1.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
2.
South Australia
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South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country, with a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres, it is the fourth-largest of Australias states and territories. Other population centres in the state are relatively small, the state comprises less than 8 percent of the Australian population and ranks fifth in population among the six states and two territories. The majority of its people reside in Adelaide, most of the remainder are settled in fertile areas along the south-eastern coast and River Murray. The states colonial origins are unique in Australia as a settled, planned British province. Official settlement began on 28 December 1836, when the colony was proclaimed at the Old Gum Tree by Governor John Hindmarsh, as with the rest of the continent, the region had been long occupied by Aboriginal peoples, who were organised into numerous tribes and languages. The first British settlement to be established was Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, on 26 July 1836, the guiding principle behind settlement was that of systematic colonisation, a theory espoused by Edward Gibbon Wakefield that was later employed by the New Zealand Company. The goal was to establish the province as a centre of civilisation for free immigrants, promising civil liberties, although its history is marked by economic hardship, South Australia has remained politically innovative and culturally vibrant. Today, it is known for its wine and numerous cultural festivals. The states economy is dominated by the agricultural, manufacturing and mining industries, the state has an increasingly significant finance sector as well. Evidence of human activity in South Australia dates back as far as 20,000 years, with flint mining activity, in addition wooden spears and tools were made in an area now covered in peat bog in the South East. Kangaroo Island was inhabited long before the island was cut off by rising sea levels, thijssen named his discovery Pieter Nuyts Land, after the highest ranking individual on board. The complete coastline of South Australia was first mapped by Matthew Flinders, the land which now forms the state of South Australia was claimed for Britain in 1788 as part of the colony of New South Wales. Although the new colony included almost two-thirds of the continent, early settlements were all on the eastern coast and it took more than forty years before any serious proposal to establish settlements in the south-western portion of New South Wales were put forward. In 1834, the British Parliament passed the South Australia Act 1834, the act stated that 802,511 square kilometres would be allotted to the colony and it would be convict-free. In contrast to the rest of Australia, terra nullius did not apply to the new province, although the patent guaranteed land rights under force of law for the indigenous inhabitants it was ignored by the South Australian Company authorities and squatters. Settlement of seven vessels and 636 people was made at Kingscote on Kangaroo Island. The first immigrants arrived at Holdfast Bay in November 1836, the Colonisation Commissioners intended to establish a police service as soon as misconduct within the increasing population warranted it
3.
Queensland
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Queensland is the second-largest and third-most-populous state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Situated in the north-east of the country, it is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west, to the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean. Queensland has a population of 4,750,500, concentrated along the coast, the state is the worlds sixth largest sub-national entity, with an area of 1,852,642 km2. The capital and largest city in the state is Brisbane, Australias third largest city, often referred to as the Sunshine State, Queensland is home to 10 of Australias 30 largest cities and is the nations third largest economy. Tourism in the state, fuelled largely by its tropical climate, is a major industry. Queensland was first inhabited by Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, the first European to land in Queensland was Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606, who explored the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula near present-day Weipa. In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook claimed the east coast of Australia for the Kingdom of Great Britain. The colony of New South Wales was founded in 1788 by Governor Arthur Phillip at Sydney, New South Wales at that time included all of what is now Queensland, Queensland was explored in subsequent decades until the establishment of a penal colony at Brisbane in 1824 by John Oxley. Penal transportation ceased in 1839 and free settlement was allowed from 1842, the state was named in honour of Queen Victoria, who on 6 June 1859 signed Letters Patent separating the colony from New South Wales. The 6th of June is now celebrated statewide as Queensland Day. Queensland achieved statehood with the Federation of Australia on 1 January 1901, the history of Queensland spans thousands of years, encompassing both a lengthy indigenous presence, as well as the eventful times of post-European settlement. The north-eastern Australian region was explored by Dutch, Spanish and French navigators before being encountered by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770, the Australian Labor Party has its origin as a formal organisation in Queensland and the town of Barcaldine is the symbolic birthplace of the party. June 2009 marked the 150th anniversary of its creation as a colony from New South Wales. The Aboriginal occupation of Queensland is thought to predate 50,000 BC, likely via boat or land bridge across Torres Strait, during the last ice age Queenslands landscape became more arid and largely desolate, making food and other supplies scarce. This led to the worlds first seed-grinding technology, warming again made the land hospitable, which brought high rainfall along the eastern coast, stimulating the growth of the states tropical rainforests. In February 1606, Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon landed near the site of what is now Weipa and this was the first recorded landing of a European in Australia, and it also marked the first reported contact between European and Aboriginal Australian people. The region was explored by French and Spanish explorers prior to the arrival of Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. Cook claimed the east coast under instruction from King George III of the United Kingdom on 22 August 1770 at Possession Island, naming Eastern Australia, including Queensland, the Aboriginal population declined significantly after a smallpox epidemic during the late 18th century
4.
New South Wales
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New South Wales is a state on the east coast of Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria to the south and it has a coast line with the Tasman Sea on its east side. The Australian Capital Territory is an enclave within the state, New South Wales state capital is Sydney, which is also Australias most populous city. In March 2014, the population of New South Wales was 7.5 million. Just under two-thirds of the population,4.67 million. Inhabitants of New South Wales are referred to as New South Welshmen, the Colony of New South Wales was founded as a penal colony in 1788. It originally comprised a more than half of the Australian mainland with its western boundary set at 129th meridian east in 1825, in addition, the colony also included the island territories of New Zealand, Van Diemens Land, Lord Howe Island, and Norfolk Island. During the 19th century, most of the area was detached to form separate British colonies that eventually became New Zealand. However, the Swan River Colony has never administered as part of New South Wales. Lord Howe Island remains part of New South Wales, while Norfolk Island has become a federal Territory, as have the now known as the Australian Capital Territory. The prior inhabitants of New South Wales were the Aboriginal tribes who arrived in Australia about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago, before European settlement there were an estimated 250,000 Aboriginal people in the region. The Wodi Wodi people are the custodians of the Illawarra region of South Sydney. The Bundjalung people are the custodians of parts of the northern coastal areas. The European discovery of New South Wales was made by Captain James Cook during his 1770 survey along the eastern coast of the Dutch-named continent of New Holland. In his original journal covering the survey, in triplicate to satisfy Admiralty Orders, Cook first named the land New Wales, however, in the copy held by the Admiralty, he revised the wording to New South Wales. After years of chaos and anarchy after the overthrow of Governor William Bligh, macquaries legacy is still evident today. During the 19th century, large areas were separated to form the British colonies of Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria. Responsible government was granted to the New South Wales colony in 1855, following the Treaty of Waitangi, William Hobson declared British sovereignty over New Zealand in 1840
5.
Victoria (Australia)
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Victoria is a state in southeast Australia. Victoria is Australias most densely populated state and its second-most populous state overall, most of its population is concentrated in the area surrounding Port Phillip Bay, which includes the metropolitan area of its state capital and largest city, Melbourne, Australias second-largest city. Prior to British European settlement, the area now constituting Victoria was inhabited by a number of Aboriginal peoples. With Great Britain having claimed the entire Australian continent east of the 135th meridian east in 1788, Victoria was included in the wider colony of New South Wales. The first settlement in the area occurred in 1803 at Sullivan Bay, and much of what is now Victoria was included in the Port Phillip District in 1836, Victoria was officially created as a separate colony in 1851, and achieved self-government in 1855. Politically, Victoria has 37 seats in the Australian House of Representatives and 12 seats in the Australian Senate, at state level, the Parliament of Victoria consists of the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. Victoria is currently governed by the Labor Party, with Daniel Andrews the current Premier, the personal representative of the Queen of Australia in the state is the Governor of Victoria, currently Linda Dessau. Local government is concentrated in 79 municipal districts, including 33 cities, although a number of unincorporated areas still exist, Victorias total gross state product is ranked second in Australia, although Victoria is ranked fourth in terms of GSP per capita because of its limited mining activity. Culturally, Melbourne is home to a number of museums, art galleries and theatres and is described as the sporting capital of Australia. The Melbourne Cricket Ground is the largest stadium in Australia, and the host of the 1956 Summer Olympics, Victoria has eight public universities, with the oldest, the University of Melbourne, having been founded in 1853. Victoria, like Queensland, was named after Queen Victoria, who had been on the British throne for 14 years when the colony was established in 1851. The first British settlement in the later known as Victoria was established in October 1803 under Lieutenant-Governor David Collins at Sullivan Bay on Port Phillip. In the year 1826 Colonel Stewart, Captain S. Wright, fly and the brigs Dragon and Amity, took a number of convicts and a small force composed of detachments of the 3rd and 93rd regiments. Victorias next settlement was at Portland, on the south west coast of what is now Victoria, edward Henty settled Portland Bay in 1834. Melbourne was founded in 1835 by John Batman, who set up a base in Indented Head, from settlement the region around Melbourne was known as the Port Phillip District, a separately administered part of New South Wales. Shortly after the now known as Geelong was surveyed by Assistant Surveyor W. H. Smythe. And in 1838 Geelong was officially declared a town, despite earlier white settlements dating back to 1826, days later, still in 1851 gold was discovered near Ballarat, and subsequently at Bendigo. Later discoveries occurred at sites across Victoria
6.
Prime meridian
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A prime meridian is a meridian in a geographical coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. Together, a meridian and its antimeridian form a great circle. This great circle divides the sphere, e. g. the Earth, if one uses directions of East and West from a defined prime meridian, then they can be called Eastern Hemisphere and Western Hemisphere. The most widely used modern meridian is the IERS Reference Meridian and it is derived but deviates slightly from the Greenwich Meridian, which was selected as an international standard in 1884. The notion of longitude was developed by the Greek Eratosthenes in Alexandria, and Hipparchus in Rhodes, but it was Ptolemy who first used a consistent meridian for a world map in his Geographia. The main point is to be comfortably west of the tip of Africa as negative numbers were not yet in use. His prime meridian corresponds to 18°40 west of Winchester today, at that time the chief method of determining longitude was by using the reported times of lunar eclipses in different countries. Ptolemys Geographia was first printed with maps at Bologna in 1477, but there was still a hope that a natural basis for a prime meridian existed. The Tordesillas line was settled at 370 leagues west of Cape Verde. This is shown in Diogo Ribeiros 1529 map, in 1541, Mercator produced his famous 41 cm terrestrial globe and drew his prime meridian precisely through Fuertaventura in the Canaries. His later maps used the Azores, following the magnetic hypothesis, but by the time that Ortelius produced the first modern atlas in 1570, other islands such as Cape Verde were coming into use. In his atlas longitudes were counted from 0° to 360°, not 180°W to 180°E as is usual today and this practice was followed by navigators well into the 18th century. In 1634, Cardinal Richelieu used the westernmost island of the Canaries, Ferro, 19°55 west of Paris, the geographer Delisle decided to round this off to 20°, so that it simply became the meridian of Paris disguised. In the early 18th century the battle was on to improve the determination of longitude at sea, between 1765 and 1811, Nevil Maskelyne published 49 issues of the Nautical Almanac based on the meridian of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Maskelynes tables not only made the lunar method practicable, they made the Greenwich meridian the universal reference point. In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D. C.22 countries voted to adopt the Greenwich meridian as the meridian of the world. The French argued for a line, mentioning the Azores and the Bering Strait. In October 1884 the Greenwich Meridian was selected by delegates to the International Meridian Conference held in Washington, united States to be the common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world
7.
