World Island Info

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.

View Larger Map

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:

• largest island
• largest lake island
• largest island on an island
• most populous island
• tallest island
• tallest lake island
• most common island name

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:

• largest American island
• tallest American island
• highest American island
• largest American lake island
• most heavily populated American island
• most common name for American islands

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.)

The NYT reports that previously unknown islands are appearing off the coast of Greenland as glaciers and iceshelves retreat.
Explorer Dennis Schmitt discovered in September that what had been thought to be a small peninsula — visible here on Google Maps — is now surrounded by open water.

A few details about the new island:

• Name: informally, Uunartoq Qeqertoq (”warming island”)
• Location: central coast of eastern Greenland, at 71 degrees 29′ north, 21 degrees 52′ west
• Area: roughly 9 sq miles / 23 sq km
• Height: roughly 2000 feet, judging by surrounding terrain
• Discovery: September 2005

Islands emerging from the ice are becomeing more common, according to John Collins Rudolf, the NYT reporter.

• A Danish cartographer “spotted several new islands in an area where a massive ice shelf had broken up.”
• A glacier scientist found that a former nunatak — an isolated mountain surrounded by glacier — now was 10 km out to sea from the ice.
• Another explorer found an emergent island off Svalbard in August 2006.

Rudolf also notes that this accelerated melting is unexpected, and could result in faster sea level rise.  A geoscientist suggests that it might add a foot or two to sea level, threatening low-lying islands.

It could get worse.  Rudolf writes, “Over the long term, much larger sea-level rises would render the world’s coastlines unrecognizable, creating a whole new series of islands.”

The Yukon’s largest island is washing away, the CBC reports.

Uninhabited Herschel Island is eroding due to rising sea levels brought on by global warming, the island’s historic sites manager says.

Where is this reservoir island, which appeared near the end of the strange 1970s movie?

The reservoir is in hilly country, with a large, almost pyramidal building near it, probably just above the dam. A cast member said, probably referring to this spot, that it was “down in Orange County,” in Southern California.

[movie locations, filming locations]

A reader comments:

Here’s a recursive island story, probably not unique. When I was 13, I went to a Sea Scout camp on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, Ontario. We wilderness camped there for 2 weeks, and one day, we climbed a steep hill/mountain behind our camp, to find a lake, which was quite warm, and good for swimming. Darned if there wasn’t an island in that lake. I looked around for a body of water on the island, but no luck. Perhaps in a torrential downfall…  Do you know of many examples of this?

Manitoulin has several nice double islands, relatively large for a lake island.

Their are several thousand such recursive islands in the world, concentrated in Canada, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and a few other places.

The largest is Samosir, on Sumatra, followed by Glover Island, on Newfoundland.

Glover is one of the few places in the world where there are islands on an island on an island — triple islands.  I once spent a week there, and camped on a small triple in the center of the island, alone except for the seagulls, and moose that came to feed at the edge of the lake.  It is possible that I am the only person to have slept on a triple island, as they are all quite out of the way.