a blog about islands
Foreign Policy magazine recently addressed a topic often linked to islands: how to start your own country.
See this for WorldIslandInfo’s take on the topic. My page deals with some of the problems Joshua Keating touches on in this FP article, such as acquiring land and attracting a population.
(Image courtesy Odalaigh)
Dubai had apparently seized the mantle of champion geoscapers from the Dutch, as whacky island schemes such as the giant palm and The World grew off the Persian Gulf emirate.
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It seems that the Dutch were the hidden hand behind the emirate’s schemes all along: firms from the Netherlands have been central to the macroengineering island projects off Dubai.
Now they may bring it home. A Dutch government agency has proposed building an island off the coast of the Netherlands — and some have suggested it should be in the shape of a tulip. A 400-square-mile tulip.
This may or may not be a good idea, but it would at least make for the long-standing Dutch habit of destroying their islands through polder and dam building.
This summer I noted the debate about the largest island on an island on an island; I placed it in Canada.
It is in Canada, but I have confirmed my suspicions that the strongest candidate is not on Newfoundland but on Victoria Island, in Nunavut.
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This island in a lake on an island in a lake in south-central Victoria Island, at 69.7928° north, 108.2411° west, is 4 acres / 1.6 hectares, easily beating its rivals in size.
I’ve added more material on Canadian geography to WorldIslandInfo.com: a page of Canadian island superlatives.
These include Canada’s:
In response to a reader query, this is a preliminary list of the largest American Atlantic islands, with the areas in square miles:
1. Long I., NY –1401
2. Marsh I., LA — 117
3. Mount Desert I., ME — 106
4. Martha’s Vineyard. MA — 97
5. Merritt I., FL — 93 (boundaries debatable)
6. Saint James I., FL — 79 (partially riverine)
7. Johns I., SC — 75
8. Matagorda I., TX – c. 71
9. Port Royal I., SC — 70
10. Saint Helena I., SC — 59
11. Staten I., NY — 58.7
12. Point Au Fer I., LA — 58
13. Edisto I., SC — 54
World Island Info has a new page on American island superlatives.
These include the:
There is some confusion over the identity of the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.
Elbruz.org has long had a nice piece on recursive islands and lakes, but they get the final one wrong, saying that the island in Taal’s Volcano Island’s crater lake is the largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.
That Filipino “triple island” is only about 1 acre / 0.4 hectare.
The largest known island of this sort (subject to further exploration; some Arctic areas are poorly mapped) is the largest island in the largest lake on Glover Island, in Grand Lake on Newfoundland.
Glover Island, the world’s second-largest island on an island, has a many lakes on it, and the largest has about 17 islands. The largest of these is 2 acres / 0.8 ha. When I visited it, it supported its own little patch of woods.
Washington DC’s largest island, the artificial mass known as Potomac Park, is suffering at both ends. 
At the south end, at Hains Point, The Awakening, a huge metal sculpture of a giant rising from the earth, has been sold and will be taken away. Washington’s islands will lose one of their most interesting sights.
At the north tip, the Post now reports that parts of the Jefferson Memorial are suffering from subsidence, as areas of the complex sink into the mud that underlies the entire construction. (The island was built up about a century ago out of the Potomac.)
Writing in The Star (Malaysia), Yip Yoke Teng describes a trip by the Mastery Academy of Chinese Metaphysics to study the feng shui of Tibet.
They visit Namucuo (commonly known as Nam Co or Nam Tsho, a high salt lake.
Teng writes:
It was evident that all mountain ranges converged on the lake, and there was an island emerging from the centre of the lake. Together, they formed “The Dragon Celebrating Pearl Formation” that facilitated Tibet’s spirituality.
Incidentally, Teng (and other sources) refer to Nam Co as “highest lake on earth,” but there are other, higher lakes, including Orba Co, the site of the highest islands in the world.
Google Sightseeing notes an interesting island off western Kyushu, Japan.
Hashima is small (6 hectare / 15 acres), and was owned by a coal mining company, which housed the miners on the island. Writes Google Sightseeing:
When space for the workers began to run out, they built Japan’s first large scale reinforced concrete apartment block on the island in 1916. More concrete tower blocks followed, and by 1959 the population of Hashima reached its peak of 5,259 — an astonishing 1,391 people per 10,000 square metres within the residential district — which is said to be the highest population density ever recorded in the world.
That would indeed be the most densely populated island known: 227,000 people per square mile, or 88,000 per sq km, surpassing the current record holder, Ap Lei Chau, which houses 160,000 per sq mi / 60,000 per sq km. This is all the more impressive given that Hashima was not connected to mainland Japan by bridge.
The island is now evidently deserted.
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