North Pole
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The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is defined as the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earths axis of rotation meets its surface. The North Pole is the northernmost point on the Earth, lying diametrically opposite the South Pole and it defines geodetic latitude 90° North, as well as the direction of true north. At the North Pole all directions point south, all lines of longitude converge there, along tight latitude circles, counterclockwise is east and clockwise is west. The North Pole is at the center of the Northern Hemisphere, while the South Pole lies on a continental land mass, the North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amid waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice. This makes it impractical to construct a permanent station at the North Pole, however, the Soviet Union, and later Russia, constructed a number of manned drifting stations on a generally annual basis since 1937, some of which have passed over or very close to the Pole. Since 2002, the Russians have also established a base, Barneo. This operates for a few weeks during early spring, studies in the 2000s predicted that the North Pole may become seasonally ice-free because of Arctic ice shrinkage, with timescales varying from 2016 to the late 21st century or later. The sea depth at the North Pole has been measured at 4,261 m by the Russian Mir submersible in 2007 and at 4,087 m by USS Nautilus in 1958. The nearest land is said to be Kaffeklubben Island, off the northern coast of Greenland about 700 km away. The nearest permanently inhabited place is Alert in the Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada, around the beginning of the 20th century astronomers noticed a small apparent variation of latitude, as determined for a fixed point on Earth from the observation of stars. Part of this variation could be attributed to a wandering of the Pole across the Earths surface, the wandering has several periodic components and an irregular component. The component with a period of about 435 days is identified with the eight-month wandering predicted by Euler and is now called the Chandler wobble after its discoverer and it is desirable to tie the system of Earth coordinates to fixed landforms. Of course, given plate tectonics and isostasy, there is no system in all geographic features are fixed. Yet the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service and the International Astronomical Union have defined a framework called the International Terrestrial Reference System. As early as the 16th century, many eminent people correctly believed that the North Pole was in a sea and it was therefore hoped that passage could be found through ice floes at favorable times of the year. Several expeditions set out to find the way, generally with whaling ships, one of the earliest expeditions to set out with the explicit intention of reaching the North Pole was that of British naval officer William Edward Parry, who in 1827 reached latitude 82°45′ North. In 1871 the Polaris expedition, a US attempt on the Pole led by Charles Francis Hall, another British Royal Navy attempt on the pole, part of the British Arctic Expedition, by Commander Albert H. Markham reached a then-record 83°2026 North in May 1876 before turning back. An 1879–1881 expedition commanded by US naval officer George W. DeLong ended tragically when their ship, over half the crew, including DeLong, were lost
8.
Arctic Ocean
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The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the worlds five major oceans. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be seen as the northernmost part of the all-encompassing World Ocean, located mostly in the Arctic north polar region in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere, the Arctic Ocean is almost completely surrounded by Eurasia and North America. It is partly covered by sea ice throughout the year and almost completely in winter, the summer shrinking of the ice has been quoted at 50%. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center uses satellite data to provide a record of Arctic sea ice cover. The Arctic may become ice free for the first time in human history within a few years or by 2040, for much of European history, the north polar regions remained largely unexplored and their geography conjectural. He was probably describing loose sea ice known today as growlers or bergy bits, his Thule was probably Norway, early cartographers were unsure whether to draw the region around the North Pole as land or water. The makers of navigational charts, more conservative than some of the more fanciful cartographers, tended to leave the region blank and this lack of knowledge of what lay north of the shifting barrier of ice gave rise to a number of conjectures. In England and other European nations, the myth of an Open Polar Sea was persistent, john Barrow, longtime Second Secretary of the British Admiralty, promoted exploration of the region from 1818 to 1845 in search of this. In the United States in the 1850s and 1860s, the explorers Elisha Kane, even quite late in the century, the eminent authority Matthew Fontaine Maury included a description of the Open Polar Sea in his textbook The Physical Geography of the Sea. Nevertheless, as all the explorers who travelled closer and closer to the reported, the polar ice cap is quite thick. Fridtjof Nansen was the first to make a crossing of the Arctic Ocean. The first surface crossing of the ocean was led by Wally Herbert in 1969, in a dog sled expedition from Alaska to Svalbard, with air support. The first nautical transit of the pole was made in 1958 by the submarine USS Nautilus. Since 1937, Soviet and Russian manned drifting ice stations have extensively monitored the Arctic Ocean, scientific settlements were established on the drift ice and carried thousands of kilometres by ice floes. In World War II, the European region of the Arctic Ocean was heavily contested, the Arctic Ocean occupies a roughly circular basin and covers an area of about 14,056,000 km2, almost the size of Antarctica. The coastline is 45,390 km long and it is surrounded by the land masses of Eurasia, North America, Greenland, and by several islands. It is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Bering Strait and to the Atlantic Ocean through the Greenland Sea, countries bordering the Arctic Ocean are, Russia, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the United States. There are several ports and harbours around the Arctic Ocean In Alaska, in Canada, ships may anchor at Churchill in Manitoba, Nanisivik in Nunavut, Tuktoyaktuk or Inuvik in the Northwest territories
9.
Asia
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Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres, about 30% of Earths total land area and 8. 7% of the Earths total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its large size and population. In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, the western boundary with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. The most commonly accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal, the Ural River, and the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains, China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 A. D. The accidental discovery of America by Columbus in search for India demonstrates this deep fascination, the Silk Road became the main East-West trading route in the Asian hitherland while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may actually have more to do with human geography than physical geography. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, the boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Suez Canal. This makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia, the border between Asia and Europe was historically defined by European academics. In Sweden, five years after Peters death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia, the Russians were enthusiastic about the concept, which allowed them to keep their European identity in geography. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg, the latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century, the border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, the border between Asia and the loosely defined region of Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Malay Archipelago. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the possessions of the various empires there. Lewis and Wigen assert, The narrowing of Southeast Asia to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process, Asia is larger and more culturally diverse than Europe. It does not exactly correspond to the borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system on the grounds there is no or is no substantial physical separation between them
10.
Pacific Ocean
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The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of the Earths oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres. Both the center of the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean, the oceans current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favourable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means peaceful sea, important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan, trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but apparently not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality, from 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and he named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Later, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519, Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century, sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan, in 1564, five Spanish ships consisting of 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history, Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the 16th and 17th century Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a Mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers, as the only known entrance from the Atlantic the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western end of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines, Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and settled Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest, one of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by other European powers, and later, Japan, in Oceania, France got a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro managed to negotiate an incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888, by occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations
11.
Australasia
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Australasia, a region of Oceania, comprises Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. Charles de Brosses coined the term in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes and he derived it from the Latin for south of Asia and differentiated the area from Polynesia and the southeast Pacific. The bulk of Australasia sits on the Indo-Australian Plate, together with India, physiographically, Australasia includes New Zealand, Australia, and Melanesia, New Guinea and neighbouring islands north and east of Australia in the Pacific Ocean. The designation is applied to all the lands and islands of the Pacific Ocean lying between the equator and latitude 47° south. Most of Australasia lies on the portion of the Indo-Australian Plate, flanked by the Indian Ocean to the west. Sometimes the term encompasses the island of New Guinea. Many organisations whose names include the prefix Australasian Society of, limit their scope of operation to just Australia and New Zealand. In the past, Australasia has been used as a name for combined Australia/New Zealand sporting teams, examples include tennis between 1905 and 1915, when New Zealand and Australia combined to compete in the Davis Cup international tournament, and at the Olympic Games of 1908 and 1912. From an ecological perspective the Australasia ecozone forms a region with a common geologic and evolutionary history. In this context, Australasia is limited to Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, New Caledonia, the Wallace Line marks the biological divide from the Indomalaya ecozone of tropical Asia – Borneo and Bali lie on the western, Asian side. These three land masses have been separated from other continents, and from one another, for millions of years, all of Australasia shares the Antarctic flora, although the northern, tropical islands also share many plants with Southeast Asia. Mainland Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania are separated from one another by shallow continental shelves and they share a similar fauna which includes marsupial and monotreme mammals and ratite birds. Eucalypts are the predominant trees in much of Australia and New Guinea, New Zealand has no extant native land mammals aside from bats, but also had ratite birds, including the kiwi and the extinct moa. Media related to Australasia at Wikimedia Commons
12.
Indian Ocean
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The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the worlds oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2. It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, the Indian Ocean is known as Ratnākara, the mine of gems in ancient Sanskrit literature, and as Hind Mahāsāgar, in Hindi. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf, the oceans continental shelves are narrow, averaging 200 kilometres in width. An exception is found off Australias western coast, where the width exceeds 1,000 kilometres. The average depth of the ocean is 3,890 m and its deepest point is Diamantina Deep in Diamantina Trench, at 8,047 m deep, Sunda Trench has a depth of 7, 258–7,725 m. North of 50° south latitude, 86% of the basin is covered by pelagic sediments. The remaining 14% is layered with terrigenous sediments, glacial outwash dominates the extreme southern latitudes. The major choke points include Bab el Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz, the Lombok Strait, the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean is artificially connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, which is accessible via the Red Sea. All of the Indian Ocean is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere is in this ocean, marginal seas, gulfs, bays and straits of the Indian Ocean include, The climate north of the equator is affected by a monsoon climate. Strong north-east winds blow from October until April, from May until October south, in the Arabian Sea the violent Monsoon brings rain to the Indian subcontinent. In the southern hemisphere, the winds are milder. When the monsoon winds change, cyclones sometimes strike the shores of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. Long-term ocean temperature records show a rapid, continuous warming in the Indian Ocean, Indian Ocean warming is the largest among the tropical oceans, and about 3 times faster than the warming observed in the Pacific. Research indicates that human induced greenhouse warming, and changes in the frequency, among the few large rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean are the Zambezi, Shatt al-Arab, Indus, Godavari, Krishna, Narmada, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Jubba and Irrawaddy River. The oceans currents are controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise, during the winter monsoon, however, currents in the north are reversed. Deep water circulation is controlled primarily by inflows from the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, north of 20° south latitude the minimum surface temperature is 22 °C, exceeding 28 °C to the east. Southward of 40° south latitude, temperatures drop quickly, surface water salinity ranges from 32 to 37 parts per 1000, the highest occurring in the Arabian Sea and in a belt between southern Africa and south-western Australia
13.
