World Island Info

The US Postal Service has issued 40 stamps sure to excite geographical obsessives, the “Wonders of America“:

Yet I guess you can’t please anyone; people have many complaints of omission (and suggestions); mine is obvious — there is not a single real island superlative.

A few come close:

• “Highest sea cliffs” is credited to Moloka’i (Molokai).
• “Deepest lake” shows Wizard Island in Crater Lake, Oregon.
• “Most active volcano” is Kilauea, on Hawaii.
• “Longest span” shows the Verrezano-Narrows Bridge between Long Island and Staten Island, New York.
• “Longest river system” appears to show one or more islands in the Mississippi.
• “Longest reef” is “off the Florida Keys.”

For the record, here are some American island superlatives:

• Largest island — The largest island of the United States is Hawaii, at 4,021 sq mi / 10,414 sq km, and still growing slowly. The largest (and longest) island of the lower 48 states is Long Island.
• Largest lake island — The largest lake island in the United States is Isle Royale, in Lake Superior, Michigan, at 209 sq mi / 541 sq km.
• Largest volcanic island — The largest volcanic island in the United States is Hawaii, at 4,021 sq mi / 10,414 sq km, and still growing slowly.
• Largest river island — The largest American river island is Sauvie Island, a 40sq mi / 104 sq km island in the Columbia River in Oregon.
• Remotest island — According to the United Nations’ Environment Programme, the most isolated American island is Nihoa, part of the Hawaiian chain, which is about 200 miles from another island and 3,600 miles from the nearest continent.
• Youngest volcanic island –The youngest volcanic island is Hawaii, the southernmost of the Hawaiian islands, and thus the most recent to pass over the hotspot that formed the island chain. It is about years old.
• Most populous island – The most populous island in the United States is Long Island, New York, with 7.4 million inhabitants.
• Smallest with one million inhabitants — The smallest American island on which one million or more people live is Manhattan, in New York City, with 1.48 million inhabitants living in 22 sq mi / 57 sq km (at 67,000 per sq mi / 26,000 per sq km).
• Tallest island — The tallest American island is Hawaii, which rises 13,796 feet / 4,205 meters from sea level to the top of Mauna Kea. It is the second tallest of the world’s islands.
• Largest bridged island — The largest island connected to the mainland by a bridge or causeway is Long Island, New York.
• Smallest divided by borders — The smallest island shared with another country is the west island in Boundary Lake, North Dakota, at about 3 acres / 1.1 ha. It is shared with Canada. [American geography, geographic superlatives]

[Image courtesy of United States Postal Service]

I thought it was finally time to circle Manhattan, the island of my birth, so I took a three-hour tour on Memorial Day weekend.

The voyage is thoroughly if not artistically documented on Flickr, with 194 images from the Hudson River, the harbor, the East River, the Harlem River, and back to the Hudson.

Sights include Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and the United Nations.

A reader had some questions:

“Where do we draw the line between island and peninsula with regard to man made structures?”

There is no clear line, as many parts of land have manmade water cutting them off.

“Prince Edward County on Lake Ontario was a peninsula, but did construction of the Murray Canal 100 years ago make it an island? (It has a couple of swing bridges over the canal and a high fixed bridge from Belleville, Ontario.)”

Probably not. Ratios are important, and the canal is very narrow compared to the peninsula. Indeed, it cannot even be discerned on this view that takes in the whole land mass.

“Prince Edward Island was connected by a long high bridge to the mainland 7 years ago. Should it be considered a peninsula?”

Bridges do not change the fact that an island is surrounded by water, so they do not erase an island’s fundamental nature. It is more a sort of domestication.

“Cape Breton Island is connected by a causeway to the rest of Nova Scotia.”

A solid causeway is more of a threat, but the Canso Causeway is broken by locks.

“Does the Corinth Canal in Greece make the Peloponnesus an island?”

Opinion is also important, and people have not decided that this is the case. Also, on a full view of the Peloponnesus it does not appear to be an island.

“Does the causeway to Singapore make it a peninsula?”

The Johor-Singapore Causeway is very small compared to the size of the island. Still, if it is solid all the way through, it does compromise Singapore’s status as a true island.

“Or is the natural state of the land mass the arbitrator of the land mass? I think you mentioned a former island in the Aral Sea or the Caspian as a peninsula due to the drop in water level. But was that not the result of irrigation?”

Human actions create and destroy islands all the time — what matters is whether a body of land surrounded by water results.

“Rene Lavasseur in Quebec exists as an island only because of the damming of the Manicaguan Reservoir.”

René-Levasseur is nonetheless a real island, as this view of the Manicouagan Reservoir shows. It is, incidentally, the largest island created by human action.

geography, geographic

I was looking at this aerial photo by Automatt on Flickr. He doesn’t say what continent he was flying over, but the river island looked familiar.

“Western Michigan,” I thought. Sure enough, it is Harbor Island in Grand Haven, seen from the northeast.

Image: Automatt (Flickr)

A lost fisherman spent nine days marooned on Turtle Island, in the Sea Islands of southeast South Carolina, before being found.

The only news I’ve ever heard from Lougheed Island, in the Canadian Arctic: Canadian soldiers met there at the conclusion of an exercise to bolster preparedness for high Arctic operations.

Two items reiterated that Manhattan is in fact an island and thus somewhat isolated.

In article on beard fashion, of all things, a salon magnate asked of the trend, “It will be interesting to see over the next six to eight months what mainland America is going to do with it.”

Meanwhile, the mainland manages occasionally to reach the island: a coyote was captured in Central Park.  People speculate that he swam a river, or came across a railroad bridge, though presumably not by commuter rail.

Scientists report that

Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth’s oceans will rise over the next century.

This appears to increase the danger that low-lying coastal and coral islands around the world will be destroyed over the course of this century.

“This American Life” offers the story of a boat excursion gone awry in “In the Shadow of the City” (Episode 307, Feb. 3, 2006).  Three Russian immigrants end up marooned on islands in Jamaica Bay, including Ruffle Bar. They do agree at least not to eat each other. (The story also hints at some of the reasons Russian male life expectancy has plummeted in recent decades.)

A newspaper offers this Zen statement about a small Michigan island used for an annual party:

“The island was created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which dumped clean dredged materials onto the site from 1937 through the mid-1960s. The island is actually about 137 acres, but all but 4 acres are submerged.”