Bennett Island

Bennett Island
Bennett Island
Waters	Arctic Ocean
Archipelago	De Long Islands
Geographical location	76 ° 42 ′  N , 148 ° 59 ′  E Coordinates: 76 ° 42 ′  N , 148 ° 59 ′  E
length	29 km
width	14 km
surface	150 km²
Highest elevation	Gora De-Longa 426  m
Residents	uninhabited
Landsat image of Bennett Island

The Bennett Island ( Russian Остров Беннетта , Yakut Беннетт арыыта ) is the largest of the De Long Islands in the arctic archipelago of the New Siberian Islands belonging to Russia . It is located in the northern part of the East Siberian Sea .

geography

Bennett Island is 29 km long between Cape Emma in the southwest and Cape Emmeline in the northeast and 14 km wide between Cape Hope in the northwest and Kapp Sofia in the southeast. It has an area of ​​150 km². The highest point is De Long Mountain in the southwest of the island at 426 m. Bennett Island is the most heavily glaciated of all De Long Islands . It is covered by four separate ice caps , of which the centrally located Toll ice cap is the largest with an area of ​​54.2 km² and a maximum height of 384 m. It has several outlet glaciers , of which the Seeberg glacier in the south calves directly into the sea . The western and eastern De Long Ice Cap in the southwest and the Small Ice Cap in the northeast of the island are smaller. Together, the glaciers cover almost half of the island with an area of ​​72 km².

history

Bennett Island Map
(Seeberg 1902)

Was discovered the island on 11 July 1881 by the US polar explorer George W. DeLong , who entered on July 28, and after the financier of the expedition, James Gordon Bennett Jr. , named. In the summer of 1902, a Russian expedition led by Eduard von Toll worked here . Great, the astronomer Friedrich Seeberg and their Yakut hunters Nikolai Djakanow and Vasili Gorochow have been missing since then. A rescue expedition led by Alexander Kolchak found only her diaries and scientific collections.

Although Bennett Island has been controlled by Russia since the early 20th century , US claims have also been made since its discovery . In the 1990 agreement between the Soviet Union and the USA on the sea border between Alaska and Siberia , the De Long Islands are recognized as Russian. According to the United States Department of State, the United States has never made a claim on the De Long Islands.

literature

• Uspenskij, Savva M .: Among seals and ice gulls, expedition to Bennett Island , Urania-Verlag Leipzig, Jena, Berlin, 1963

Web links

Commons : Bennett Island  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andrey F. Glazovskiy: Russian Arctic , chap. 2.7 in: Jacek Jania, Jon Ove Hagen (eds.): Mass Balance of Arctic Glaciers (PDF; 132 kB), IASC Report No. 5, Sosnowiec-Oslo 1996.
2. ↑ Aleksey I. Sharov: Online Atlas of Glacier Fluctuations in the Eurasian High Arctic (PDF; 2.26 MB). JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Graz 2013.
3. ↑ William Barr: Baron Eduard von Toll's Last Expedition: The Russian Polar Expedition, 1900-1903 (PDF; 5.59 MB). In: Arctic 34, 1980, pp. 201-224 (English).
4. ^ Status of Wrangel and other Arctic islands , Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, US State Department, 2003, accessed on February 20, 2016.