UNIT ONE – GEOGRAPHIC TERMS

river. a large, flowing body of water that usually empties into a sea or ocean. sea. a large body of salty water that is often connected to an ocean. It may be partly or completely surrounded by land.

bay

An island landform is land that is completely surrounded by water. It can be any type of land. The island can also be surrounded different types of water such as a sea, ocean, river and lake.

Bishop Rock

Its significant population, compared with its small size, results in its being one of the most densely populated islands on Earth….Santa Cruz del Islote.

But floating islands do indeed exist on six of the seven continents and sometimes in the oceans between them. Sometimes they cluster together and seem to form a little continent; sometimes they are dispersed by the shifting winds; at other times, when the wind falls dead, they float in isolation.

Islands are not floating at all. They are actually mountains or volcanos that are mostly underwater. Their bases are connected to the sea floor. If an island does disappear under the ocean, it’s because the land underneath has moved or the bottom of the volcano has broken apart.

There’s only one place in the world where you can swim in the tectonic plates between 2 continents. The Silfra fissure in Iceland is the crack between North America and Europe. It is the only place in the world where you can swim between two tectonic plates.

In a new survey of the sub-seafloor off the U.S. Northeast coast, scientists have made a surprising discovery: a gigantic aquifer of relatively fresh water trapped in porous sediments lying below the salty ocean. It appears to be the largest such formation yet found in the world.

The deep sea discoveries of 2020 are stunning The siphonophore, found suspended in the water, might be the longest animal ever discovered. It’s well over 150 feet in length.

blue whale

“The intense pressures in the deep ocean make it an extremely difficult environment to explore.” Although you don’t notice it, the pressure of the air pushing down on your body at sea level is about 15 pounds per square inch. If you went up into space, above the Earth’s atmosphere, the pressure would decrease to zero.

In a personal opinion, the ocean is much more scary. Because we have only observed 5% of the ocean, leaving a mysterious 95% that we don’t know about. We dont know what lives down there etc. But in out of space, we can see a lot in space and it’s not mysterious as the Ocean.

65 percent

There are a handful of places around the world that are largely untouched or uninhabited. Unexplored areas around the world also include small islands, such as Pitcairn Island off of New Zealand, and Palmerston Island in the South Pacific.

While humans have generally explored almost Earth’s entire continental surface, with the exception of Antarctica, there are substantial parts of the ocean that remain unexplored and understudied. For life at the microbial level in the oceans, many species, possibly thousands, remain unknown.

There are still many abandoned and uninhabited islands around the world. After all, 270 people live on Tristan de Cunha, which is 2430 kilometers from the next inhabited island! The reasons islands remain uninhabited are financial, political, environmental, or religious -or a combination of those reasons.

Even if an island is farther out — 200 miles away from the coast — nations can still lay claim with the Law of the Sea (also declared by the U.N.). But beyond that radius, the island is fair game.

Living on an island grows stale very quickly. Most uninhabited islands are for a reason uninhabited: They cannot sustain life for one or several persons, so replenishment of stocks and therefore contact with the outer world are a necessity. Anyway, all islands are under a jurisdiction.