@inbook {5391, title = {An Ultrahigh-Latitude Submarine Channel: Northern Chukchi Rise}, booktitle = {Atlas of Submarine Glacial Landforms: Modern, Quaternary and Ancient.}, volume = {Memoirs}, number = {46}, year = {2016}, month = {12/2016}, pages = {391-392}, publisher = {The Geological Society of London}, organization = {The Geological Society of London}, address = {London, UK}, abstract = {

In support of efforts to establish an extended continental shelf under the auspices of the Law of the Sea Treaty, the United States and other nations have been collecting high-resolution multibeam sonar data in many previously unmapped regions of the Arctic. The U.S. has conducted eight dedicated mapping cruises since 2003 (four in collaboration with Canada) in the mostly ice-covered waters north of Alaska as far north as 83.5o N (Mayer et al., 2010) using the USCG Icebreaker HEALY equipped with a 12-kHz multibeam sonar. Given the generally heavy ice conditions in this region (the ice-edge was typically encountered at about 75o N), most of the surveys involved single multibeam swaths that cover specific targets relevant to a Law of the Sea submission (e.g., the 2500-m isobath or the foot of the slope). During the 2012 record-setting ice minimum, however, we found the ice margin at about 80oN that left large areas of open water available for mapping using more traditional overlapping multibeam survey techniques (Mayer and Armstrong, 2012). The complete coverage surveys carried out during 2012 revealed a remarkable, previously unknown submarine channel (informally named \“Weather Channel\”), most likely, the northern-most submarine channel ever mapped.

}, keywords = {chukchi, submarine channel}, doi = {doi:10.1144/M46.19}, author = {Larry A Mayer and James V. Gardner and Andrew A. Armstrong} }