Nishinoshima (Ogasawara)

Nishinoshima (Japanese西 之 岛, literally. "Western Island", English Rosario Iceland ) is a small volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean. It belongs to the Japanese Ogasawara Islands and thus administratively to the prefecture of Tokyo. The island is sometimes counted in the island chain of islands bonuses. This is from a geographical and geological point of view, however, incorrect. Although the island is Chichi -jima in the central bonuses islands closest to separate from these, however deep, not only by a distance of over 130 km, but also by the more than 4000 meters Ogasawara Trough.

The uninhabited island is located about 950 km south of Honshu on that seamounts, on the north the Izu Islands, further south, the Kazan - RETTO ( volcanic islands) lying the later continues in the island arc of the Mariana Islands. From Chichi -jima, located on the eastern sea back of the Ogasawara Islands, it is approximately 150 km away.

Nishinoshima, the 29 -acre and up to 38 m protruding from the sea caldera of a volcano dar. In the years 1973 and 1974, occurred several eruptions, the island completely redesigned and made three more small rocky islands occur which meanwhile with the main island are fused.

On November 21, 2013 approximately 200 meters was formed in an undersea eruption südsüdostlich of Nishinoshima another island with a size of 300 by 200 meters.

The island is increased by eruptions continued and reached the beginning of December an area of ​​5.6 hectares and a height of 25 m. Until 26 December 2013, the first elongated island has assumed a more rounded shape and now has dimensions of 450 meters by 500 meters on. She touched in two places already the neighboring island Nishinoshima and is about to grow together with this. The island has no official name, but is in Japanese reports just " new island " (新 岛) called, which reads Shinto or alternatively Niijima.