Vilkitsky Island (Kara Sea)

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Location of Vilkitsky and Neupokoyeva Islands in the Kara Sea.
Location of Vilkitsky and Neupokoyeva Islands in the Kara Sea.
Vilkitsky and Neupokoyeva Islands
Vilkitsky and Neupokoyeva Islands
For other islands and geographic features called "Vilkitsky" see Vilkitsky (disambiguation).

Vilkitsky Island, (Russian: Остров Вильки́цкого; Ostrov Vil'kitskogo) is an island in the Kara Sea. It is located 40 km northeast of Shokalskogo Island, off the tip of the Gydan Peninsula in North Siberia. This island is bleak and windswept and is covered with tundra. Vilkitsky Island is crescent-shaped and it is divided in two by a narrow sound in its midst. It is 42 km in length but only 12 km wide at its broadest zone.

The sea surrounding this island is covered with pack ice in the winter and there are numerous ice floes even in the summer. There is a large shallow area between Vilkitsky Island and its southern neighbor, Neupokoyeva Island (Остров Неупокоева).

Vilkitsky Island belongs to the Tyumen Oblast administrative division of the Russian Federation. It is also part of the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve, the largest nature reserve of Russia .

This island is not to be confused with other islands called "Vilkitsky", like the small Vilkitsky group (now mentioned as Dzhekman Islands in most maps) which is part of the Nordenskjold Archipelago, the Vilkitsky Islands located in the Laptev sea off the eastern shores of the Taymyr Peninsula, and also Vilkitsky Island in the De Long Group in the Eastern Siberian Sea.

All these islands are named after Russian hydrographer Boris Vilkitsky.

[edit] References

  • Nature Reserve: [1]
  • Fast ice conditions: [2]
  • Contamination in the Kara Sea: [3]

[edit] See also


Coordinates: 73°28′N 75°45′E / 73.467, 75.75