Alexander Island
The Alexander I Island ( named in analogy to the English Alexander Island) is 49,000 km ², the largest island of Antarctica. It lies off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Bellingshausen and extends over about 378 km long and 200 km wide. Your coastline is about 2185 km. The island is connected by the ice shelf of King George VI Sound to the mainland Antarctica, and therefore difficult to detect on satellite photos as an island. In fact, it is just 20 km off the coast of Antarctica, from which it is separated by the Sound aforementioned. The climate of the Alexander I Island is according to their geographical location polar and it is almost completely covered with ice.
Geography
The Alexander I Island looms in the Douglas Range up to 2987 m. Off the west coast of the island, between Latady, Charcot and Rothschild Island, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is located. The southwest of Alexander I Island it is divided by numerous bays in various peninsulas. The two largest of these peninsulas are the Beethoven Peninsula in the southwest and the Monteverdi Peninsula in the extreme south, between which extends the Bach Ice Shelf.
In the southeast of the island of Hodgson Lake, a former subglacial lake, which was 10,500 years ago under a 500 m thick layer of ice is. Today, the strength of its ice sheet depending on the season is now only 3.6 to 4.0 m. In 2013, it was verified in a drill core from the sediment of the lake, that he harbored in his subglacial phase of life.
History
The Alexander I Island was discovered on January 28, 1821 by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen in the context of the first Russian South Pole Expedition and named after the Russian tsar Alexander I.. Until 1940, it was assumed that the area belongs to the Antarctic mainland, which is why you occasionally still finds the name Alexander I. Land. Today, Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom raise territorial claims to the island, but these are not internationally recognized. United Kingdom maintains on the island since 1961, the station Fossil Bluff.