Queen Maud Land - Geography

Geography

Queen Maud Land extends from the boundary with Coats Land in the west to the boundary with Enderby Land in the east, and is divided into the Princess Martha Coast, Princess Astrid Coast, Princess Ragnhild Coast, Prince Harald Coast and Prince Olav Coast. The territory is estimated to cover around 2,700,000 square kilometres (1,000,000 sq mi). It is not officially defined where the limits of the claim are in the south and in the sea in the north. The sea that extends off the coast between the longitudal limits of Queen Maud Land is generally called King Haakon VII Sea.

There is no ice-free land at the coast; the coast consists of a 20-to-30-metre-high (66 to 98 ft) wall of ice throughout almost the entire territory. It is thus only possible to disembark from a ship in a few places. Some 150 to 200 kilometres (93 to 120 mi) from the coast, rocky peaks pierce the ice cap, itself at a mean height of around 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) above sea level, with the highest point at Jøkulkyrkja (3,148 metres or 10,328 feet) in the Mühlig-Hofmann Mountains. The other major mountain ranges are the Heimefront Range, Orvin Mountains, Wohlthat Mountains and Sør Rondane Mountains.

Geologically, the ground of Queen Maud Land is dominated by Precambrian gneiss, formed c. 1–1.2 Ga, before the creation of the supercontinent Gondwana. The mountains consist mostly of crystalline and granitic rocks, formed c. 500–600 Ma in the Pan-African orogeny during the assembly of Gondwana. In the farthest western parts of the territory, there are younger sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Research on the thickness of the ice has revealed that without the ice, the coast would be similar to those of Norway and Greenland, with deep fjords and islands.