Buffer Island
| Buffer Island | ||
|---|---|---|
| Waters | Marguerite Bay | |
| Geographical location | 69 ° 9 ′ S , 67 ° 21 ′ W | |
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| Residents | uninhabited | |
Buffer Island (from English buffer , damper, buffer ' ) is a mainly icy island off the Fallières coast of the Antarctic Peninsula . It lies west of the Wordie Ice Shelf and 15 km northwest of Mount Balfour .
The first aerial photographs of the island were taken during the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition (1947–1948). The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey carried out surveys in 1958. The UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee first named it in 1962 as the Buffer Ice Rise , as it obstructed the north-westerly runoff of the ice shelf, which thus piled up to form a supposed ice dome . The true nature of this geographic object was revealed in 1989 by the sharp retreat of the Wordie Ice Shelf, resulting in a renaming.
Web links
- Buffer Iceland in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey (English)
- Buffer Island on geographic.org (English)