Southern Ocean
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As such, it is regarded as the fourth-largest of the five principal oceanic divisions, smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans but larger than the Arctic Ocean. This ocean zone is cold, northward flowing waters from the Antarctic mix with warmer subantarctic waters. By way of his voyages in the 1770s, Captain James Cook proved that waters encompassed the southern latitudes of the globe. Since then, geographers have disagreed on the Southern Oceans northern boundary or even existence, considering the part of the Pacific, Atlantic. Others regard the seasonally-fluctuating Antarctic Convergence as the natural boundary, Borders and names for oceans and seas were internationally agreed when the International Hydrographic Bureau, the precusor to the IHO, convened the First International Conference on 24 July 1919. The IHO then published these in its Limits of Oceans and Seas, Australian authorities regard the Southern Ocean as lying immediately south of Australia. Map publishers using the term Southern Ocean on their maps include Hema Maps, Southern Ocean is an obsolete name for the Pacific Ocean or South Pacific, coined by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to discover it, who approached it from the north. The South Seas is an archaic synonym. A1745 British Act of Parliament established a prize for discovering a Northwest Passage to the Western and Southern Ocean of America, authors using Southern Ocean to name the waters encircling the unknown southern polar regions used varying limits. James Cooks account of his second voyage implies New Caledonia borders it, peacocks 1795 Geographical Dictionary said it lay to the southward of America and Africa, John Payne in 1796 used 40 degrees as the northern limit, the 1827 Edinburgh Gazetteer used 50 degrees. The United Kingdoms South Australia Act 1834 described the waters forming the southern limit of the new colony of South Australia as the Southern Ocean. The Colony of Victorias Legislative Council Act of 1881 delimited part of the division of Bairnsdale as along the New South Wales boundary to the Southern ocean. The limit then followed the west coast of Tasmania southwards to the South East Cape and then went eastwards to Broughton Island, New Zealand, the northern limits of the Southern Ocean were moved southwards in the IHOs 1937 second edition of the Limits of Oceans and Seas. From this edition, much of the northern limit ceased to abut land masses. As is discussed in detail below, prior to the 2002 edition the limits of oceans explicitly excluded the seas lying within each of them. The Great Australian Bight was unnamed in the 1928 edition, and it therefore encompassed former Southern Ocean waters but was technically not inside any of the three adjacent oceans by 1937. To perform direct comparisons of current and former limits of oceans it is necessary to consider, or at least be aware of, the limits of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans have therefore been extended South to the Antarctic Continent. The IHO readdressed the question of the Southern Ocean in a survey in 2000, of its 68 member nations,28 responded, and all responding members except Argentina agreed to redefine the ocean, reflecting the importance placed by oceanographers on ocean currents
14.
Antarctica
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It contains the geographic South Pole and is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14,000,000 square kilometres, it is the fifth-largest continent, for comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 km in thickness, Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Antarctica is a desert, with precipitation of only 200 mm along the coast. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89.2 °C, though the average for the quarter is −63 °C. Anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Organisms native to Antarctica include many types of algae, bacteria, fungi, plants, protista, vegetation, where it occurs, is tundra. The continent, however, remained neglected for the rest of the 19th century because of its hostile environment, lack of easily accessible resources. In 1895, the first confirmed landing was conducted by a team of Norwegians, Antarctica is a de facto condominium, governed by parties to the Antarctic Treaty System that have consulting status. Twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, and thirty-eight have signed it since then, the treaty prohibits military activities and mineral mining, prohibits nuclear explosions and nuclear waste disposal, supports scientific research, and protects the continents ecozone. Ongoing experiments are conducted by more than 4,000 scientists from many nations, the name Antarctica is the romanised version of the Greek compound word ἀνταρκτική, feminine of ἀνταρκτικός, meaning opposite to the Arctic, opposite to the north. Aristotle wrote in his book Meteorology about an Antarctic region in c.350 B. C, marinus of Tyre reportedly used the name in his unpreserved world map from the 2nd century A. D. Before acquiring its present geographical connotations, the term was used for locations that could be defined as opposite to the north. For example, the short-lived French colony established in Brazil in the 16th century was called France Antarctique, the first formal use of the name Antarctica as a continental name in the 1890s is attributed to the Scottish cartographer John George Bartholomew. Antarctica has no population and there is no evidence that it was seen by humans until the 19th century. Explorer Matthew Flinders, in particular, has credited with popularising the transfer of the name Terra Australis to Australia. Cook came within about 120 km of the Antarctic coast before retreating in the face of ice in January 1773. The first confirmed sighting of Antarctica can be narrowed down to the crews of ships captained by three individuals, according to various organisations, ships captained by three men sighted Antarctica or its ice shelf in 1820, von Bellingshausen, Edward Bransfield, and Nathaniel Palmer
15.
South Pole
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The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earths axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth, situated on the continent of Antarctica, it is the site of the United States Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, which was established in 1956 and has been permanently staffed since that year. The Geographic South Pole should not be confused with the South Magnetic Pole, the South Pole is at the center of the Southern Hemisphere. For most purposes, the Geographic South Pole is defined as the point of the two points where the Earths axis of rotation intersects its surface. However, the Earths axis of rotation is actually subject to very small wobbles, the geographic coordinates of the South Pole are usually given simply as 90°S, since its longitude is geometrically undefined and irrelevant. When a longitude is desired, it may be given as 0°, at the South Pole, all directions face north. For this reason, directions at the Pole are given relative to grid north, along tight latitude circles, clockwise is east, and counterclockwise is west, opposite to the North Pole. The Geographic South Pole is located on the continent of Antarctica. It sits atop a featureless, barren, windswept and icy plateau at an altitude of 2,835 metres above sea level, and is located about 1,300 km from the nearest open sea at Bay of Whales. The ice is estimated to be about 2,700 metres thick at the Pole, the polar ice sheet is moving at a rate of roughly 10 metres per year in a direction between 37° and 40° west of grid north, down towards the Weddell Sea. Therefore, the position of the station and other artificial features relative to the geographic pole gradually shift over time. The Geographic South Pole is marked by a stake in the ice alongside a small sign, these are repositioned each year in a ceremony on New Years Day to compensate for the movement of the ice. The sign records the respective dates that Roald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott reached the Pole, followed by a quotation from each man. A new marker stake is designed and fabricated each year by staff at the site, the Ceremonial South Pole is an area set aside for photo opportunities at the South Pole Station. It is located around 180 metres from the Geographic South Pole, Amundsens Tent, The tent was erected by the Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen on its arrival on 14 December 1911. It is currently buried beneath the snow and ice in the vicinity of the Pole and it has been designated a Historic Site or Monument, following a proposal by Norway to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting. In 1820, several expeditions claimed to have been the first to have sighted Antarctica, with the very first being the Russian expedition led by Faddey Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev. The first landing was probably just over a year later when American Captain John Davis, the basic geography of the Antarctic coastline was not understood until the mid-to-late 19th century
16.
Great circle
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A great circle, also known as an orthodrome or Riemannian circle, of a sphere is the intersection of the sphere and a plane that passes through the center point of the sphere. This partial case of a circle of a sphere is opposed to a circle, the intersection of the sphere. Any diameter of any great circle coincides with a diameter of the sphere, and therefore all great circles have the same circumference as each other, a great circle is the largest circle that can be drawn on any given sphere. Every circle in Euclidean 3-space is a circle of exactly one sphere. For most pairs of points on the surface of a sphere, there is a great circle through the two points. The exception is a pair of points, for which there are infinitely many great circles. The minor arc of a circle between two points is the shortest surface-path between them. In this sense, the arc is analogous to “straight lines” in Euclidean geometry. The length of the arc of a great circle is taken as the distance between two points on a surface of a sphere in Riemannian geometry. The great circles are the geodesics of the sphere, in higher dimensions, the great circles on the n-sphere are the intersection of the n-sphere with 2-planes that pass through the origin in the Euclidean space Rn+1. To prove that the arc of a great circle is the shortest path connecting two points on the surface of a sphere, one can apply calculus of variations to it. Consider the class of all paths from a point p to another point q. Introduce spherical coordinates so that p coincides with the north pole. Any curve on the sphere that does not intersect either pole, except possibly at the endpoints, can be parametrized by θ = θ, ϕ = ϕ, a ≤ t ≤ b provided we allow φ to take on arbitrary real values. The infinitesimal arc length in these coordinates is d s = r θ ′2 + ϕ ′2 sin 2 θ d t. So the length of a curve γ from p to q is a functional of the curve given by S = r ∫ a b θ ′2 + ϕ ′2 sin 2 θ d t. Note that S is at least the length of the meridian from p to q, S ≥ r ∫ a b | θ ′ | d t ≥ r | θ − θ |. Since the starting point and ending point are fixed, S is minimized if and only if φ =0, so the curve must lie on a meridian of the sphere φ = φ0 = constant
17.
