World Island Info

There is some debate about Teresa Island in Atlin Lake.

Teresa Island is indeed the 2nd tallest lake island on the planet, the highest being Isla Ometepe in Nicaragua.

As for its ranking among “inland islands,” it is the 22nd largest lake island in the world, and thus ranked lower for overall “inland islands.”

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]

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]

Seacology, one of my favorite charities, reports that it is funding “a dormitory to house rangers” on Tetepare, an island in the Solomon Islands.

Now Tetepare’s claim to fame is that it is one of the largest uninhabited tropical islands — sometimes erroneously called the largest uninhabited island in the world.

If rangers are living there all the time, won’t it cease to be uninhabited?

(Note to Seacology: it will be difficult preserving “72 square miles of primary lowland rainforest” on Tetepare, as the island is only about 46 square miles in size.)

A Reuters article in the Washington Post claimed today that Chongming Dao, in the Yangtze north of Shanghai, is larger than Cyprus. In fact, it is much smaller, at only 1,041.4 sq km. Cyprus is actually nine times Chongming’s size, at 9,251 sq km, making it the 81st largest island in the world.

Chinese commonly claim that it is the largest alluvial island in the world. This is incorrect, as most river islands are alluvial, and Brazil has a number of larger alluvial islands in the Amazon, beginning with 40,100 sq km Marajo.

They also cite it as the third largest island of China, after Taiwan and Hainan, but it is more accurately the second largest, as Taiwan is not currently administered by China.

With the possible exception of a few Tibetan monks, the islanders of Lake Titicaca inhabit the highest populated islands in the world.

The NYT here reports on Taquile and its 2,000 Taquileños, on the Peruvian side of the lake. And another tourist recently visited two other Titicaca islands, along with Taquile.

For a more in-depth view of the island, see this article.

A reader suggests an addition to the list of largest islands by country:

There we can find a lot of small lake islands but as the biggest island of Brazil is Marajó then also Rusne Island (Rusnės sala in Lithuanian) must be counted. Its territory is 55,56 sq km and it lies between Atmata (Athmath in German) and Skirvytė (Skirwieth in German, Severnaja in Russian, it is the border river between Russian Kaliningradskaya oblast and Lithuania) rivers and Baltic Sea.

Two Indian fishermen who drifted onto North Sentinel Island in the Andamans have been killed by the Sentinelese, who are the world’s most isolated islanders.

The Sentinelese, thought to number between 50 and 200, have rebuffed all contact with the modern world, firing a shower of arrows at anyone who comes within range.  They are believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world to remain isolated.

DNA suggests they have been isolated for a very long time indeed:

DNA analysis of another tribe, the Jarawa, whose members made first contact with the outside world in 1997, suggest that the tribesmen migrated from Africa around 60,000 years ago.  

I won the WorldAtlas.com geoquiz today. This was the crucial clue:

This somewhat unusual body of land has many striking features, not the least of which are its two massive (and somewhat scary) cloud-covered volcanoes.

The answer was Isla Ometepe, Lake Nicaragua, and it helped that Ometepe is one of my favorite islands among the 311 that I’ve visited.

I had to go: Concepcion Volcano makes Ometepe the tallest lake island on the planet, rising a vertical mile above the lake.  Most of this rise is accomplished in a horizontal mile and a half, so it was indeed a scary climb, up fresh rockslide chutes and into the clouds, then on all fours up ash slopes until the ground suddenly dropped away into a crater emanating heat.

A bridge and tunnel are planned for Chongming, the large Yangtze River island north of Shanghai.

This would transfer another 700,000 or so people from the world’s unbridged island population.  Until then, Chongming may be the most populous unbridged river island in the world.