Arctic Archipelago (Canadian Arctic Archipelago)

The Arctic Archipelago consists of all of Canada’s islands lying north of mainland North America. In total, it includes 94 major islands—that is, islands larger than 50 square miles (130 square kilometers)—and 36,469 minor islands encompassing a total area of 540,500 square miles (1.4 million square kilometers). It includes the second largest high Arctic land area behind only Greenland. Much of this region is typically covered in ice nearly year-round; however, as Earth’s climate warms, the Arctic Archipelago has begun to assume greater importance as a potential trade route and possible source of mineral resources.

Due to its isolation, harsh climate, and lack of significant population centers, the Arctic Archipelago has generally received little attention. However, as the ice melts, the islands have assumed an increasingly prominent role in international politics. Researchers have discovered that this region accounts for one-third of the global volume of land outside the ice sheets. Between 2015 and 2023, the ice decreased by 40 percent, and temperatures reached a record high in the summer months of 2024.

In addition, as the potential benefits of an ice-free ocean become more obvious, Canada has become engaged in international conflicts with other nations over Arctic waterways and the ownership of the Arctic Ocean seafloor, which may hold up to 25 percent of the world’s remaining oil and natural gas reserves.

Background

The Arctic Archipelago only includes islands under Canadian control, and these islands comprise 14 percent of Canada’s total landmass. Geographically, the archipelago is split between the Canadian territories of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. The total population of the Arctic Archipelago is less than twenty thousand, which is mostly made up of a combination of Native Canadians such as the Inuit and members of the Canadian military.

The archipelago is home to six of the world’s thirty largest islands, including Baffin Island, which has a greater land area than the entire United Kingdom. The largest islands of the archipelago are Baffin, Victoria, Ellesmere, Banks, Devon, Axel Heiberg, Melville, and Prince of Wales. Sitting between these islands are massive channels, some of which are covered in ice for all or most of the year. If Greenland and Antarctica are excluded, the Arctic Archipelago accounts for one-third of all land ice in the world.

The Arctic Archipelago extends 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) east to west, and 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) north to south. To its west lies the Beaufort Sea, while the Arctic Ocean borders its north. To the east are the Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, and Greenland. The channels between the islands form the Northwest Passage, a sea route that was formerly impassable for much of the year due to thick ice. During the early era of North American discovery, a possible Northwest Passage assumed mythic proportions as a potential trade route from Europe to Asia that was easier and faster than traveling around the tip of South America. However, explorers found all possible routes to be ice-covered and largely not worth the expense or danger they required. The ill-fated Franklin Expedition of 1845 was one such expedition, which resulted in the deaths of all 129 members of its party.

The eastern islands are more mountainous than those found elsewhere in the archipelago, with some peaks rising to more than 6,500 feet (2,000 meters). They are part of the Canadian Shield, a region roughly surrounding Canada’s Hudson Bay that forms the geologic core of North America and one of the oldest geologic regions on Earth. The Canadian Shield is known to contain rich deposits of diamonds, gold, coal, natural gas, and oil.

Overview

Historically, the Arctic Archipelago has been occupied by the Inuits and their ancestors for nearly four thousand years. The Inuits continue to live on many of the region’s islands. When Canada split the territory of Nunavut from the Northwest Territories in 1999, the town of Iqalut on Baffin Island was made the new territorial capital. Baffin Island has the largest population of any island in the archipelago with thirteen thousand people, and most of the archipelago’s islands are located within Nunavut.

The first European explorers to travel through the region were Martin Frobisher, William Baffin, Robert Bylot, and John Davis, and many places throughout the archipelago have been named after them. Frobisher is credited with being the first Westerner to sail Frobisher Bay in 1576, while Davis explored Davis Strait in 1585. Baffin and Bylot were the first Europeans to site Baffin Bay and Baffin Island in 1616. They further explored such areas as Smith and Lancaster Sounds, which are the eastern openings to the Northwest Passage.

Despite its harsh climate, the Arctic Archipelago is home to a variety of plants and animals. For instance, more than 60 percent of the world’s polar bears are found in the Canadian Arctic, while 75 percent of the world’s narwhal population lives among the islands. The islands are also a major breeding site for a variety of whales, including belugas and bowheads. Other native animals include Arctic foxes, Peary caribou, Arctic hares, lemmings, Arctic wolves, muskox, walruses, and countless species of birds. Most of the plant life is short and hardy due to a harsh climate where temperatures may only rise above freezing for one or two months annually and precipitation is typically less than 15 inches (400 millimeters) per year. The vast majority of plant life on the islands is restricted to such species as lichen, sedges, grasses, mosses, and some short shrubs. On the northernmost islands, night runs continually for a period of three to four months during the winter, while the region has twenty-four hours of daylight for several months in the summer. Many of the islands are covered in permafrost, which may be more than one-third of a mile (550 meters) thick in the northernmost islands.

Canada has assumed a more forceful stance in the twenty-first century over the rights it believes that it is entitled to because it owns the Arctic Archipelago. For example, Canada has increasingly taken a stance that it has sole ownership of the Northwest Passage, while the United States and many European countries have argued that it is an international passage, open to all nations. The debate has important implications as the sea ice thins. In 2013, a Chinese vessel carrying 73,500 tons (66.7 million kilograms) was able to navigate the passage for the first time. Other travel routes such as the Panama Canal are not capable of allowing the passage of such immense cargo ships, meaning that sole control of the Northwest Passage could have enormous financial benefits for Canada.

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