New Guinea
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New Guinea is a large Island in the South West Pacific region. It is the worlds second-largest island, after Greenland, covering an area of 785,753 km2. The island is divided between two countries, Papua New Guinea to the east, and Indonesia to the west, the island has been known by various names. The name Papua was used to refer to parts of the island before contact with the West and its etymology is unclear, one theory states that it is from Tidore, the language used by the Sultanate of Tidore, which controlled parts of the islands coastal region. The name came from papo and ua, which means not united or, ploeg reports that the word papua is often said to derive from the Malay word papua or pua-pua, meaning frizzly-haired, referring to the highly curly hair of the inhabitants of these areas. When the Portuguese and Spanish explorers arrived in the island via the Spice Islands, when the Dutch colonized it as part of Netherlands East Indies, they called it Nieuw Guinea. The name Irian was used in the Indonesian language to refer the island and Indonesian province, the name was promoted in 1945 by Marcus Kaisiepo, brother of the future governor Frans Kaisiepo. It is taken from the Biak language of Biak Island, and means to rise and this name of Irian is the name used in the Biak language and other languages such as Serui, Merauke and Waropen. The name was used until 2001, when the name Papua was again used for the island, the name Irian, which was originally favored by natives, is now considered to be a name imposed by the authority of Jakarta. New Guinea is an island to the north of Australia, and it is isolated by the Arafura Sea to the west and the Torres Strait and Coral Sea to the east. A spine of east–west mountains, the New Guinea Highlands, dominates the geography of New Guinea, stretching over 1,600 km from the head to the tail of the island. The western half of the island of New Guinea contains the highest mountains in Oceania, rising up to 4,884 m high, the tree line is around 4,000 m elevation and the tallest peaks contain permanent equatorial glaciers—which have been retreating since at least 1936. Various other smaller mountain ranges occur both north and west of the central ranges, except in high elevations, most areas possess a warm humid climate throughout the year, with some seasonal variation associated with the northeast monsoon season. At 4,884 metres, Puncak Jaya makes New Guinea the worlds fourth highest landmass, Puncak Mandala, located in Papua, is the second highest peak on the island at 4,760 metres. Puncak Trikora, also in Papua, is 4,750 metres, mount Wilhelm is the highest peak on the PNG side of the border at 4,509 metres. Its granite peak is the highest point of the Bismarck Range, mount Giluwe 4,368 metres is the second highest summit in PNG. It is also the highest volcanic peak in Oceania, another major habitat feature is the vast southern and northern lowlands. Stretching for hundreds of kilometres, these include lowland rainforests, extensive wetlands, savanna grasslands, the southern lowlands are the site of Lorentz National Park, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site
18.
Indonesia
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Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country located mainly in Southeast Asia with some territories in Oceania. Situated between the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is the worlds largest island country, with more than seventeen thousand islands. At 1,904,569 square kilometres, Indonesia is the worlds 14th-largest country in terms of area and worlds 7th-largest country in terms of combined sea. It has an population of over 260 million people and is the worlds fourth most populous country. The worlds most populous island, Java, contains more than half of the countrys population, Indonesias republican form of government includes an elected legislature and president. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special Administrative status and its capital and countrys most populous city is Jakarta, which is also the most populous city in Southeast Asia and the second in Asia. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, other neighbouring countries include Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support the second highest level of biodiversity. The country has abundant natural resources like oil and natural gas, tin, copper, agriculture mainly produces rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cacao, medicinal plants, spices and rubber. Indonesias major trading partners are Japan, United States, China, the Indonesian archipelago has been an important region for trade since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Indonesia consists of hundreds of native ethnic and linguistic groups. The largest – and politically dominant – ethnic group are the Javanese, a shared identity has developed, defined by a national language, ethnic diversity, religious pluralism within a Muslim-majority population, and a history of colonialism and rebellion against it. Indonesias national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, articulates the diversity that shapes the country, Indonesias economy is the worlds 16th largest by nominal GDP and the 8th largest by GDP at PPP, the largest in Southeast Asia, and is considered an emerging market and newly industrialised country. Indonesia has been a member of the United Nations since 1950, Indonesia is a member of the G20 major economies and World Trade Organization. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek name of the Indós, the name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia. In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians—and, his preference, in the same publication, one of his students, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago. However, Dutch academics writing in East Indies publications were reluctant to use Indonesia, they preferred Malay Archipelago, the Netherlands East Indies, popularly Indië, the East, and Insulinde
19.
Papua New Guinea
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Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby. The western half of New Guinea forms the Indonesian provinces of Papua, Papua New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. There are 852 known languages in the country, of which 12 have no known living speakers, most of the population of more than 7 million people live in customary communities, which are as diverse as the languages. It is also one of the most rural, as only 18 percent of its live in urban centres. The country is one of the worlds least explored, culturally and geographically and it is known to have numerous groups of uncontacted peoples, and researchers believe there are many undiscovered species of plants and animals in the interior. Papua New Guinea is classified as an economy by the International Monetary Fund. Strong growth in Papua New Guineas mining and resource sector led to the becoming the sixth fastest-growing economy in the world in 2011. Growth was expected to slow once major resource projects came on line in 2015, mining remains a major economic factor, however. Local and national governments are discussing the potential of resuming mining operations in Panguna mine in Bougainville Province, nearly 40 percent of the population lives a self-sustainable natural lifestyle with no access to global capital. Most of the still live in strong traditional social groups based on farming. Their social lives combine traditional religion with modern practices, including primary education, at the national level, after being ruled by three external powers since 1884, Papua New Guinea established its sovereignty in 1975. This followed nearly 60 years of Australian administration, which started during the Great War and it became an independent Commonwealth realm with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations in its own right. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first arrived in Papua New Guinea around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago and they were descendants of migrants out of Africa, in one of the early waves of human migration. Agriculture was independently developed in the New Guinea highlands around 7000 BC, a major migration of Austronesian-speaking peoples to coastal regions of New Guinea took place around 500 BC. This has been correlated with the introduction of pottery, pigs, in the 18th century, traders brought the sweet potato to New Guinea, where it was adopted and became part of the staples. Portuguese traders had obtained it from South America and introduced it to the Moluccas, the far higher crop yields from sweet potato gardens radically transformed traditional agriculture and societies. Sweet potato largely supplanted the previous staple, taro, and resulted in a significant increase in population in the highlands. In 1901, on Goaribari Island in the Gulf of Papua, missionary Harry Dauncey found 10,000 skulls in the islands Long Houses, traders from Southeast Asia had visited New Guinea beginning 5,000 years ago to collect bird of paradise plumes
20.
Fly River
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The Fly, at 1,050 kilometres, is the second longest river in Papua New Guinea, after the Sepik. The Fly is the largest river in Oceania, the largest in the world without a dam in its catchment. It rises in the Victor Emanuel Range arm of the Star Mountains, the Fly flows mostly through the Western Province, though for a small stretch it forms the boundary between Papua New Guinea and the Indonesia province of Papua. This section protrudes slightly to the west of the 141°E longitude line, to compensate for this slight gain in territory for Papua New Guinea, the border south of the Fly River is slightly east of the 141°E longitude line. As part of deal, Indonesia has the right to use the Fly River to its mouth for navigation. The principal tributaries of the Fly are the Strickland and the Ok Tedi, close to its mouth, the flow of the Fly River encounters a tidal bore, where an incoming high tide pushes water upstream until the changing of the tide. The range of this tidal bore is still undocumented, the delta of the Fly River is over 100 km wide at its entrance, but only 11 km wide at the apex upstream of Kiwai Island. The delta contains 3 main distributary channels that branch from a common point, the distributary channels are 5 to 15m in depth, separated by elongate, sand-mud islands that are stabilised by lush mangrove vegetation. The islands are eroded and rebuilt rapidly in the apex area, upstream from the apex the river gradually narrows to a width of 1.6 km or less. The Fly Delta exhibits a distinctive shape in plan view. Mean spring tidal ranges are amplified within the delta, from around 3. 5m at the entrance of the distributary channels. The land on both sides of the estuary is of the same character, the islands in the estuary are flat and covered with thick, fertile alluvial soil. The largest islands are Kiwai Island, Purutu Island, Wabuda Island, Aibinio Island, Mibu Island, Kiwai, Wabuda and Domori are inhabited. A list of the delta islands is, The inhabitants of the Fly River delta engage in agriculture. Coconut palm, breadfruit, plantain, sago palm, and sugar cane are grown, the Fly was first discovered by Europeans in 1845 when Francis Blackwood, commanding the corvette HMS Fly, surveyed the western coast of the Gulf of Papua. The river was named after his ship and he proclaimed that it would be possible for a steam powered boat to travel up the mighty river. In 1876, Italian explorer, Luigi DAlbertis, was the first person to attempt this when he travelled 900 km into the interior of New Guinea, in his steamer. It was the furthest any European explorer had ever been into the island, both the Strickland and the Ok Tedi Rivers have been the source of environmental controversy due to tailings waste from the Porgera Mine and the Ok Tedi Mine, respectively
21.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
22.
Sakha Republic
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The Sakha Republic is a federal subject of Russia. It has a population of 958,528, consisting mainly of ethnic Yakuts and it is larger than Argentina and just smaller than India which covers an area of 3,287,590 square kilometers. Its capital is the city of Yakutsk, the Sakha Republic is one of the ten autonomous Turkic Republics within the Russian Federation. The hypercontinental tendencies also result in warm summers for much of the republic. Borders, internal, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Magadan Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai, Amur Oblast, Zabaykalsky Krai, Irkutsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai. water, Arctic Ocean. These waters, the coldest and iciest of all seas in the Northern Hemisphere, are covered by ice for 9–10 months of the year, new Siberian Islands are a part of the republics territory. Sakha can be divided into three great vegetation belts, about 40% of Sakha lies above the Arctic circle and all of it is covered by permafrost which greatly influences the regions ecology and limits forests in the southern region. Arctic and subarctic tundra define the region, where lichen. In the southern part of the belt, scattered stands of dwarf Siberian pine. Below the tundra is the vast taiga forest region, larch trees dominate in the north and stands of fir and pine begin to appear in the south. Taiga forests cover about 47% of Sakha and almost 90% of the cover is larch, Sakha spans three time zones, Yakutsk Time Zone. Covers the republics territory to the west of the Lena River as well as the territories of the located on the both sides of the Lena River. Covers most of the territory located between 127°E and 140°E longitude. Covers most of the territory located east of 140°E longitude. Districts, Abyysky, Allaikhovsky, Momsky, Nizhnekolymsky, Srednekolymsky, Verkhnekolymsky, the Chersky Range runs east of the Verkhoyansk Range and has the highest peak in Sakha, Peak Pobeda. The second highest peak is Peak Mus-Khaya reaching 3,011 m, the Stanovoi Range borders Sakha in the south. Sakha is well endowed with raw materials, the soil contains large reserves of oil, gas, coal, diamonds, gold, silver, tin, tungsten and many others. Sakha produces 99% of all Russian diamonds and over 25% of the diamonds mined in the world, Sakha is known for its climate extremes, with the Verkhoyansk Range being the coldest area in the Northern Hemisphere
23.
