Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada.
██ Nunavut
██ Northwest Territories
██ Greenland
A satellite image of the northern segment of Ellesmere Island,
Nunavut.
Greenland is to the east.
The first European to sight the island was William Baffin, in 1616. It was named in 1852 by Edward Inglefield's expedition after Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere. The American expedition led by Augustus Greely in 1881 crossed the island from east to west.
More than one-fifth of the island is protected as Quttinirpaaq National Park, which includes seven fjords and a variety of glaciers. Barbeau Peak, the highest mountain in Nunavut (2,616 m) is located in the British Empire Range on Ellesmere Island. The most northern mountain range in the world, the United States Range is located in the northeast region of the island. The northern lobe of the island is called Grant Land.
Large portions (80,000 km² or roughly 41%) 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. Along the northwest coast of Ellesmere Island are some ice shelves, including the Ward Hunt ice shelf which experienced major breakup during summer 2002.
There are three settlements on Ellesmere Island: Alert, Eureka, and Grise Fiord. Politically, it is part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region.
Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert is the northernmost settlement in the world. With the end of the Cold War and the advent of new technologies allowing for remote interpretation of data, the overwintering population has been reduced to 50.
Eureka, which is the second northernmost settlement in the world, consists of three areas, the "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.
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