Ellesmere Island

The first inhabitants of Ellesmere Island were small bands drawn to the area for Peary Caribou, muskox, and marine mammal hunting about 1000-2000 BC.^[2]

As was the case for the Dorset (or Palaeoeskimo) hunters and the pioneering Neoeskimos, the Post-Ruin Island and Late Thule culture Inuit used the Bache Peninsula region extensively both summer and winter until environmental, ecological and possibly social circumstances caused the area to be abandoned. It was the last region in the Canadian High Arctic to be depopulated during the "Little Ice Age", attesting to its general economic importance as part of the Smith Sound culture sphere of which it was occasionally a part and sometimes the principal settlement component.^[3]

Vikings, likely from the Greenland colonies, reached Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island and Ruin Island during hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit groups.^[4] Unusual structures on Bache peninsula may be the remains of a late-period Dorset stone longhouse.^[5]

The first European to sight the island after the height of the "Little Ice Age" was William Baffin, in 1616; said "Age" lasted until roughly 1850. Ellesmere Island was named in 1852 by Edward Inglefield's expedition after Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere.^[6] The American expedition led by Adolphus Greely in 1881 crossed the island from east to west.^[7] The Greely expedition found fossil forests on Ellesmere Island in the late 1880s. Stenkul Fiord was first explored in 1902 by Per Schei, a member of Otto Sverdrup's 2nd Norwegian Polar Expedition.

Geography

Protected areas

In July 2007, a study noted the disappearance of habitat for waterfowl, invertebrates, and algae on Ellesmere Island. According to John P. Smol of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and Marianne S. V. Douglas of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, warming conditions and evaporation have caused low water levels changes in the chemistry of ponds and wetlands in the area. The researchers noted that "In the 1980s they often needed to wear hip waders to make their way to the ponds...while by 2006 the same areas were dry enough to burn.^[9]

Glaciers and ice caps

Large portions of Ellesmere Island are covered with glaciers and ice, with Manson Icefield and Sydkap in the south; Prince of Wales Icefield and Agassiz Ice Cap along the central-east side of the island, along with substantial ice cover in Northern Ellesmere Island. The northwest coast of Ellesmere Island was covered by a massive, long ice shelf until the 20th century. The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was reduced by 90 percent in the twentieth century due to global warming, leaving the separate Alfred Ernest, Ayles, Milne, Ward Hunt, and Markham Ice Shelves.^[10] A 1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that of ice calved from the Milne and Ayles ice shelves between 1959 and 1974.^[8] The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest remaining section of thick (>10 m, >30 ft) landfast sea ice along the northern coastline of Ellesmere Island, lost of ice in a massive calving in 1961-1962.^[11] It further decreased by 27% in thickness () between 1967 and 1999.^[12]

Paleontology

Schei and later Nathorst^[17] described the Paleocene-Eocene (ca. 55 Ma) fossil forest in the Stenkul Fiord sediments. The Stenkul Fiord site represents a series of deltaic swamp and floodplain forests^[18]. The trees stood for at least 400 years. Individual stumps and stems of >1 m (>3 ft) diameter were abundant. Abundance of Metasequoia and possibly Glyptostrobus trees.

Insect ecology

Ellesmere Island is noted as being the northernmost occurrence of eusocial insects; specifically, the bumblebee Bombus polaris. Interestingly, there is a second species of bumblebee occurring there, Bombus hyperboreus, which is a parasite in the nests of B. polaris.^[20]

Population

In 2006, the population of Ellesmere Island was recorded as 146. There are three settlements on Ellesmere Island including Alert (pop. 5),^[21] Eureka (pop. 0), and Grise Fiord (pop. 141).^[22] Politically, it is part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region.

Eureka, which is the second northernmost settlement in the world, consists of three areas, "Eureka Airport" which includes "Fort Eureka" (the quarters for military personnel maintaining the island's communications equipment), the Environment Canada Weather Station and the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), formally the Arctic Stratospheric Ozone (AStrO) Observatory.