CASE Outcrop Data

The dataset comprises the locations of outcrops with respective information on the lithology, stratigraphy, rock age and tectonic data collected during the CASE expeditions. The data attributes include stereographic projections and sketches of tectonic structures derived from the outcrop data. At the end of the 1980s, BGR initiated the research program Circum-Arctic Structural Events (CASE) to reconstruct the plate tectonic processes during the evolution of the Arctic Ocean using terrestrial data from the surrounding continental margins. One of the scientific questions of the CASE programme is as simple as it is complex: How did the Arctic Ocean, this large basin between the Eurasian and North American continental plates, develop? There are still no conclusive answers to this question in terms of plate tectonics. In contrast to the marine expeditions of geophysicists in the Arctic Ocean, geologists on land along the various coastal areas of the Arctic Ocean can directly touch, examine and map rocks, structures, folds and fault zones and determine the respective ages of the movements. This makes it possible to directly compare rock units and deformation zones on different continental plates and thus also to reconstruct when these plates collided, how long they remained next to each other and when and how they separated again. Since the inception of BGR’s Arctic research, the primary focus and research areas have been along the continental margins between Spitsbergen and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago via Greenland, to the Yukon North Slope on the border with Alaska. On the opposite side of the Arctic Ocean, there have been expeditions to Yakutia, the mainland areas near the Laptev Sea, the New Siberian Islands and to the Polar Ural with Russian partners. An important method for the interpretation of the geological evolution of the Arctic is the examination of tectonic structures (faults, folds, cleavage etc.), the determination of the kinematics and the age of the tectonic movements.