Introduction and satellite imagesBylot Island is an 11,000-square-kilometer (4,200-square-mile) island, located in the province of Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic, between 72.5 and 74 degrees North. It lies east of northern Baffin Island, from which it is separated by Eclipse Sound. The island is dominated by the NW-SE-trending Byan Martin Mountains which reach 1900 metres in height. They are made of resistant Archaean-Proterozoic metamorphic and igneous rocks, and are bordered by plains of softer Cretaceous and Tertiary sedimentary rocks. The island is named after the British explorer Robert Bylot, who discovered it in 1616. | |||
 Overview of Bylot Island, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image on NASA’s Terra satellite, July 22, 2012. |  Glaciers of the expedition area:
Fountain Glacier (F), Stagnation Glacier (St), Sermillik Glacier (Se), Aktineq Glacier (Ak) and Bylot Island Icefield (BII). Landsat image no. LC80330082013221LGN00_B1_B2_B3_TIF, August 2013 | ||
| The Byan Martin Mountains support the Bylot Island Icefield, from which large outlet glaciers radiate, some of them having piedmont lobes. The longest glacier is 49 km in length and 6.5 km in width. A few terminate in the sea. The total ice extent was 4783 km2 in 2007, and covered about 43% of the island. Ten surge-type glaciers were recognised by Julian and Evelyn Dowdeswell in 2007. They further calculated that there was a 5% loss of the ice-covered area since 1958, but in recent years there has been accelerating recession and thinning of glaciers. The area therefore highlights the impact of global warming on the cryosphere. | |||