Kotelny Island
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Kotelny Island is part of the Anzhu Islands subgroup of the New Siberian Islands located between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea in the Russian Arctic. It is administratively and municipally part of Bulunsky District, Kotelny, Faddeyevsky and Bunge Land are usually named as separate islands on most 20th century maps, although sometimes on the newest maps the name Kotelny is applied to the whole island. A flat, low-lying, plain connecting both is known as Bunge Land, the total area of Kotelny Island is 23,165 km². Kotelny is one of the 50 largest islands in the world and these merged islands are a practically uninhabited territory belonging to the Sakha Republic of the Russian Federation. The island was discovered by a Russian merchant and hunter, Ivan Lyakhov, with the merchant Protod’yakonov. In 1770, Ivan Lyakhov noticed reindeer tracks heading seaward across the sea ice, in 1773, he and Protod’yakonov discovered the Lyakhovsky Islands by boat using the bearing of these tracks. Continuing from the Lyakhovsky Islands, they discovered Kotelny Island and named it Kettle Island after a copper kettle, the person, who visited Kotelny Island and left the copper kettle, is unknown. Formerly this island had been known as Thaddeus Island or Thaddeus Islands in some maps, under the employment of Semen and Lev Syrovatskiy, Yakov Sannikov conducted numerous hunting and cartographic expeditions between 1800 and 1810. On one of expeditions in 1805, he discovered Faddeyevsky Island. In 1809–1810 Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom went to the New Siberian Islands on a cartographic expedition, Yakov Sannikov reported the sighting of a new land north of Kotelny in 1811. This became the myth of Zemlya Sannikova or Sannikov Land, in 1886 Baron Eduard Von Toll thought that he had seen an unknown land north of Kotelny. He guessed that this was the so-called Zemlya Sannikova, the western part of Kotelny Island proper, also known as Kettle Island, is the largest section of the group, with an area of 11,665 km². It is rocky and hilly, rising to 374 m on Mt. Malakatyn-Tas, the Chukochya River flows westwards to the Laptev Sea. Cape Anisy 76. 200°N139. 1167°E /76.200,139.1167 is the northernmost headland of Kotelny, cape Medvezhiyis the southernmost headland of the island. Bunge Land or Zemlya Bunge is an empty and almost barren intermediate zone. It is located between Kotelny and Faddeyevsky, which, unlike Bunge Land, could be described as proper islands, sandy and flat, its area is 6,200 km². The area that is periodically submerged accounts for over 80% of the surface and is practically devoid of vegetation. Bunge Land is named after Russian zoologist and explorer Alexander Alexandrovich Bunge, Faddeyevsky Peninsula is a large peninsula projecting from the northern end of Bunge Land eastwards with its isthmus in the north
24.
New Siberian Islands
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The New Siberian Islands are an archipelago in the Extreme North of Russia, to the North of the East Siberian coast between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea north of the Sakha Republic. The first news about the existence of the New Siberian Islands was brought by a Cossack, Yakov Permyakov, in 1712, a Cossack unit led by M. Vagin reached the Great Lyakhovsky Island. At the beginning of the 19th century, the islands were explored by Yakov Sannikov, Matvei Gedenschtrom. In 1809–10 Yakov Sannikov and Matvei Gedenschtrom went to the New Siberian Islands on a cartographic expedition, Yakov Sannikov reported the sighting of a new land north of Kotelny in 1811. This became the myth of Zemlya Sannikova or Sannikov Land, in 1886 Eduard von Toll, during his first visit to the New Siberian Islands, thought that he had seen an unknown land north of Kotelny Island. He guessed that this was the so-called Zemlya Sannikova, polar explorer and scientist Eduard Toll paid a further visit to this island group in the spring of 1892, accompanied only by one Cossack and three natives. He traveled over the ice in sleds drawn by dogs and reached the south coast of Great Lyakhovsky Island. Along the southern coast of this island he found well-preserved bones, ivory, peat, wood and these sediments are cemented by permafrost and have accumulated periodically over the last 200,000 years. In September 2014, the Russian Navy re-established a Soviet era naval base which had abandoned since 1993. Very close to Bunge Lands northwestern coast lie two islands, Zheleznyakov Island, right off the NW cape and east of it. Both islands have a length of about 5 km, nanosnyy Island 76. 283°N140. 416°E /76.283,140.416 is a small island located due north off the northern bay formed by Kotelny and Bunge. It is C-shaped and only 4 km in length, but its importance lies in the fact that it is the northernmost island of the New Siberian group, Jeannette Island Henrietta Island Bennett Island Vilkitsky Island Zhokhov Island The New Siberian Islands are low-lying. Their highest point is Mt. Malakatyn-Tas on Kotelny island, with an elevation of 374 m, the New Siberian Islands once formed major hills within the Great Arctic Plain that covered the northern part of Late Pleistocene Beringia between Siberia and Alaska during the Last Glacial Maximum. At this plains greatest extent, sea level was 100–120 m below modern sea-level and this plain did not undergo extensive glaciation during the Late Pleistocene or the Last Glacial Maximum because it lay in the rain shadow of the Northern European ice sheet. During the frigid polar climate of the Last Glacial Maximum,17,000 to 24,000 BC, fragments of these ice caps remain on Jeannette, Henrietta, and Bennett Islands. Traces of former small slope and cirque glaciers in the form of buried ground ice deposits are preserved on Zhokhov Island, the sea submerged the Great Arctic Plain within a relatively short time span of 7,000 years during the Early–Middle Holocene. As noted by Digby and numerous publications, this archipelago consists of a mixture of folded and faulted sedimentary. The De Long Islands consist of early Paleozoic, middle Paleozoic, Cretaceous and these sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks are mantled by loose Pleistocene and Holocene sediments that range in thickness from a fraction of a meter to about 35 meters
25.
East Siberian Sea
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The East Siberian Sea is a marginal sea in the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the Arctic Cape to the north, the coast of Siberia to the south, the New Siberian Islands to the west and Cape Billings, close to Chukotka and this sea borders on the Laptev Sea to the west and the Chukchi Sea to the east. This sea is one of the least studied in the Arctic area, the sea shores were inhabited for thousands of years by indigenous tribes of Yukaghirs, Chukchi and then Evens and Evenks, which were engaged in fishing, hunting and reindeer husbandry. They were then absorbed by Yakuts and later by Russians, major industrial activities in the area are mining and navigation within the Northern Sea Route, commercial fishing is poorly developed. The largest city and port is Pevek, the northernmost city of mainland Russia, the present name was assigned to the sea on 27 June 1935 by Decree of the Soviet Government. Before that, the sea had no name was intermixedly called in Russia as Indigirskoe, Kolymskoe, Severnoe, Sibirskoe or Ledovitoe. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the East Siberian Sea as follows, the Eastern limit of Laptev Sea. A line from the Northernmost point of Wrangel Island to the Northern sides of the De Long Islands and Bennett Island, from the Northernmost point of Wrangel Island through this island to Cape Blossom thence to Cape Yakan on the main land. Because it is open towards the Arctic Ocean in the north, the gulfs of the East Siberian Sea, like the Kolyma Bay, the Kolyma Gulf. There are no islands in the middle of the East Siberian Sea, but there are a few islands and island groups in its waters, like Ayon Island. The total area of the islands is only 80 km2, some islands mostly consist of sand and ice and gradually erode. The total catchment area is 1,342,000 km2, among the rivers flowing into the East Siberian Sea, the Indigirka, Alazeya, Uyandina, Chukochya, Kolyma, Rauchua, Chaun, and Pegtymel are the most important. Only a few rivers are navigable, the coastline of the sea is 3,016 km long. It makes large bends, sometimes stretching deep into the land, fine bends are rare and occur only in the river deltas. The coastal section between the New Siberian Islands and the mouth of the Kolyma River is uniform, with low and it extends landwards to the marshy tundra filled with numerous small lakes. In contrast, the coast to the east of the Kolyma River is mountainous, about 70% of the sea is shallower than 50 m, with predominant depths of 20–25 m. North-east to the mouth of the Kolyma and Indigirka rivers, there are deep trenches on the seabed, the region of small depths in the western part forms the Novosibirsk shoal. The greatest depths of about 150 m are found in the part of the sea
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Maly Lyakhovsky Island
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Maly Lyakhovsky Island is the second largest of the Lyakhovsky Islands belonging to the New Siberian Islands archipelago in Laptev Sea in northern Russia. It has an area of 1,325 square kilometers, the Lyakhovsky Islands are named in honour of Ivan Lyakhov, who explored them in 1773. Maly Lyakhovsky Island consists of Upper Jurassic to lower Cretaceous turbidites, also known as flysch and these Mesozoic rocks consist of sandstones, argillites, and shales deformed into east-northeast striking folds about 7 to 20 km wide. The Mesozoic rocks are covered by a thin layer of Pliocene to Pleistocene sandy. Near the coast, the alluvial sediments grade into nearshore marine sediments containing fossil marine mollusks, thick permafrost characterized by massive ice wedges has developed in these sediments. On 29 May 2013, an expedition of North-Eastern Federal University found the remains of a 10 and it was reported that liquid blood was found in ice cavities below the belly even though the temperature at the time of excavation was –7 to –10 °C. It was speculated that this find might reveal information about the properties of mammoth blood. Rush/grass, forb, cryptogam tundra covers Maly Lyakhovsky Island and it is tundra consisting mostly of very low-growing grasses, rushes, forbs, mosses, lichens, and liverworts. These plants either mostly or completely cover the surface of the ground, the soils are typically moist, fine-grained, and often hummocky. List of mammoths Andreev, A. A. and D. M, peteet,1999, Climate and Diet of Mammoths in the East Siberian Arctic. Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, tumskoy,2002, Environmental History of the Novosibirskie Islands for the last 12 ka. 32nd International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2002, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder, pp 23–25. Anonymous, nd, New Siberian Islands at the Wayback Machine aerial photographs of these islands. Sulerzhitsky, Ch. Siegert,2001, New data on the Mammoth fauna of the Laptev Shelf Land,144 KB PDF file, The World of Elephants - International Congress, Rome 2001. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Centro di Studio per il Quaternario e lEvoluzione Ambientale, Università di Roma, Roma, grosse,2005, Lost world - Late Quaternary environment of periglacial Arctic shelves and coastal lowlands in NE-Siberia. 2nd International Alfred Wegener Symposium Bremerhaven, October,30 - November 2,2005
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Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island
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It has an area of 4,600 km², and a maximum altitude of 270 m. The peninsula projecting towards the west of the island is the Kigilyakh Peninsula, off Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Islands southwestern cape lies a small islet called Ostrov Khopto-Terer. The Lyakhovsky Islands are named in honour of Ivan Lyakhov, who explored them in 1773, Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island consists of highly folded and faulted Precambrian metamorphic rocks and turbidites, Mesozoic turbidites and igneous rocks, and Cenozoic sediments. Exposed in southeastern part of island, the older Precambrian. Early Proterozoic, metamorphic rocks consist of schists and amphibolites, small exposures of Late Proterozoic schistose, quartzose sandstones and phyllitic, sericite-quartz schist also occur in the southeastern part of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. The bulk of this consists of Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous turbidites composed of interbedded fine-grained sandstones, thinly bedded siltstones. The Precambrian and Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous rocks are intruded by Late Cretaceous granites and granodiorites, a blanket of unconsolidated Cenozoic sediments blankets most of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. Overlying these sediments are Pliocene to Pleistocene colluvial, alluvial, and nearshore marine sands, silts, the nearshore marine sediments contain the shells of marine mollusks and pieces of lignitized wood. Thick permafrost characterized by ice wedges has developed in these sediments. Contrary to the interpretations of Baron von Toll and earlier geologists, glacial tills, the oldest sediments exposed in the southern sea cliffs of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island consists of a layer of rocky, yellowish to greenish colored sediment. This layer is a thick Paleogene weathering crust that has developed within Permian sandstone, Saalian sediments uncomfortably overlie this paleosol. The oldest known Pleistocene sediments exposed in the sea cliffs of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island consist of Saalian sediments. The lower part of these sediments consist of ice-rich, silty and they contain pebbles, peat inclusions, and peat horizons. The presence of ice belts, reticulated ice interlayers, and wide, the lower part of this unit contains the pollen of sparse grass-sedge vegetation, which reflects a stadial environment. The upper part of this unit contains pollen associated with dense grass-dominated tundra. These loess-like sediments accumulated within floodplains and lakes, as they accumulated between 170,000 and 120,000 years ago, ice wedge polygons formed in these sediments as the result of extremely cold and dry conditions. Elsewhere along the coast of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, the sea cliffs expose pre-Eemian floodplain, in some locations, the Eemian lake deposits are thicker and laterally continuous enough to form a complete blanket overlying older sediments. The Eemian sediments contain fossils indicative of an interglacial environment, at many localities along the sea cliffs, typically over 10 meters of Early Weichselian lacustrine and loess-like floodplain deposits overlie the Eemian and pre-Eemian sediments
28.
