About

The geological evolution of the Arctic is as long-lived as it is complicated, and this complexity is a function of its time evolution. Over the last 400+ Million years, the Arctic has experienced extreme terrane mobility, massive volcanic events, and the opening and destruction of oceans. These processes have environmental impacts like mountain building, anoxic ocean events, ice-sheet formation, and mass-extinctions.

To study these interactions, the Arctic must be studied as a unique part of a 4-dimensional whole-Earth domain. However, the spatial connections (including vertically, down to the core boundary, and horizontally over 1000s kms over plates), through to their time-dependent evolution are still poorly understood. This is particularly true for the deep mantle connection, e.g. subducted slabs and mantle plumes, which is particularly under-explored for the Arctic. POLARIS aims to honour these scales and processes by linking the geodynamic evolution of the deep mantle and surface Arctic.

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Objectives

Primary objective of POLARIS is to:
Build an integrated geodynamic model of the Arctic back to the start of the Devonian times; with a focus on the interplay of tectonics and whole mantle convection, that can explain magmatism, and significant changes in palaeogeography.

Secondary objectives:

• build digital, self-consistent plate reconstructions back to the Late Paleozoic (419 Ma), embedded in global models,
  
• construct palaeogeographic maps for sub-times,
  
• characterise Arctic subduction processes from surface and mantle (seismic tomography, numerical models),
  
• explore potential plume origins and dynamics of major magmatic events,
  
• evaluate the Arctic contribution to true-polar wander (TPW) episodes, and
  
• engage the community via an interactive website.

You can read more about the context for the project
or jump directly to the three main themes/work-packages of the project :

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Funding

POLARIS is funded by the Norwegian Research Council (Norges Forskningsrådet)
Awarded under the Young Researcher Talent call to Dr Grace E. Shephard for 4 years (Dec 2021-2025). YFF project number 326238. Budget 8 million nok.

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Team

Two core members are funded by the project, but work in collaboration with an international team and are supported by administration at CEED/Uni.Oslo. The team includes experts in geology, marine geophysics, plate tectonics, geodynamics, seismic tomography, and sedimentology.

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