Abstract The ice cover of the Arctic Ocean restricts research vessels, limiting the number of miles of seismic reflection and refraction lines in the area. Figures 1 and 2 show the distribution of the lines, andTables 1 and 2 provide references keyed to those figures. This paper describes the distribution, collection, and processing of the seismic reflection and refraction data available in the deep basins and major ridges in the Arctic Ocean and briefly discusses the salient geological results by region. In addition, the position of seismic surveys on the continental margins and adjacent landmasses of the North American plate have been compiled for completeness. These peripheral areas are documented with recent review papers Table 1) including Eldholm and others (this volume) and Larsen (this volume). Most of the seismic reflection information in the Arctic Ocean has been collected on drifting ice stations; thus, the direction of the lines is controlled by the whims of nature. The data set presented here is incomplete due to the inaccessibility of information collected by Soviet scientists. No seismic profiling has been run from the northern margin of Greenland, and only three refraction surveys and one reflection line exist on the Canadian Polar margin from Greenland to the Beaufort Sea. Most of the reflection lines in the Canada Basin were acquired with power sources of insufficient strength to penetrate the sedimentary section. Even with this meager collection of erratically spaced and variable quality information, important trends can be seen, interesting features

Abstract The polar continental margin described here lies between M’Clure Strait and the Lincoln Sea (Fig. 1). It clearly separates continental sequences of the Queen Elizabeth Islands from presumed oceanic crust beneath the deep Canada Basin and, near Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere Islands, from rocks of the submarine Alpha and Lomonosov Ridges. Systematic studies in the region began in the late 1940s with Soviet air-lifted spot soundings over the outer continental slope and rise. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Alpha Ridge and adjacent parts of the outer continental shelf and slope were identified by multiparameter measurements from a series of drifting U.S. ice stations. In Canada, onshore geological studies began in 1955, and reconnaissance investigations of the polar shelf and slope were underway by 1960. The reader is referred to Weber (1983) and Weber and Roots (this volume) for further details of early studies. Comprehensive reviews that include onshore geology adjacent to the polar margin begin with Fortier and others (1963) with later syntheses by Thorsteinsson and Tozer (1970), Trettin and others (1972), Trettin and Balkwill (1979), Hea and others (1980), Miall (1981), and Kerr (1981). Offshore, chiefly geophysical data over the polar shelf and slope are summarized by Trettin and others (1972), Sweeney and others (1978), Vogt and others (1982), Sweeney (1982), and Forsyth and others (1988). From the information available up to the early 1980s, it was considered that the polar margin formed when the Canada Basin opened in Jurassic or Early Cretaceous time, that the crust