Requirements to conduct a study of the thermal history of areas surrounding the Mackenzie River and To conduct a study of the sedimentary provenance of Devonian strata in northern Yukon and of Cretaceous strata on Banks Island.

The department of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has 2 requirements as follows: To conduct a study of the thermal history of areas surrounding the Mackenzie River (e.g. Peel, Great Bear and Mackenzie plains, Richardson and Mackenzie mountains, etc.) in support of regional mapping and petroleum systems studies. An effective approach to this type of problem is to use thermal modelling based on apatite fission track (AFT) thermochronology.Previous AFT work in the area has shown that it is possible to resolve multiple thermal events by exploiting the multi-kinetic thermal annealing characteristics of compositionally variable detrital apatite grains recovered from sedimentary rocks. Knowledge of the regional thermal history is critical to a clearer understanding of the generation and migration of hydrocarbons, and thus to reducing exploration risk in this active frontier area. To conduct a study of the sedimentary provenance of Devonian strata in northern Yukon and of Cretaceous strata on Banks Island. The former lies in an area of complex structural geometry in Canadian Cordillera. The latter lies near the Canadian Arctic continental margin. These new data will permit us to make more confident correlations between a variety of source areas and sedimentary basins within the project area. They will enhance our knowledge of the formation and evolution of these basins through their history. Detrital zircon (DZ) age analysis is widely used and can provide statistically reliable provenance age distributions. These requirements will result in the creation of three different low dollar contracts to the pre-identified supplier.