The Impact Cratering Record of the Canadian North

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Impact cratering is a fundamental and ubiquitous geological process in the Solar System. It is considered the most important surface process on the Moon, Mercury, asteroids, and over large parts of the more geologically active planets of Mars and Venus. We now know that meteorite impact events have also played an important role throughout Earth's history, shaping the geological landscape, affecting the evolution of life, and producing mineral and hydrocarbon deposits of major economic significance. The results of this research program will fill in some significant gaps in current knowledge and will further our understanding of meteorite impact events and their beneficial scientific and economic effects. This is particularly important for Canada, which draws such a huge amount of wealth from the mining within the Sudbury impact structure - the richest mining district in North America. The long-term objectives of this research program is to test the hypotheses that meteorite impact craters can produce beneficial effects, such as providing new habitats for microbial communities, the generation of economic mineral and hydrocarbon deposits, and detailed paleoenvironmental records in intra-crater lake deposits. This work focuses on comparative study of impact craters ~20-40 km in diameter within different types of target rocks and in different states of preservation. This will enable the differentiation of local effects and features of specific craters from more general features of impact craters. The following 5 sites will be investigated over the course of the next 5 years: Haughton impact structure, Nunavut, 75° 22' N, 89° 41' N; Mistastin impact structure, Labrador, 55° 53' N, 63° 18' W; Prince Albert impact structure, NWT, 72° 30' N, 114° 0'W; Clearwater East and Clearwater West impact structures, Quebec, 56° 05' N, 74° 07' W and 56° 13' N, 74° 30' W, respectively.