Ellesmere Island: Take a Glimpse At The Top of The World

Canadian time-lapse photographer and cameraman Alain Lusignan shot these wonderful images of Ellesmere Island while on location for White Wolves: Ghosts of the Arctic near the Eureka weather station and at various locations on the Foshein Penninsula.

They reveal a surprising look at Ellesmere Island, located less than 1000 kilometres from the north pole, as spring changes to summer.  

A true polar desert, Ellesmere gets less then 70 mm of rain and/or snow a year.  During the brief summer, when the sun beats down twenty-four hours a day, the environment dries up and resembles the Sahara desert or Death Valley.  It's cool, remote and dry — in fact, NASA has sent teams to Ellesmere to run Mars simulations because it's probably the place on earth which most closely resembles our planetary neighbour. 

Ellesmere is the world's tenth largest island and one of the planet's last great wilderness domains. It's home to three tiny communities, Grise Fiord, Eureka and CFB Alert and a hundred or so humans.

The Fosheim Peninsula is known as the 'garden spot of the arctic' and has a higher density and diversity of vegetation than other areas this close to the north pole. Wildlife includes seals, walrus, polar bears, musk ox, murres, wolves, arctic hare, jeagers, terns and a collection of other species that are uniquely suited towards surviving the harsh arctic climate.