Name
Investigation of Canada’s Eastern Arctic with Ocean-Bottom Seismometers (ICE-OBS)
Date & Time
Monday, May 25, 2026, 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Description
The Baffin-Labrador Seaway developed through continental rifting and seafloor spreading between Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic. Although rifting ceased in the mid-Eocene, it left dense networks of faults that host abundant seismicity today, notably including the 1933 Baffin Bay M 7.3 earthquake, which is the largest known earthquake north of the Arctic Circle. Data coverage of the region has been sparse, however, due to the logistic challenges of this remote location. The ICE-OBS project by the National Facility for Seismological Investigations (NFSI), with support from Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), is addressing this using NFSI’s Broadband Ocean Bottom Seismometers (BOBS). In September 2024, 28 BOBS were deployed on a 40 km grid spacing over the most active area of the Baffin Bay Seismic Zone (BBSZ), including the epicentre of the 1933 earthquake. One instrument released prematurely during the winter and rafted under sea ice ~1,500 km to the south, where it surfaced in April 2025 and was eventually recovered in the Labrador Sea. Two other instruments were unresponsive on attempted recovery in September 2025. The remaining 25 BOBS recorded high-quality data, which will lead to improved seismic and tsunami hazard estimates as well as models of the 3D seismic velocity structure of the BBSZ. In a continuous operation, 22 of the instruments were immediately redeployed with ~30 km spacing over the Labrador Sea Seismic Zone, with recovery planned for the fall of 2026. We present an overview of the project and field operations.
Location Name
McInnes Room
Full Address
Dalhousie University
Halifax NS
Canada
Session Type
Poster
Abstract ID
225
Speaker Organization
Dalhousie University
Session Name
S-2
Co-authors
Mladen Nedimović (1), Alexander Plourde (1,2), John Thibodeau (1), Katie Bosman (1), Brian May (3), Stephane Blouin (3), Sean Pecknold (3), Romina Gehrmann (3) (1) Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Dalhousie University, Halifax (2) Natural Resources Canada, Geological Survey of Canada Atlantic, Dartmouth (3) Defence Research and Development Canada - Atlantic, Dartmouth
Presenting Author
Graeme Cairns