Maly Taymyr Island

This article is about the island in the Laptev Sea. For the island in the Kara Sea, see Taymyr Island.
Maly Taymyr
Russian: Малый Таймыр

Maly Taymyr and Starokadomsky Island

Location of Maly Taymyr Island in the Laptev Sea.

Geography
Location Laptev Sea
Coordinates 78°7′N 107°15′E / 78.117°N 107.250°E / 78.117; 107.250
Archipelago Severnaya Zemlya
Area 232 km2 (90 sq mi)
Length 28 km (17.4 mi)
Width 8 km (5 mi)
Highest elevation 31 m (102 ft)
Administration

Maly Taymyr Island (Russian: Малый Таймыр, or Little Taymyr Island) is an island in the Laptev Sea, Russian Arctic.

Geography

It is located off the southeastern end of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago and northeast of the Taymyr Peninsula and has a smaller island, Starokadomsky Island, close by on its northwestern side.

The area of Maly Taymyr Island is 232 km2 (90 sq mi) and its location is 78°7′N 107°15′E / 78.117°N 107.250°E / 78.117; 107.250. The Vilkitsky Strait runs south of Maly Taymyr Island and its waters, as well as the waters surrounding the two islands, are covered with pack ice during the long and bitter winters. There are many ice floes even in the short summer, between June and September.

Maly Taymyr Island belongs to the Krasnoyarsk Krai administrative division of the Russian Federation and is part of the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve – the largest nature reserve of Russia and one of the biggest in the world.

On the northern shores of Maly Taymyr there is a small island named Ostrov Oktyabrenok.

History

The island was discovered by Boris Vilkitsky during the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition in 1913 and was named Tsarevich Alexei Island (Russian: Остров Цесаревича Алексея),[1] after the son of Zar Nicholas II of Russia. Following the 1917 October Revolution the island was renamed "Maly Taymyr". In 2005 a request was forwarded to the local government in Krasnoyarsk Krai in order to reinstate its former name to the island.

Tsarevich Alexei Island south of Emperor Nicholas II Land[2] in a 1915 map of the Russian Empire.

See also

References

  1. The Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition 1910-1915
  2. Nicholas II Land, Bulletin of the American Geographical Society Vol. 46, No. 2 (1914), pp. 117-120


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