Digital elevation model (DEM) of central and western North Greenland showing the caves described and figured in the text (data from Arctic DEM, Porter et al. 2018). The caves are developed immediately beneath the plateau surface, at an altitude of 800-1000 m, that is seen in the southern parts of the area, from Freuchen Land westwards to Hall Land. The dark blue peaks are ice caps sitting on the plateau surface. Documentation and illustration of other caves discovered during aerial reconnaissance are provided in Supplementary File S1. The colour ramp extends from sea level to 1900 m a.s.l., and the shift to the darkest blue tone is at 1700 m a.s.l.

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... characteristically occur high in fjord walls and other cliffs, where they have been truncated and exposed by glaciation. In North Greenland, they are characteristically located a few tens to hundreds of metres below the distinctive plateau surface that is developed from Hall Land eastwards to Kronprins Christian Land (Figs 1, 8). The caves are predominantly former phreatic conduits, many of which are very large -up to tens of metres in width. ...

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... are abundant in the Ordovician and, particularly, Silurian limestones that extend westwards from J. P. Koch Fjord to Hall Land (Figs 1, 8; Supplementary File S1). (Figs 1, 8). ...

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... are abundant in the Ordovician and, particularly, Silurian limestones that extend westwards from J. P. Koch Fjord to Hall Land (Figs 1, 8; Supplementary File S1). (Figs 1, 8). The cave is one of several at this stratigraphic horizon at the locality and currently represents the most northerly documented cave. ...

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... of the Kap Jackson Formation (Fig. 4; early Sandbian, Upper Ordovician) in southern Freuchen Land as part of the regional mapping programme in 1984 ). The caves lie on the north side of a small glacier in south-eastern Freuchen Land that flows from the main ice sheet (82.31296°N, 41.83505°W), close to the southern end of Navarana Fjord (FL1 in Fig. ...

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... large entrance of around 30 m width was observed during helicopter reconnaissance in a 700 m high cliff at the southern end of Nordenskiöld Fjord (NF1 in Fig. 8; 82.15836°N, 44.32837°W). The cave lies around 200 m below the cliff-top and is developed within a carbonate mound (m in Fig. 13) immediately above the Djaevlekløften -Petermann Halvø Formation boundary (PH in Fig. 4). The mound has pale flanking beds with depositional dips markedly steeper than the inter-mound limestones. Several ...

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... entrances are seen in the western wall of the fjord that separates Permin Land from southern Warming Land, in the innermost extension of Hartz Sund (Fig. 8). Cave WaL8 (Figs 8, 15A Davies & Krinsley (1960) at the north-western end of Apollo Sø, Wulff Land, western North Greenland (Figs 1, 8). A: Cave from the east side of Apollo Sø. Cliff is 800 m high from terrace to summit. B: Close-up of cave entrance from helicopter; entrance approximately 30 m wide. C: The large cave entrance of WuL6 ...

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... entrances are seen in the western wall of the fjord that separates Permin Land from southern Warming Land, in the innermost extension of Hartz Sund (Fig. 8). Cave WaL8 (Figs 8, 15A Davies & Krinsley (1960) at the north-western end of Apollo Sø, Wulff Land, western North Greenland (Figs 1, 8). A: Cave from the east side of Apollo Sø. ...

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... the top of the 800 m cliff that marks the plateau edge and are again located in cliff-forming limestones of the Djaevlekløften Formation. The conduit widths are less than 10 m, but the closely spaced cluster of multiple entrances again suggests erosional truncation of a phreatic network. Cave WaL6 is located within the interior of Warming Land (Fig. 8, 81.59510°N, 52.24085°W; see also Supplementary File S1) and is noteworthy for being one of the few caves in Greenland with active water flow, with a stream emitting from the entrance at an altitude of around 700 m (see Supplementary File S1 for image). A stream appears to sink just back from the cliff edge and emerges from the entrance ...

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... in the western wall of southern Sankt George Fjord, (NL11 in Figs 8, 15D; Table 1; 81.63091°N, 54.83647°W) were first recorded by Niels Henriksen in 1985 as part of the photo-reconnaissance flights to obtain oblique aerial photography of fjord and valley walls during the regional mapping programme (Fig. 15D) (Figs 1, 8). Cliff is 900 m high, and the cave entrance is c. 20 m wide. ...

Context 10

... 3.3; Fig. 1), is characterised by a plateau at 800-1000 m, into which fjords with vertical walls are deeply incised by outlet glaciers from the Greenland ice sheet. This plateau surface is highest in the southern parts of Nyeboe Land and Warming Land, reducing in height eastwards into Wulff Land and the area around the head of Victoria Fjord (Fig. 8). It is high again in central Peary Land, at around 1000 m, but mainly at lower altitudes in Kronprins Christian Land. There are two areas of conspicuously higher elevation, one to the north of Peary Land in the mountains of Johannes V. Jensen Land (up to 1850 m a.s.l.) and the second in the Prinsesse Caroline-Mathilde Alper of central ...

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... digital elevation model for the Independence Fjord region (Japsen et al. 2021, fig. 19) shows that there is a plateau surface on either side of Independence Fjord at around 1000 m a.s.l., and it is this surface that is continuous with the plateau developed at a similar altitude across western North Greenland (Fig. 8). In relation to Cenozoic uplift, the AFTA data identified a short, localised phase of uplift in the mid-Paleocene (60 Ma) associated with inversion and exhumation along major fault zones, and a more regional, but again short lived, cooling/uplift event at the end of the Eocene that led to the almost complete removal of an extensive, ...

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... within them is uncemented mud and silt and localised, uncemented breakdown breccias; many are plugged with ice. They also have a characteristic geomorphological position, located in the steep fjord walls and other glacially eroded cliffs, within a few 100 metres vertically beneath the plateau surface that is developed at elevations of 800-1000 m (Fig. 8). Given these similarities, it is probable that they have a similar speleogenetic history and formed in a single phase of cave ...

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... North Greenland, there is only a single planation surface, which Japsen et al. (2021) ascribed to a Miocene uplift event at 10 Ma (temporally equivalent to the UPS on the east and west Greenland coasts). This event creates the distinctive plateau surface at 800-1000 m from Hall Land in the west to Kronprins Christian Land in the east (Figs 1, 8). The combination of evidence suggests that the initiation of cave formation in North Greenland is unlikely to be pre-Miocene, and that speleogenesis was probably associated with Miocene uplift. ...