International audienceSecurity of supply of a number of raw materials is of concern for the European Union; foremost among these are the rare earth elements (REE), which are used in a range of modern technologies. A number of research projects, including the EURARE and ASTER projects, have been funded in Europe to investigate various steps along the REE supply chain. This paper addresses the initial part of that supply chain, namely the potential geological resources of the REE in Europe. Although the REE are not currently mined in Europe, potential resources are known to be widespread, and many are being explored. The most important European resources are associated with alkaline igneous rocks and carbonatites, although REE deposits are also known from a range of other settings. Within Europe, a number of REE metallogenetic belts can be identified on the basis of age, tectonic setting, lithological association and known REE enrichments. This paper reviews those metallogenetic belts and sets them in their geodynamic context. The most well-known of the REE belts are of Precambrian to Palaeozoic age and occur in Greenland and the Fennoscandian Shield. Of particular importance for their REE potential are the Gardar Province of SW Greenland, the Svecofennian Belt and subsequent Mesoproterozoic rifts in Sweden, and the carbonatites of the Central Iapetus Magmatic Province. However, several zones with significant potential for REE deposits are also identified in central, southern and eastern Europe, including examples in the Bohemian Massif, the Iberian Massif, and the Carpathians

Past interglacial climates with smaller ice sheets offer analogs for ice sheet response to future warming and contributions to sea level rise; however, well-dated geologic records from formerly ice-free areas are rare. Here we report that subglacial sediment from the Camp Century ice core preserves direct evidence that northwestern Greenland was ice free during the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 interglacial. Luminescence dating shows that sediment just beneath the ice sheet was deposited by flowing water in an ice-free environment 416 ± 38 thousand years ago. Provenance analyses and cosmogenic nuclide data and calculations suggest the sediment was reworked from local materials and exposed at the surface <16 thousand years before deposition. Ice sheet modeling indicates that ice-free conditions at Camp Century require at least 1.4 meters of sea level equivalent contribution from the Greenland Ice Sheet.

For around 40 years, the Geological Survey of Greenland (GGU) and later the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) conducted systematic geological overview mapping of Greenland, leading to the production of 14 printed map sheets on a scale of 1:500 000 which covers the entire country (Fig. 1). The mapping was completed in 1999 and the map sheets were published between 1971 and 2004. Revised 2nd editions of two of the sheets have been published (Table 1). As a result of the development of the Internet, the publi-cation platform for geological maps has increasingly moved from traditional paper sheets to digital publications for most geological surveys worldwide. This tendency has changed the requirements to the underlying production, storage and publication platforms for map data. For the same reason, it has over the past decade been a strategy of GEUS to bring the 1:500 000 geological maps of Greenland together as a seamless, digital product with a homogeneous legend. This has been further motivated by the increasing number of Geo-graphic Information System (GIS) and web applications to which such a map would provide a valuable background, as well as to many international projects such as OneGeology. The harmonisation of the geological maps was carried out by a project team at GEUS comprising both geological and GIS expertise. The first version of the new seamless map was finished in 2012 and will be released in various web applications in 2013.