Khabarovsk Krai
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Khabarovsk Krai is a federal subject of Russia, located in the Russian Far East. It lies mostly in the basin of the lower Amur River, but also occupies a vast mountainous area along the coastline of the Sea of Okhotsk, the administrative center of the krai is the city of Khabarovsk. The indigenous people of the area are various Tungusic peoples and Amur Nivkhs, in terms of area, it is the fourth-largest federal subject within Russia. Taiga and tundra in the north, swampy forest in the central depression, Khabarovsk Krai has a severely continental climate with its northern areas being subarctic with stronger maritime summer moderation in the north. This is because of the influence of the East Asian monsoon in summer, in 1643, Vassili Poyarkovs boats descended the Amur, returning to Yakutsk by the Sea of Okhotsk and the Aldan River, and in 1649–1650 Yerofey Khabarov occupied the banks of the Amur. The resistance of the Chinese, however, obliged the Cossacks to quit their forts, although the Russians were thus deprived of the right to navigate the Amur River, the territorial claim over the lower courses of the river was not settled in the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689. The area between Uda River and Greater Khingan mountain range was left undemarcated and the Sino-Russian border was allowed to fluctuate, later in the nineteenth century, Nikolay Muravyov would conduct an aggressive policy with China by claiming that the lower reaches of the Amur River belonged to Russia. In 1852, a Russian military expedition under Muravyov explored the Amur, the Sino-Russian border was later further delineated in the Treaty of Peking of 1860 when the Ussuri Territory, which was previously a joint possession, became Russian. Modern Khabarovsk Krai was established on October 20,1938, when the Far Eastern Krai was split into the Khabarovsk, since 1991, CPSU lost all the power, and the head of the Oblast administration, and eventually the governor was appointed/elected alongside elected regional parliament. The Charter of Khabarovsk Krai is the law of the krai. The Legislative Duma of Khabarovsk Krai is the regional standing legislative body, the Legislative Duma exercises its authority by passing laws, resolutions, and other legal acts and by supervising the implementation and observance of the laws and other legal acts passed by it. The Krai Administration supports the activities of the Governor who is the highest official, Khabarovsk Krai is the most industrialized territory of the Far East of Russia, producing 30% of the total industrial products in the Far Eastern Economic Region. The machine construction industry consists primarily of a highly developed military-industrial complex of large-scale aircraft-, the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aircraft Production Association is currently one of among the krais most successful enterprises, and for years has been the largest taxpayer of the territory. In the Amur basin, there is some cultivation of wheat. The administrative center, Khabarovsk, is at the junction of the Amur River, the regions own mineral resources are underdeveloped. According to the 2010 Census,91. 8% of the population are Russians,2. 1% Ukrainians,0. 8% Nanais,0. 6% Tatars,0. 6% Koreans,55,038 people were registered from administrative databases, and could not declare an ethnicity. It is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group, in addition to the Nanai, other indigenous groups include the Evenks and Evens in the northern part of the province, and Ulchs in the lower Amur river. Some Nivkhs, a fishing people speaking an isolate language
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Laptev Sea
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The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands and its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with co-ordinates of 79°N and 139°E, and ends at the Anisiy Cape. The Kara Sea lies to the west, the East Siberian Sea to the east, the sea has a severe climate with temperatures below 0 °C over more than 9 months per year, low water salinity, scarcity of flora, fauna and human population, and low depths. It is frozen most of the time, though clear in August. The sea shores were inhabited for thousands of years by tribes of Yukaghirs and then Evens and Evenks. They were then settled by Yakuts and later by Russians, Russian explorations of the area started in the 17th century. They came from the south via several large rivers which empty into the sea, such as the prominent Lena River, the Khatanga, the Anabar, the Olenyok, the Omoloy, the sea contains several dozen islands, many of which contain well-preserved mammoth remains. Major human activities in the area are mining and navigation on the Northern Sea Route, the largest settlement and port is Tiksi. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Laptev Sea as follows, the eastern limit of Kara Sea. A line joining Cape Molotov to the Northern extremity of Kotelni Island, from the Northern extremity of Kotelni Island – through Kotelni Island to Cape Madvejyi. Then through Malyi Island, to Cape Vaguin on Great Liakhov Island, thence to Cape Sviatoy Nos on the main land. Using current geographic names and transcription this definition corresponds to the shown in the map. The seas border starts at Arctic Cape on Komsomolets Island at 81°13′N 95°15′E and connects to Cape Rosa Luxemburg, the next segment crosses Red Army Strait and leads to Cape Vorochilov on October Revolution Island and afterwards through that island to Cape Anuchin at 79°39′37″N 100°21′22″E. Next, the border crosses Shokalsky Strait to Cape Unslicht at 79°25′04″N 102°31′00″E on Bolshevik Island and it goes further through the island to Cape Yevgenov at 78°17′N 104°50′E. From there, the border goes through Vilkitsky Strait to Cape Pronchishchev at 77°32′57″N 105°54′4″E on the Tamyr peninsula, the southern boundary is the shore of the Asian mainland. Prominent features are the Khatanga Gulf and the delta of the Lena River, in the east, the polygon crosses the Dmitry Laptev Strait. It connects Cape Svyatoy Nos at 72. 7°N141. 2°E /72.7,141. 2 with Cape Vagin at 73°26′0″N 139°50′0″E in the very east of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. Next, the Laptev Sea border crosses Eterikan Strait to Little Lyakhovsky Island at 74. 0833°N140. 5833°E /74.0833,140. 5833 up to Cape Medvezhiy, finally, there is a segment through Kotelny Island to Cape Anisy, its northernmost headland 76°10′N 138°50′E
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Sea of Okhotsk
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The northeast corner is the Shelikhov Gulf. The sea is named after Okhotsk, the first Russian settlement in the Far East, the Sea of Okhotsk covers an area of 1,583,000 square kilometres, with a mean depth of 859 metres and a maximum depth of 3,372 metres. It is connected to the Sea of Japan on either side of Sakhalin, on the west through the Sakhalin Gulf, the distribution and thickness of ice floes depends on many factors, the location, the time of year, water currents, and the sea temperatures. With the exception of Hokkaido, one of the Japanese home islands, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Sea of Okhotsk as follows, On the Southwest. The Northeastern and Northern limits on the Japan Sea, some of the Sea of Okhotsks islands are quite large, including Japans second largest island, Hokkaido, as well as Russias largest island, Sakhalin. Practically all of the islands are either in coastal waters or belong to the various islands making up the Kuril Islands chain. These fall either under undisputed Japanese or Russian ownership or disputed ownership between Japan and Russia, iony Island is the only island located in open waters and belongs to the Khabarovsk Krai of the Russian Federation. The majority of the islands are uninhabited making them ideal breeding grounds for seals, sea lions, seabirds. Large colonies, with over an individuals, of crested auklets use the Sea of Okhotsk as a nesting site. The Okhotsk culture is a coastal fishing and hunter-gatherer culture of the lands surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk. Some believe that Mishihase was living in the area, Russian explorers Ivan Moskvitin and Vassili Poyarkov were the first Europeans to visit the Sea of Okhotsk in the 1640s. The first and foremost Russian settlement on the shore was the port of Okhotsk, the Russian-American Company all but monopolized the commercial navigation of the sea in the first half of the 19th century. The Second Kamchatka Expedition under Vitus Bering systematically mapped the entire coast of the sea, jean-François de La Pérouse and William Robert Broughton were the first non-Russian European navigators known to have passed through these waters other than Maarten Gerritsz Vries. Ivan Krusenstern explored the eastern coast of Sakhalin in 1805, mamiya Rinzō and Gennady Nevelskoy determined that the Sakhalin was indeed an island separated from the mainland by a narrow strait. The first detailed summary of the hydrology of the Okhotsk sea was prepared and published by Stepan Makarov in 1894, American and French whaleships, as well as a few German, Russian, and British, hunted whales in the Sea of Okhotsk between 1845 and 1907. They primarily caught right whales and bowhead whales, the former in the half of the sea. Bowheads were first caught in 1847, and dominated the catch between 1849 and the late 1860s, beginning in the mid-1850s they caught the occasional gray whale, and made attempts to catch humpback, fin, blue and killer whales as well but were rarely successful. Beluga whales were also taken opportunistically, from 1854 to 1856, an average of nearly 150 vessels cruised in the sea each year
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Strait of Tartary
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It is 900 kilometres long, 4–20 m deep, and 7.3 kilometres wide at the narrowest point. Tartary is a name used by Europeans to refer to a vast region covering Inner Asia, Central Asia. The toponym is derived from the Medieval ethnonym Tartars, which was applied to various Turco-Mongol semi-nomadic empires, since the Manchus rise to prominence in 1644, the name Tartars became applied to them as well, and Manchuria became known to the Europeans as the Chinese Tartary. Accordingly, when La Pérouse charted most of the strait between Sakhalin and the mainland Chinese Tartary in 1787, the body of water received the name of the Strait of Tartary. The Tartar Strait was a puzzle to European explorers since, when approached from the south, it becomes increasingly shallow, in 1787 La Perouse decided not to risk it and turned south even though locals had told him that Sakhalin was an island. In 1797 William Broughton also decided that the Gulf of Tartary was a bay, in 1805 Adam Johann von Krusenstern failed to penetrate the strait from the north. Mamiya Rinzōs journey of 1808 was little known to Europeans, gennady Nevelskoy passed the strait from the north in 1848. The Russians kept this a secret and used it to evade a British fleet during the Crimean War, s-117 was a Soviet Shchuka class submarine that was lost on or about 15 December 1952, due to unknown causes in the Strait of Tartary in the Sea of Japan. The boat may have collided with a ship or struck a mine. All forty-seven crewmen died in the incident. S, congressman, Larry McDonald, strayed into the Soviet air space and was attacked by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor just west of Sakhalin Island. The plane came down on the waters off the only land mass. An intensive naval search by the U. S. with assistance of Japanese, the Russians claimed it would raise the temperature of the Sea of Japan by an average of 35 degrees. Since 1973, a ferry operates across the strait, connecting the port of Vanino. Looking at the map, one could think that the Strait of Tartary would provide a convenient connection for boats sailing from the Sea of Japan to the Sea of Okhotsk, however, according to the SASCO that operates that shipping line, their ships rarely travel that way. The usual winter route from Vanino to Magadan is via Tsugaru Strait, and around Hokkaido, a tunnel under the strait, to provide a road and/or rail connection between Sakhalin and the mainland, was begun under Joseph Stalin, but abandoned incomplete after his death. Renewed calls for either a tunnel or a bridge have made by politicians in recent years. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 Parusa. narod. ru, Tatar Strait—Strait of Tartary—
