World Island Info

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.

Islands are found everywhere, and only a few countries — Bhutan, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Vatican City — have defied all my attempts to locate islands within their borders.
Liechtenstein may be giving in — is this the Alpine microstate’s only island?  Maybe one of the 34,000 Liechtensteiners, or a traveler, could confirm.  It is in the south, at Neugrutt, near Balzers.

Tuva Online recently covered a very rare thing: a Siberian lake island with an ancient fortress.

Near Mongolia but on the Russian side of the border, the ruined Uigur fortress is called Por-Bazhyn, and is on an island in Lake Tere-Khol. The rectangular fortress is visible in satellite photos.

Ukraine and Romania appear to be saying that they will let an international court rule on Zmeiny (”serpent”), a disputed island in the northwestern Black Sea.

Administered by Ukraine, it is pretty much the sole island of significance in the Black Sea, and also it’s most isolated.

[border disputes, Ukrainian  geography]

A reader asks: “Looking through your page on the largest islands of Great Britain, could you tell me where would the Isle of Man be in this compilation?”

The list is of islands of the United Kingdom, hence the omission: the Isle of Man is not part of the UK, but a separately administered crown dependency.

At about 571 sq. km, it would be the 8th largest island in the UK if it were part of the UK.

The Washington Post today reports on efforts to preserve the islandness of Mont-Saint-Michel, the island abbey off the north coast of France. The historic rocky islet “is succumbing to a relentless invasion of silt and sea grass, which are surrounding the island and threatening to make it part of the mainland.

Part of the 19th century causeway will be replaced with a bridge.

Says a leader of the project to hold back the encroaching land, “If we don’t do anything at all, in 40 years Mont-Saint-Michel will be part of the continent.”

“Being an island is part of its strong identity — a gem in the sea,” says the mayor of the island, which has a population of 26 but is visited by 3 million people a year.

Long a pilgrimage destination, its island nature also has symbolic significance:

Brother François, who heads a group of six brothers and five sisters from the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem who conduct services in the abbey, said Mont-Saint-Michel was laden with powerful religious symbolism that is important to protect — the mountaintop, the story of the archangel’s appearance, the sand flats where pilgrims wander, waiting for the parting of the sea at low tide.

After the causeway was built in 1879, Victor Hugo decried the change: “The Mont-Saint-Michel must remain an island. We must save it from mutilation!” People are at last responding.

[Image courtesy Neerav Mehta]

Some long-term thinkers are taking advantage of the nature of islands: they are creating a “doomsday” seed bank meant to contain every kind of agricultural seed on the planet on the island of Svalbard.

The high-security vault, almost half the length of a football field, will be carved into a mountain on a remote island above the Arctic Circle. If the looming fences, motion detectors and steel airlock doors are not disincentive enough for anyone hoping to breach the facility’s concrete interior, the polar bears roaming outside should help.

The isolation of Svalbard would hopefully keep the seed library out of harm’s way in even the worst circumstances:

The “doomsday vault,” as some have come to call it, is to be the ultimate backup in the event of a global catastrophe — the go-to place after an asteroid hit or nuclear or biowarfare holocaust so that, difficult as those times would be, humankind would not have to start again from scratch.

Planners even examined what is likely to happen to Svalbard if global warming picks up, and how it would fare in the event of serious cooling due to a Gulf Stream collapse.

In honor the imminent independence of the Balkan nation of Montenegro, let’s take a look at the country’s islands.

For a small state with a short coastline, it possesses a nice assortment of islands, both on its dramatic coastline and in lakes. Many are embellished with historic sites, especially monasteries.

Montenegrin island superlatives
Largest island — There are two candidates of virtually identical size, both about 1.9 square miles / 4.8 square km.

• Ada is a delta island on the southeast border with Albania.
• Vranjina, a monastery island on the northwest side of Lake Skadar, is formed by the lake and the incoming Moraca river.  Vranjina is Montenegro’s largest freshwater island.

Largest sea island — Sveti Nikola is about 36 hectares / 90 acres.

Tallest island — Vranjina rises 296 meters or about 971 feet above Lake Skadar.

Tallest sea island — Sveti Nikola is 121 meters or about 397 feet tall. Second-tallest is Sveti Marko, at 36 meters or about 118 feet.

Sea islands
Montenegro has several sea islands of note in the Boka Kotorska:

• Prevlaka — bridged; 13th century monastery ruins
• Sveti Marko — off Tivat; has a Club Med
• Otok — islet off Sveti Marko with a monastery
• Gospa od Skrpjela — artificial islet off Perast with notable church
• Sveti Dorde — another islet off Perast, site of a Benedictine Abbey

Sveti Nikola is in the Adriatic off Budva, and has church ruins and an endemic species of lilly; boat tours go here.

The most famous Montenegrin “island” is not an island at all: Sveti Stefan is lovely and walled, but now a peninsula.

Lake islands
Montenegro’s lakes are dominated by Lake Skadar (Skadarsko Jezero), in the southeast. It seems to have 50 or more islands; a number are listed here. Monastic islands include Vranjina, Starcevo, Beska, and Sveti Dorde. Skadar also has a prison islet, Grmozur.

Montenegro also has islands in reservoir lakes, including a concentration near the city of Niksic.
[Montenegrin islands, Montenegrin geography]

This evening the TV show “Numbers” mentioned the famous “Seven Bridges of Königsberg” math problem.  Königsberg in East Prussia

included two large islands which were connected to each other and the mainland by seven bridges. The question is whether it is possible to walk with a route that crosses each bridge exactly once, and return to the starting point. In 1736, Leonhard Euler proved that it was not possible.

The islands are still there, in Kaliningrad, Russia, though some of the bridges are gone.

A double island — a lake island on the island of Great Britain — has several minutes on screen in the new “Pride and Prejudice”.

It is in the background while Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are arguing in a pillared pavillion, one hour and eight minutes in on the DVD.

The real island is part of the gardens of Stourhead Estate; the pavillion seems to be the Temple of Apollo.