop situation. In addition, a survey was carried out with a helicopter from Longyearbyen for testing new instrumentation for aerogeophysical measurerments under polar conditions.