Belcher Islands
| Belcher Islands | ||
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| Waters | Hudson Bay | |
| Geographical location | 56 ° 11 ′ N , 79 ° 15 ′ W | |
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| Number of islands | about 1500 | |
| Main island | Flaherty Island | |
| Total land area | 2900 km² | |
| Residents | 744 (2006) | |
 Mercator Projection |
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The Belcher Islands ( English Belcher Islands , French Îles Belcher , inuktitut Qikirtait ) are an archipelago in the southeast of Hudson Bay in Canada , north of James Bay . Politically, they belong to the Nunavut Territory .
The archipelago covers an area of 13,000 km², of which around 2,900 km² is land. It was discovered in 1610 by the English navigator Henry Hudson and later named after Sir Edward Belcher , a polar explorer and commander of an Arctic expedition .
The islands, which rise only a few meters above sea level, belong geologically to the Canadian Shield and consist of 1.64 to 2.34 billion year old sedimentary rocks . Their strange, loop-like shape was created by the tight folding of the sedimentary rocks and the subsequent erosion of the less resistant rock layers when the sea level was still well below today's mark. Therefore, today only the harder, more erosion-resistant layers in the fold structures extend beyond the sea surface.
The main island is the 1585 km² Flaherty Island . On the north coast of Flaherty Island is the settlement of Sanikiluaq , the southernmost community of Nunavut. Other larger islands of the archipelago comprising a total of 1,500 islands are Kugong Island , Moore Island , Tukarak Island , Innetallong Island , Wiegand Island , Split Island , Snape Island and Mavor Island .
The Belcher Islands can be divided into four groups:
- North Belcher Islands , main islands: Johnson Island , Laddie Island , Split Island
- Baker's Dozen Islands , about 50 islands
- East Belcher Islands , 15 islands
- Flaherty Islands , about 300 islands
The indigenous population of the Belcher Islands, which can be attributed to the Inuit , is called Qikirtamiut after the Inuktitut name of the island .
Web links
- mitiq.com - Belcher Islands
Individual evidence
- ↑ NASA Earth Observatory - Belcher Islands
- ^ Douglas J. Nakashima: The Ecological Knowledge of Belcher Island Inuit: A traditional basis for contemporary wildlife co-management. PhD thesis, McGill University, Montreal 1991 ( online ), p. 11