Description
This summer, I travelled up to the Haughton Impact Structure on Devon Island, Nunavut. The crater is about 23 km across, and formed from a meteorite impact about 39 million years ago.
While most of the impact structure is barren, filled with rubble that has been broken up by the freezing and thawing of ice, this one part of the crater is filled with ancient river mud, allowing water to pool and life to thrive. Nonetheless, freeze-thaw effects are still occurring! Here, we see ice-wedge polygons; patterned ground resulting from the ground being churned by seasonal melting and freezing of water in the soil.
In this photo we are using an ILRIS terrestrial laser scanner to capture the shape of the terrain. The scanner fires lasers at the ground from a distance, and measures the signals returned to the machine. This enables us to make 3D images of the ground at a millimetre to centimetre scale, which is fantastic for characterizing how the seasonal ice processes are affecting the ground!
Each scan takes between 20-40 minutes to complete, which gives us a nice break to enjoy the beautiful landscapes in Canada's north.
Taken By
Elise Harrington
Taken On
July 28, 2016
Tagged
polygons
terrain
lidar
ice-wedge
periglacial
cracks
nunavut
devon
island
haughton
Assignments
Field equipment
