Montagu Island

Montagu Island
	Montagu Island satellite image
Waters	South Atlantic
Archipelago	South Sandwich Islands
Geographical location	58 ° 27 ′ S , 26 ° 22 ′ W Coordinates: 58 ° 27 ′ S , 26 ° 22 ′ W
length	12 km
width	11 km
surface	110 km²
Highest elevation	Mount Belinda ; 1370 m
Residents	uninhabited

Montagu Iceland ( Spanish Isla Jorge ) is about 110 sq km, the largest of the sub-Antarctic South Atlantic located South Sandwich Islands . The island is politically part of the British overseas territory " South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ", but is also claimed by Argentina .

geography

Montagu Island is centrally located within the arch of the South Sandwich Islands, about 60 km south of Saunders Island and 60 km north of Bristol Island . The uninhabited volcanic island has an area of approximately 12 × 11 km, with over 90% of its area permanently covered with ice. The shield volcano Mount Belinda with its height of 1370 m above sea level is the most remarkable geographical aspect of the vegetationless island and at the same time the highest point of the South Sandwich Islands. Another prominent mountain cone, Mount Oceanite with a height of 915 m , rises in the extreme southeast of the island.

Mount Belinda eruption

Since no volcanic activity was known for the time of the Holocene , Mount Belinda was considered inactive until the end of the 20th century. From October 2001, satellite imagery indicated eruption activity at the top of the mountain that continued into 2007. At the height of volcanic activity in 2005, a lava flow of around 90 meters was created , which after 3.5 kilometers on the north coast poured into the sea forming a delta, increasing the area of the island by around 0.2 km².

history

Montagu was discovered Iceland on 1 February 1775 by British navigator James Cook , who after John Montagu , then First Lord of the Admiralty , Cape Montagu named because he thought it were the tip of a larger country. It was not until Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen that it was an island in January 1820. The first recorded landing on Montagu Island was in 1908 by the Norwegian whaler Carl Anton Larsen .

literature

Martin Wyatt Holdgate , Peter Edward Baker: The South Sandwich Islands: I. General description (= British Antarctic Survey Scientific Reports . No. 91 ). Natural Environment Research Council - British Antarctic Survey , Cambridge 1979, ISBN 0-85665-046-3 , IV. South Sandwich Islands - G. Montagu Island, p. 45–50 (English, online , PDF; 12.77 MB).
Matthew R. Patrick, John L. Smellie: Synthesis A spaceborne inventory of volcanic activity in Antarctica and southern oceans, 2000-10 . In: Antarctic Science . tape 25 , no. 4 , August 2013, ISSN 0954-1020 , South Sandwich Islands: Mount Belinda (Montagu Island), p. 487-490 , doi : 10.1017 / S0954102013000436 (English).
Matthew R. Patrick, John L. Smellie et al .: First recorded eruption of Mount Belinda volcano (Montagu Island), South Sandwich Islands . In: Bulletin of Volcanology . tape 67 , no. 5 , June 2005, p. 415–422 , doi : 10.1007 / s00445-004-0382-6 (English, freely available online from CiteSeer ^x , PDF; 333 kB).

Web links

Commons : Montagu Island - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Montagu Island in the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution (English).
Montagu Island ( Memento from December 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) in the island encyclopedia www.oceandots.com (English).

Individual evidence

^ Matthew R. Patrick, John L. Smellie, Synthesis A spaceborne inventory of volcanic activity in Antarctica and southern oceans, 2000-10 . In: Antarctic Science . tape 25 , no. 4 , August 2013, ISSN 0954-1020 , South Sandwich Islands: Mount Belinda (Montagu Island), p. 487-490 , doi : 10.1017 / S0954102013000436 (English).
^ William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 1 . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara / Denver / Oxford 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 430 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).

[1] Matthew R. Patrick, John L. Smellie, Synthesis A spaceborne inventory of volcanic activity in Antarctica and southern oceans, 2000-10 . In: Antarctic Science . tape 25 , no. 4 , August 2013, ISSN 0954-1020 , South Sandwich Islands: Mount Belinda (Montagu Island), p. 487-490 , doi : 10.1017 / S0954102013000436 (English).

[2] William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 1 . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara / Denver / Oxford 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 430 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).