World Island Info » Russia

Ancient Tuvan fortress island

World Island Info — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 04:05:05 +0000

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.

“Numbers”: 7 bridges, 2 islands

World Island Info — Sat, 27 May 2006 03:05:28 +0000

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.

Query: Lena River Delta islands, Siberia, Russia

World Island Info — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 01:05:29 +0000

A reader asks: “In my atlas there is a large island at the northwest end of the Lena River delta in the Russian Arctic. It is not named in the atlas, but it appears to be bigger than Vaygach. Have you any information on this?”

The distinct islands shown on some maps of the delta seem to be illusory; see Google maps, which shows a largely unifed delta.

That said, see the map on p. 2 of this paper. “Arga Island” seems largely to correspond with the beige area in the Google satellite view, and could be some 10,000 square km, or 4,000 square miles.

But it’s not much of an island: see these details of the channels that would form its southern boundary.

Virtually the only references to Arga Island online (at least in English) are in the context of that single paper on Nikolay Lake.

This paper has this to say:

The western part of the Lena Delta is formed by a large, 20-m-high sand island fringed by a unique lace coast formed by narrow estuary-like bays deeply penetrating the land. This unique coast undergoes intensive erosion not only on promontories but also inside of estuaries due to storm surges reaching to >2 m height. The sand island is characterized by typical lake-thermokarst relief.

Page 17 of that paper refers to Tit-Ary Island, south of Arga.

Here is a small, real island in the delta, indicating that other islands have names.

So, is there a large island in the northwest of the Lena River Delta? I suppose so, but you can be the judge.

[Russian islands, delta islands]