Maps ot The Arctic Region

The Arctic is a polar region located around the North Pole. It consists of parts of U.S.A. (Alaska), Canada, Finland, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. It also includes the Arctic Ocean and adjoining seas, with seasonal sea ice.

The land includes a great amount of natural resources, like oil, gas and minerals.

The continental shelf is a relatively flat area of seafloor adjacent to the coast that slopes gradually down to water depths of about 200 m. The waters along the continental shelf are generally productive of plant and animal life, both from sunlight and from nutrients from ocean upwelling and land runoff. More than a quarter of the Arctic seafloor is continental shelf. The Eurasian shelf is very broad, extending for 1,500 km and is the largest continental shelf in the world. Examples of features found on the continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean include the Barents Shelf, Beaufort Shelf, Davis Shelf, Chukchi Shelf, East Siberian Shelf, Kara Shelf, Laptev Shelf, and Lincoln Shelf..