This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2009) |
Jones Sound | |
---|---|
Coordinates | 76°N086°W / 76°N 86°W |
Basin countries | Canada |
Settlements | Grise Fiord |
Jones Sound [1] is a waterway in Qikiqtaaluk, Nunavut, Canada. It lies between Devon Island and the southern end of Ellesmere Island. At its northwestern end it is linked by several channels to Norwegian Bay; at its eastern end it opens via Glacier Strait into Baffin Bay. The hamlet of Grise Fiord was established on the south shore Ellesmere Island in 1953, partly to assert Canadian sovereignty in the high Arctic.
The first known European to sight the sound was the English explorer William Baffin in 1616 who named it after one of his patrons. The next European to pass it was John Ross in 1818.
Ellesmere Island is Canada's northernmost and third largest island, and the tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of 196,236 km2 (75,767 sq mi), slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total length of the island is 830 km (520 mi).
Frobisher Bay is an inlet of the Davis Strait in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. It is located in the southeastern corner of Baffin Island. Its length is about 230 km (140 mi) and its width varies from about 40 km (25 mi) at its outlet into the Labrador Sea to roughly 20 km (12 mi) towards its inner end.
Baffin Bay, located between Baffin Island and the west coast of Greenland, is defined by the International Hydrographic Organization as a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is sometimes considered a sea of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is connected to the Atlantic via Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea. The narrower Nares Strait connects Baffin Bay with the Arctic Ocean. The bay is not navigable most of the year because of the ice cover and high density of floating ice and icebergs in the open areas. However, a polynya of about 80,000 km2 (31,000 sq mi), known as the North Water, opens in summer on the north near Smith Sound. Most of the aquatic life of the bay is concentrated near that region.
Devon Island is an island in Canada and the largest uninhabited island in the world. It is located in Baffin Bay, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is one of the largest members of the Arctic Archipelago, the second-largest of the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Canada's sixth-largest island, and the 27th-largest island in the world. It has an area of 55,247 km2 (21,331 sq mi). The bedrock is Precambrian gneiss and Paleozoic siltstones and shales. The highest point is the Devon Ice Cap at 1,920 m (6,300 ft) which is part of the Arctic Cordillera. Devon Island contains several small mountain ranges, such as the Treuter Mountains, Haddington Range and the Cunningham Mountains. The notable similarity of its surface to that of Mars has attracted interest from scientists.
Nares Strait is a waterway between Ellesmere Island and Greenland that connects the northern part of Baffin Bay in the Atlantic Ocean with the Lincoln Sea in the Arctic Ocean. From south to north, the strait includes Smith Sound, Kane Basin, Kennedy Channel, Hall Basin and Robeson Channel. Nares Strait has a nearly permanent current from the north, powered by the Beaufort Gyre, making it harder to traverse for ships coming from the south.
Smith Sound is an uninhabited Arctic sea passage between Greenland and Canada's northernmost island, Ellesmere Island. It links Baffin Bay with Kane Basin and forms part of the Nares Strait.
Kane Basin is an Arctic waterway lying between Greenland and Canada's northernmost island, Ellesmere Island. It links Smith Sound to Kennedy Channel and forms part of Nares Strait. It is approximately 180 kilometres in length and 130 km at its widest.
Sir Edward Augustus Inglefield was a Royal Navy officer who led one of the searches for the missing Arctic explorer John Franklin during the 1850s. In doing so, his expedition charted previously unexplored areas along the northern Canadian coastline, including Baffin Bay, Smith Sound and Lancaster Sound.
The Arctic Cordillera is a terrestrial ecozone in northern Canada characterized by a vast, deeply dissected chain of mountain ranges extending along the northeastern flank of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago from Ellesmere Island to the northeasternmost part of the Labrador Peninsula in northern Labrador and northern Quebec, Canada. It spans most of the eastern coast of Nunavut with high glaciated peaks rising through ice fields and some of Canada's largest ice caps, including the Penny Ice Cap on Baffin Island. It is bounded to the east by Baffin Bay, Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea while its northern portion is bounded by the Arctic Ocean.
The Parry Channel is a natural waterway through the central Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Its eastern two-thirds lie in the territory of Nunavut, while its western third lies in the Northwest Territories. It runs east to west, connecting Baffin Bay in the east with the Beaufort Sea in the west. Its eastern end is the only practical entrance to the Northwest Passage. Its western end would be a natural exit from the archipelago were it not filled with ice. The channel separates the Queen Elizabeth Islands to the north from the rest of Nunavut.
Brae Bay is an Arctic waterway in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located in Baffin Bay by northern Devon Island. Directly to the north is the Inuit community of Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island.
The Glacier Strait is a natural waterway through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago within Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It separates Ellesmere Island from Coburg Island. To the north-east it opens into Baffin Bay, and to the south-west into the Jones Sound.
Foulk Fjord is a fjord in Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland.
Avannaata is a municipality of Greenland created on 1 January 2018 from the bulk of the former Qaasuitsup municipality. It encompasses an area of 522,700 km2 and has 10,726 inhabitants.
The Canadian Arctic Rift System is a major North American geological structure extending from the Labrador Sea in the southeast through Davis Strait, Baffin Bay and the Arctic Archipelago in the northwest. It consists of a series of interconnected rifts that formed during the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Extensional stresses along the entire length of the rift system have resulted in a variety of tectonic features, including grabens, half-grabens, basins and faults.
The Makinson Inlet is an inlet in Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located in the southeastern shore of Ellesmere Island and opens eastwards to Baffin Bay between Boger Point to the north and Cape Stokes to the south. To the west is Bowman Island and Piliravijuk Bay, and to the south-west Bentham Fiord.
Grise Fiord is a waterway on Ellesmere Island, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. Grise Fiord means "pig inlet" in Norwegian. Otto Sverdrup from Norway named it so during an expedition around 1900 because he thought the walrus in the area sounded like pigs. It feeds into Jones Sound and out into Baffin Bay. The Inuit community of Grise Fiord, the northernmost civilian settlement in Canada, is located at the south end of the fiord.