Arctic Volcanism
by Thomas Birchall (UNIS), Paul Heckmann (UiT), Cheng-Cheng Wang (UiB).
Three major magmatic events: the Sibirian Traps, the High Arctic Large Igneous Province (HALIP) and the North Atlantic Igneous Province (NAIP) in the Arctic region are introduced in the following. These events are classified as large igneous provinces (LIBs), periods during Earth’s history when large volumes of magma (> 0.1 million km3) have been produced and erupted over a wide area in a relative short period of time (c. 1-5 Myr), driving by large mantle-derived thermal and material fluxes into the shallow crust, independent of regional plate tectonics prior to emplacement (Coffin & Eldholm, 1994; Svensen, et al., 2009). The LIBs presented here are mainly discussed in terms of their timing, composition, geochemistry, origin and formation as well as climatic related impacts. This essay also includes studies based on outcrops in Svalbard, where evidences of numerous Arctic volcanic events and their effects can be traced and correlated (Fig. 1).
