• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Greenland; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.631.1671; http://www.geus.dk/publications/bull/nr17/nr17_p57-60.pdf

Geological maps are of vital importance for documenting and advancing geological knowledge and they are a prerequi-site for any meaningful evaluation of economic resources. In Greenland, mapping is taking place on the mainland – that for two centuries has been the traditional exploration target – and offshore, where only in the last decades has hydrocar-bon exploration moved to the continental shelves. Greenland with its 2 166 000 km2 is the largest island in the world. However, the land is overwhelmed by ice. A cen-tral ice sheet – the Inland Ice – blankets some 81 % of the country reducing rock outcrop to a coastal fringe 0 to 300 km wide (Fig. 1). The continental shelves comprise a little more than twice the area of this fringe, c. 830 000 km2. This preamble serves to emphasise that Greenland’s three physiographic units – exposed fringe, offshore and Inland Ice