Alejandro Selkirk
| Alejandro Selkirk (Más Afuera) | |
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| Waters | Pacific Ocean |
| Archipelago | Juan Fernández Islands |
| Geographical location | 33 ° 45 ′ S , 80 ° 47 ′ W |
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| length | 10.4 km |
| width | 7.1 km |
| surface | 49.52 km² |
| Highest elevation | Cerro de Los Inocentes 1650 m |
| Residents | 50 1 inhabitant / km² |
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The island of Alejandro Selkirk ( Spanish Isla Alejandro Selkirk , formerly Isla Más Afuera (“Outer Island ”), German also Alexander Selkirk Island ) is the furthest west of the Juan Fernández Islands in the Pacific Ocean . The group belongs politically to Chile and is geographically part of South America expected.
The not permanently inhabited island is 10.4 kilometers long, seven kilometers wide and with an area of about 49.5 km², slightly larger than the second main island of the archipelago, Isla Robinson Crusoe .
The island is named after the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk , who was released in 1704 on the neighboring island , which is now called Robinson Crusoe , about 160 kilometers to the east . His fate served the writer Daniel Defoe as a template for his world-famous novel " Robinson Crusoe ".
On the east coast of Alejandro Selkirk Island there are still around 20 buildings from a former convict colony that was in operation from 1909 to 1930. 190 convicts were initially housed there. From 1927 to 1930 there were 160 political prisoners on the island. Today Alejandro Selkirk is only inhabited by about 50 fishermen who are only on the island during the fishing season.
The entire archipelago shows very little erosion, the youngest rocks are one to two million years old. The oval island is formed by rock ridges that break off towards the sea in a cliff. The coastal cliffs are up to 1000 meters high. Deep, cleft-like rock incisions are characteristic of the island's relief. The highest point on the island is the Cerro de Los Inocentes at 1650 meters .
The island is home to the endemic island spiny-tailed hatchet ( Aphrastura masafuerae ), an extremely endangered species of pottery bird . The bird of prey Buteo polyosoma exsul , a subspecies of the red-backed buzzard , only breeds on this island.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Archipelago Juan Fernández. Sitio prioritario para la conservación de la bioversidad global. Sistematizacion del estado actual del conocimiento. Santiago 2009 (Spanish, wordpress.com [PDF; accessed January 8, 2017]).
- ↑ Maura Brescia de Val: Selkirk Robinson: El mito: a tres siglos del desembarco del solitario en Isla Robinson Crusoe (1704-2004) . Mare Nostrum, 2004, ISBN 956-8089-04-7 (Spanish).
- ↑ Martin Kaluza: Today a Robinson Crusoe. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 18, 2012, accessed on January 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Gonzalez J. (2014). Phylogenetic position of the most endangered Chilean bird: the Masafuera Rayadito ( Aphrastura masafuerae ; Furnariidae). Tropical Conservation Science . 7: 677-689.
- ^ Robin and Anne Woods: Atlas of Breeding Birds of the Falkland Islands , Anthony Nelson, Shorpshire 1997, ISBN 0-904614-60-3 , p. 103