Geology of the Soviet Arctic: Kola Peninsula to Lena River

Abstract

This chapter covers the geology of the western Soviet Arctic, extending from the Norwegian and Finnish borders on the west to the Lena River delta on the east. The original plan was to describe this vast region in three separately authored chapters. Members of the Institute of Arctic Geology (niiga or cevmorgeo) in Leningrad were invited to write these three chapters. In the beginning of 1978, these promised papers were not forthcoming, so the editors decided to synthesize the geology of the region from the most recently published Soviet literature. Fortunately, since the Second Arctic Geology Symposium held in 1970, the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park has routinely exchanged literature with the Soviet Institute of Arctic Geology. Using these data and our combined ability to assemble, translate, and assess Soviet literature, we attempt here to describe the geology of the western Soviet Arctic. Severe time limitations and spotty regional and topical data have made the subject coverage in this chapter somewhat uneven. Inaccuracies in translation and interpretation are also inevitable, and thus we have assembled a list of key references that are especially oriented to an English-speaking reader who may want to see the original data. The geology of the Kara, Barents, and Laptev Shelf Seas and the adjacent Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean has been synthesized by Demenitskaya and Hunkins (1971). The geology of this area has also been reviewed by both Soviet and western geologists in the Proceedings of the Second Arctic Geology Symposium (Pitcher, 1973). Since then, very few new data have been published on the marine geology of the Arctic Ocean bordering the U.S.S.R.