The Arctic Archipelago, also known as the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, groups together all islands lying to the north of the Canadian continental mainland excluding Greenland. Situated in the northern extremity of North America and covering about, this group of 36,563 islands in the Arctic Sea comprises much of the territory of Northern Canada—most of Nunavut and part of the Northwest Territories. The Canadian Arctic Archipelago is showing some effects of global warming, with some computer estimates determining that melting there will contribute to the rise in sea levels by 2100.
History
were based on the explorations in the 1570s by Martin Frobisher. Canadian sovereignty was originally only over island portions that drained into Foxe Basin, Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait. Canadian sovereignty over all of the islands was not established until the 1880 transfer by Britain to Canada of the remaining islands. The District of Franklin – established in 1895 – comprised almost all of the archipelago; the district was dissolved upon the creation of Nunavut in 1999. Canada claims all the waterways of the Northwestern Passages as Canadian Internal Waters; however, the United States and most other maritime countries view these as international waters. Disagreement over the passages' status has raised Canadian concerns about environmental enforcement, national security, and general sovereignty. Hans Island, in the Nares Strait east of Ellesmere Island, is a territory currently contested between Canada and Denmark.
Geography
The archipelago extends some longitudinally and from the mainland to Cape Columbia, the northernmost point on Ellesmere Island. It is bounded on the west by the Beaufort Sea; on the northwest by the Arctic Ocean; on the east by Greenland, Baffin Bay and Davis Strait; and on the south by Hudson Bay and the Canadian mainland. The various islands are separated from each other and the continental mainland by a series of waterways collectively known as the Northwestern Passages. Two large peninsulas, Boothia and Melville, extend northward from the mainland. The archipelago consists of 36,563 islands, of which 94 are classified as major islands, being larger than, and cover a total area of. The islands of the archipelago over, in order of descending area, are: * NT = Northwest Territories, NU = Nunavut After Greenland, the archipelago is the world's largest high-Arctic land area. The climate of the islands is arctic, and the terrain consists of tundra except in mountainous areas. Most of the islands are uninhabited; human settlement is extremely thin and scattered, being mainly coastal Inuit settlements on the southern islands.