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Moneron Island
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Moneron Island, is a small island located off Sakhalin Island. Moneron has an area of about 30 square kilometres and a highest point of 429 metres and it is the only landmass in the whole Tatar Straits. The island was known as Todomoshiri by its original Ainu inhabitants and its precise position and final distance from the island are disputed. The island is a place for diving and for birds. Surrounded by steep cliffs and rocky islets, it is a haven for sea birds, the warm Tsushima Current brings abundant marine life to the surrounding waters and species normally found much further south abound. In 2006, infrastructure was constructed to allow tourists to visit the island, the facilities are operated by the Moneron National Park, which is the first marine national park in Russia
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Sakhalin Oblast
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Sakhalin Oblast is a federal subject of Russia comprising the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in Russias far east. The oblast has an area of 87,100 square kilometers and its administrative center and the largest city is Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Besides people from parts of the former Soviet Union and the Korean Peninsula. Sakhalin is rich in gas and oil, and is Russias second wealthiest federal subject. It is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group, according to a 2012 official survey 21. In addition, 37% of the population declares to be spiritual but not religious, 15% is atheist, the indigenous people of Sakhalin are the Nivkhs, Oroki, and Ainu minorities. Early maps of Sakhalin reflect the uncertainty of the age as to whether or not the mass was attached to the Asian continent. The fact that it is not connected was conclusively established by Mamiya Rinzō, Japanese settlement on Sakhalin dates to at least the Edo period. Ōtomari was supposedly established in 1679, and cartographers of the Matsumae domain mapped the island, during the Ming and Qing dynasties China considered the island part of its empire, and included the Sakhalin peoples in its system for subjugated peoples. At no time though was any attempt made to establish an Imperial military presence on the island. Japan, concerned about Russian expansion in northeast Asia, unilaterally proclaimed sovereignty over the island in 1845. Russian settlers ignored this claim however, and beginning in the 1850s, established coal mines, administration facilities, schools, prisons, Russia also agreed to dismantle its military base at Ōtomari. South Sakhalin was administrated by Japan as Karafuto-chō, with the capital Toyohara, after the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war northern Sakhalin ultimately became governed by the Russian SFSR as a part of Far Eastern Oblast, Far Eastern Krai and Khabarovsk Krai. Sakhalin Oblast was established on 20 October 1932 as a part of Far Eastern Krai, in August 1945, the Soviet Union took over the control of entire Sakhalin and Kuril Islands. The Soviet attack on South Sakhalin started on August 11,1945, the 56th Rifle Corps consisting of the 79th Rifle Division, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, the 5th Rifle Brigade and the 214th Tank Brigade attacked the Japanese 88th Division. Although the Red Army outnumbered the Japanese by three times, they could not advance due to strong Japanese resistance, Japanese resistance grew weaker after this landing. Actual fighting continued until August 21, however, this was relatively limited in scope. From August 22 to August 23, most of the remaining Japanese units announced truce, the Soviets completed the conquest of Sakhalin on August 25,1945 by occupying the capital of Sakhalin, then known as Toyohara
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Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
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Hokkaido
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Hokkaido, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is the second largest island of Japan, and the largest and northernmost prefecture. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu, the two islands are connected by the underwater railway Seikan Tunnel. The largest city on Hokkaido is its capital, Sapporo, which is also its only ordinance-designated city, about 43 km north of Hokkaido lies Sakhalin island, Russia, whereas to its east and north-east are the disputed Kuril Islands. Hokkaido was settled by the Ainu, Nivkh, and Orok before recorded history, the Nihon Shoki, finished in 720 AD, is often said to be the first mention of Hokkaido in recorded history. According to the text, Abe no Hirafu led a navy and army to northern areas from 658 to 660 and came into contact with the Mishihase. One of the places Hirafu went to was called Watarishima, which is believed to be present-day Hokkaido. During the Nara and Heian periods, people in Hokkaido conducted trade with Dewa Province, from the Middle Ages, the people in Hokkaido began to be called Ezo. Hokkaido, formerly known as Ezochi Ezochi or Ezogashima, the Ezo mainly relied upon hunting and fishing and obtained rice and iron through trade with the Japanese. During the Muromachi period, the Japanese created a settlement at the south of the Oshima Peninsula, as more people moved to the settlement to avoid battles, disputes arose between the Japanese and the Ainu. The disputes eventually developed into a war, takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader, Koshamain, and defeated the opposition in 1457. Nobuhiros descendants became the rulers of the Matsumae-han, which was granted trading rights with the Ainu in the Azuchi-Momoyama. The Matsumae familys economy relied upon trade with the Ainu and they held authority over the south of Ezochi until the end of the Edo period in 1868. The Matsumae clan rule over the Ainu must be understood in the context of the expansion of the Japanese feudal state, medieval military leaders in northern Honshū maintained only tenuous political and cultural ties to the imperial court and its proxies, the Kamakura Shogunate and Ashikaga Shogunate. Feudal strongmen sometimes located themselves within medieval institutional order, taking shogunal titles, in fact many of the feudal strongmen were descended from Emishi military leaders who had been assimilated into Japanese society. The Matsumae clan were of Yamato descent like other ethnic Japanese people, the Emishi were conquered and integrated into the Japanese state dating back as far as the 8th century, and as result began to lose their distinctive culture and ethnicity as they became minorities. By the time the Matsumae clan ruled over the Ainu most of the Emishi were ethnically mixed, there were numerous revolts by the Ainu against feudal rule. The last large-scale resistance was Shakushains Revolt in 1669–1672, in 1789, a smaller movement, the Menashi-Kunashir Rebellion, was also crushed. After that rebellion the terms Japanese and Ainu referred to clearly distinguished groups, in 1799–1821 and 1855–1858 the Edo Shogunate took direct control over Hokkaido in response to a perceived threat from Russia
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Rebun Island
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Rebun Island is an island in the Sea of Japan off the northwestern tip of Hokkaidō, Japan. The island sits 50 kilometres off the coast of Hokkaidō, Rebun stretches 29 kilometres from north to south and 8 kilometres from east to west. The island covers approximately 80 square kilometres, Rebun Island is located 10 kilometres northwest of Rishiri Island, and the two islands are separated by the Rebun Channel. Rebun Island is known for its flowers and the 8-Hour Hiking Course which runs from one end of the island to the other. The hiking course can be broken into two sections, known as the 4-Hour Hiking Courses, Rebun Island is home to a chashi, or hilltop fortifications of the Ainu people. The highest point on the island is Mount Rebun, the island is part of the Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park. The name of the island in the Ainu language, Repun, Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park travel guide from Wikivoyage
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Sea of Japan
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The Sea of Japan is a marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, and the Asian mainland. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean and it is bordered by Japan, North Korea, Russia and South Korea. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it has almost no tides due to its nearly complete enclosure from the Pacific Ocean and this isolation also reflects in the fauna species and in the water salinity, which is lower than in the ocean. The sea has no islands, bays or capes. Its water balance is determined by the inflow and outflow through the straits connecting it to the neighboring seas. Few rivers discharge into the sea and their contribution to the water exchange is within 1%. The seawater has a concentration of dissolved oxygen that results in high biological productivity. Therefore, fishing is the dominant economic activity in the region, the intensity of shipments across the sea has been moderate owing to political issues, but it is steadily increasing as a result of the growth of East Asian economies. The sea is called Rìběn hǎi or originally Jīng hǎi in China, Yaponskoye more in Russia, Chosŏn Tonghae in North Korea, a naming dispute exists about the sea name, with South and North Korea promoting the English translation of its native name East Sea. In Europe, the sea is called Mer du Japon in French, Japanisches Meer in German, Mar del Giappone in Italian, in Southeast Asia, the sea is called Laut Jepun in Malay, Laut Jepang in Indonesian, and Dagat Hapon in Filipino. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Japan Sea as follows, the Northeastern limit of the Eastern China Sea and the Western limit of the Inland Sea. A line running from Nagoya Saki in Kyûsyû through the islands of Uma Sima, from the extremity of Siriya Saki to the extremity of Esan Saki. A line joining Sôni Misaki and Nishi Notoro Misaki, from Cape Tuik to Cape Sushcheva. The Sea of Japan was once a landlocked sea when the bridge of East Asia existed. The onset of formation of the Japan Arc was in Early Miocene, the Early Miocene period also corresponds to incipient opening of the Japan Sea, and the northern and southern parts of the Japanese archipelago that were separated from each other. During the Miocene, there was expansion of Sea of Japan, the northern part of the Japanese archipelago was further fragmented at later periods until the orogenesis of the northeastern Japanese archipelago began in the later Late Miocene. The southern part of the Japanese archipelago remained as a large landmass. The land area had expanded northward in the Late Miocene, the orogenesis of high mountain ranges in the northeastern Japan started in Late Miocene and it lasts in Pliocene also
