A crustal model for northern Melville Bay, Baffin Bay

Abstract The interpretation of seismic refraction and gravity data acquired in 2010 gives new insights into the crustal structure of the West Greenland coast and the adjacent deep central Baffin Bay basin. Underneath Melville Bay, the depth of the Moho varies between 26 and 17 km. Stretched continental crust with a thickness of 25 to 14 km and deep sedimentary basins are present in this area. The deep Melville Bay Graben contains an up to ~11 km thick infill of consolidated and unconsolidated sediments with velocities of 1.6 to 4.9 km/s. Seaward, at the ~60 km wide transition between oceanic and stretched continental crust, a mount‐shaped magmatic structure is observed, which most likely formed prior to the initial formation of oceanic crust. The up to 4 km high magmatic structure is underlain by a ~2 km thick and ~50 km wide high velocity lower crust. More to the west, in the oceanic part of the Baffin Bay basin, we identify a two‐layered, 3.5 to 6 km thin igneous oceanic crust with increasing thickness toward the shelf. Beneath the oceanic crust, the depth of the Moho ranges between 11.5 and 13.5 km. In the western part of the profile, oceanic layer 3 is unusually thin (~1.5 km) A possible explanation for the thin crust is accretion due to slow spreading, although the basement is notably smooth compared to the basement of other regions formed by ultra‐slow spreading. The oceanic crust is underlain by partly serpentinized upper mantle with velocities of 7.6 to 7.8 km/s.