Cultural Data

Cartographic reference system recommended to be used off West Greenland

Definition of the cartographic reference system recommended to be used off West Greenland:

2004 Licensing Round areas

Co-ordinates defining the four areas selected for licensing in 2004 are can be downloaded as an ASCII-file.

Coastline data

Coastline data for Greenland and Canada are available at various places on the internet. A usefull web site is e.g. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Detailed coastline data for Greenland are also available from the Danish National Survey and Cadastre (Kort & Matrikelstyrelsen – KMS). Contact person is: Anders Nielsen (e-mail: asn@kms.dk, phone direct: + 45 3587 5164, switchboard +45 3587 5050).

Border with Canada

The border with Canada is defined in an agreement between the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark and the Goverment of Canada of 17 December 1973. An ASCII-file  with the points defining the border is included.

Well positions

An ASCII-file with the positions of the 7 deep wells in West Greenland related to the WGS-84 datum is included (see Fig. 5.1).

The positions of the 5 offshore wells from the 1970s have been shifted from the original Quornoq datum to the WGS-84 datum by GEUS in 1999. Further information on the datum shift can be obtained from GEUS.

Bathymetry data

GEUS has compiled a generalised bathymetry map for the Davis Strait – Baffin Bay region (see Fig. 5.1). An ASCII-file with generalized bathymetry as digitized contours is included (UTM zone 21 coordinates - GEUS copyright) in two versions: one file with data in a format so they can be imported as contours into Landmarks Z-Map (grbatzm.dat) and one file with data as x,y,z coordinates (grbathy.xyz).

More detailed bathymetry data have been digitized from 1: 100,000 maps (100 m contours). The data of these maps have been merged into 3 areas off West Greenland:

59°00' N to 62°30' N
62°30' N to 65°00' N
65°00' N to 69°30' N

These data can also be supplied in the two formats describe above. Please contact GEUS for further information.

Definition of the block system applicable for offshore areas in West Greenland

The block system for the West Greenland offshore areas is based on quadrants defined as 1 degree of longitude by 1 degree of latitude. A quadrant is subdivided into blocks measuring 30 minutes of longitude by 10 minutes of latitude (12 blocks per quadrant). One block is further subdivided into subblocks measuring 6 minutes of longitude by 2 minutes of latitude.

Quadrants are numbered using the latitude and longitude of the southeastern corner (i.e. 6555). The 12 blocks within a quadrant are subsequently numbered starting with the northwestern block as number 1, the northeastern as number 2 and ending with the southeastern block as number 12. The block number is then combined with the quadrantnumber to produce e.g. 6555/1 for the northwesternmost block in quadrant 6555.

The block system is also used to number wells in order e.g. 6555/1-1 etc.