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Otaru
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Otaru is a city and port in Shiribeshi Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan, northwest of Sapporo. The city faces the Ishikari Bay, and has served as the main port of the bay. With its many buildings, Otaru is a popular tourist destination. Because it is a 25-minute drive from Sapporo, it has grown as a bedroom community. As of 31 July,2011, the city has an population of 131,706 with 67,308 households. The total area is 243.13 km2, although it is the largest city in Shiribeshi Subprefecture, the subprefectures capital is the more centrally located Kutchan. The city was an Ainu habitation, and the name Otaru is recognised as being of Ainu origin, the very small remaining part of the Temiya Cave contains carvings from the Zoku-Jōmon period of Ainu history, around A. D.400. Otaru was recognised as a village by the bakufu in 1865, an Imperial decree in July 1899 established Otaru as an open port for trading with the United States and the United Kingdom. The city flourished well as the financial and business center in Hokkaido as well as the port with Japanese ruled southern Sakhalin until the 1920s. Otaru was redesignated as a city on August 1,1922, on December 26,1924, a freight train loaded with 600 cases of dynamite exploded in Temiya Station, damaging the warehouse, the harbour facilities and the surrounding area. Local officials stated that at least 94 were killed and 200 injured in this disaster, since the 1950s, as the coal industry around the city went into a decline, the status of economic hub shifted from Otaru to Sapporo. Otaru is a town on the coast of the Sea of Japan in northern Shiribeshi Subprefecture. The southern portion of the city is characterized by the slopes of various mountains, notably Tenguyama. Shiribeshi Yoichi District, Yoichi, Akaigawa Ishikari Sapporo, Ishikari Some of the rivers in Otaru are, Hoshioki, Kiraichi, Zenibako, Hariusu, Asari, Katsunai, Shioya, Myoken, Irifune. In the summer the weather, like all of western Hokkaido, is warm and balmy, with a maximum temperature of around 25 °C. In the winter, however, Otaru is very snowy, receiving as much as 6.6 metres of snow from November to March, the average maximum snow cover is 1.22 metres. Extreme temperatures have ranged from 34.9 °C on August 1,2000 to −18.0 °C on January 24,1954, in which month the highest snowfall of 3.1 metres occurred. Monthly precipitation totals in a record dating back to 1943 have ranged from 379.8 millimetres in August 1962 to 12.0 millimetres in June 2007, the city attracts a large number of Japanese tourists as well as Russian visitors
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Oshima Peninsula
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The Oshima Peninsula is the southernmost part of Hokkaidō, the northernmost of the Japanese islands. Where the peninsula starts is open to interpretation, a more generous interpretation is to draw a line southeast from Ishikari Bay across the Ishikari Plain to Yufutsu. A narrower interpretation is to draw a line connecting Suttsu on the Sea of Japan and this narrow interpretation encompasses the subprefectures of Oshima and Hiyama. At its southern end it forks into the southwest-pointing Matsumae Peninsula and these two peninsulas face Tsugaru and Shimokita Peninsulas of Honshū across the Tsugaru Strait. The Ōnuma Quasi-National Park is located on the peninsula, the terrain of the peninsula is hilly, with several volcanoes and onsen hot springs. The peninsula is home to the city and port of Hakodate and numerous small fishing. Matsumae Castle, the northernmost castle in Japan, is located on the Oshima peninsula
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Tsugaru Strait
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The Tsugaru Strait is a strait between Honshu and Hokkaido in northern Japan connecting the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean. It was named after the part of Aomori Prefecture. The Tsugaru Strait has eastern and western necks, both approximately 20 km across with maximum depths of 200 m and 140 m respectively, in the past, the most common way for passengers and freight to cross the strait was on ferries, approximately a four-hour journey. On September 26,1954,1,172 lives were lost when the ferry Tōya Maru sank in the strait, the Tsugaru Strait was therefore established as a major zoogeographical boundary, and became known as the Blakiston Line. Media related to Tsugaru Strait at Wikimedia Commons
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Aomori Prefecture
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Aomori Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region. The capital is the city of Aomori, until the Meiji Restoration, the area of Aomori prefecture was known as the northern part of Mutsu Province. During the Edo period the Hirosaki clan began building a seaport at the current city of Aomori, there were green woods near the city which were used as landmarks for the ships that came into port. These green woods called aoi-mori is where Aomori got its name, the prefecture came into existence in 1871. The town of Aomori was established in 1889, the town was incorporated as a city in 1898 with a population of 28,000. On May 3,1910 a fire out in the Yasukata district. Fanned by strong winds, the fire devastated the whole city. The conflagration claimed 26 lives and injured a further 160 residents and it destroyed 5,246 houses and burnt 19 storage sheds and 157 warehouses. At 10,30 p. m. on July 28,1945 a squadron of American B29 bombers bombed over 90% of the city, radio Aomori made its first broadcast in 1951. Four years later, the first fish auctions were held,1958 saw the completion of the Municipal Fish Market as well as the opening of the Citizens Hospital. In the same year, the Tsugaru Line established a connection with Minmaya Village at the tip of the peninsula. Various outlying towns and villages were incorporated into the city and with the absorption of Nonai Village in 1962. Almost exactly three years later, on March 13, railroad service was inaugurated on the Tsugaru Kaikyo Line and that same day saw the end of the Seikan Ferry service. During their 80 years of service, the ferries of the Seikan line sailed between Aomori and Hakodate some 720,000 times, carrying 160 million passengers. In April 1993, Aomori Public College opened, in August 1994, Aomori City made an Education, Culture and Friendship Exchange Pact with Kecskemét in Hungary. One year later a treaty was signed with Pyongtaek in South Korea. In April 1995, Aomori Airport began offering regular international air service to Seoul, South Korea, and Khabarovsk, Russia. In June 2007, four North Korean defectors reached Aomori Prefecture, after having been at sea for six days, in March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck Japan on the east coast
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Shimokita Peninsula
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Shimokita Peninsula is the remote northeastern cape of the Japanese island of Honshū, stretching out towards Hokkaidō. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the east, Tsugaru Strait to the north and Mutsu Bay to the west, shaped like an axe pointing west, the peninsula has a thin axe handle connecting the mountainous axe blade to the mainland of Honshū to the south. The peninsula contains the northernmost point on Honshū, Cape Ōma, administratively the area is a part of Aomori Prefecture, and the bulk of the area falls within the jurisdiction of the city of Mutsu, with a number of small towns and villages along the periphery. Most of the live in coastal areas rather than the mountainous interior. Tourist attractions include Yagen Valley, known for its hot springs, economically, the mainstays of the local economy are commercial fishing, forestry, and seasonal tourism. The main commercial centre is the city of Mutsu, the village of Rokkasho, at the southern end of Shimokita Peninsula, home to a range of nuclear facilities. In 2012, Japan set a new record for ocean drilling depth. Shimokita District Kamikita District Media related to Shimokita Peninsula at Wikimedia Commons Shimokita Peninsula travel guide from Wikivoyage 41°32′47″N 140°54′47″E 41°25′52″N 141°27′43″E
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Honshu
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Honshu is the largest and most populous island of Japan, located south of Hokkaido across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyushu across the Kanmon Straits. The island separates the Sea of Japan, which lies to its north and west, from the North Pacific Ocean to its south and it is the seventh-largest island in the world, and the second-most populous after the Indonesian island of Java. Honshu had a population of 103 million as of 2005, mostly concentrated in the coastal lowlands, as the historical center of Japanese culture and political power, the island includes several past Japanese capitals, including Kyoto, Nara, and Kamakura. Much of the southern shore forms part of the Taiheiyō Belt. The island is linked to the three major Japanese islands by a number of bridges and tunnels. Its climate is humid and mild, the island is roughly 1,300 km long and ranges from 50 to 230 km wide, and its total area is 225,800 km2, 60% of the total area of Japan, making it slightly larger than Great Britain. Its land area has been increasing with land reclamation and coastal uplift in the north, Honshu has 5,450 kilometres of coastline. Mountainous and volcanic, Honshu experiences frequent earthquakes, the highest peak is the active volcano Mount Fuji at 3,776 m, which makes Honshu the worlds 7th highest island. There are many rivers, including the Shinano River, Japans longest, the northernmost point on Honshu is the tip of the Shimokita Peninsula in Ōma, Aomori, Cape Kure lies at the southern extreme in Kushimoto, Wakayama. The islands eastern extremity is Todogasaki in Miyako, Iwate, and its western one is Bishanohana in Shimonoseki, Honshu spans more than eight degrees of latitude and 11 degrees of longitude. Honshu is connected to the islands of Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku by tunnels or bridges, the island is divided into five nominal regions and contains 34 prefectures, including metropolitan Tokyo. Administratively, some islands are included within these prefectures, notably including the Ogasawara Islands, Sado Island, Izu Ōshima. Fruits, vegetables, grains, rice and cotton are grown in Honshu, niigata is noted as an important producer of rice. The Kantō and Nōbi plains produce rice and vegetables, yamanashi is a major fruit-growing area, and Aomori is famous for its apples. Rare species of the lichen genus Menegazzia are found only in Honshu, yields of zinc, copper, and oil have been found on Honshu
