Over the last 10–15 years, it has served as a significant Mars analogue for astrobiology investigations studying life and habitability of polar cryoenvironments and field-testing planetary exploration instrumentation platforms.

During the summer of 1986, a Canadian expedition headed by Dr. James Basinger set out to investigate a very unusual fossil forest on Axel Heiberg.

Instead of turning into petrified "stone" fossils, they were ultimately mummified by the cold, dry Arctic climate and only recently exposed to erosion.

[12] Scientists from the Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg provided a few grams of Metasequoia conifer wood from the site to genetics researchers at the National University of Altai, who compared the DNA sequences of the ancient wood with DNA of modern woody plants and found them to be almost identical.

[13] Komarov Institute scientists also discovered double-strand DNA molecules in Metasequoia fossil leaves from Axel Heiberg Island.

There were concerns that Arctic cruise ship tourists were taking wood and that the site was being disturbed by Canadian military helicopters from nearby bases and even by scientists in their studies.

[12][16] Interesting animal fossils have been discovered on the island, including a remarkably preserved specimen of an ancient Aurorachelys turtle and, identified in 2016, the humerus of a Tingmiatornis bird.

It extends in elevation from 56 to 1,782 m (184 to 5,846 ft) above sea level, a range which, as noted by Dyurgerov (2002),[19] is exceeded only by Devon Ice Cap in the world list of glaciers with measured mass balance.

It is characterized by a perennial hypersaline (24%) discharge at subzero temperatures (~−5 °C (23 °F)) flowing to the surface through a hollow, 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high cone-shaped salt tufa structure.

Based on these properties, this spring is considered a significant astrobiology analogue site for possible habitats currently present on Mars and the cold moons Europa and Enceladus.